[threatofrain]

> Anyways, it feels like all sides of the political spectrum are trying to strip away any semblance of anonymity or privacy online both in the US and abroad.

It's not this or that political party, your neighbors simply don't share your values. Maybe you don't agree with their values either — like to what degree we should be ceding privacy in favor of fighting child exploitation on the internet. Child protection arguments work because it is a compass to the true feelings of your neighbors.

[ls612]

It is as Aristotle said, the average person is a natural born slave (to their emotions, and thus to the rhetoriticians most skilled in changing them). That is why democracy always fails in the end. Americans just had such good geographic and historic luck to delay this reckoning by a century or two.

If you see politics through this lens then the 'democratic backsliding' that has been universal across the world for the past two decades is entirely unsurprising.

Vae Victus.

[kij]

Vae victo — Vae victis

[AnthonyMouse]

> your neighbors simply don't share your values

The problem with this argument is that everyone agrees with protecting children.

"Think of the children" arguments are the legislator's fallacy: Something must be done, this is something, therefore we must do this.

In reality there are alternative means to accomplish any given goal, and the debate is about what should be done, because no one benefits from using methods that cost more than they're worth.

Well, almost no one. The opportunists who drape themselves in the cloak of "safety" when they want to have the government mandate the use of their services or use it as an excuse to monopolize markets or establish a chokepoint for surveillance and censorship do benefit from the machinations that allow them to screw the majority of the population. But the majority of the population doesn't.

[gzread]

There's fake protecting children and there's real protecting children. The Colorado and California parental controls API laws (not age verification laws, there is no age verification in these laws) are clearly "real protecting children" since all they do is mandate standardisation of a parental controls API on each OS.

We kept saying parental controls are all that's really needed, these states said "ok then, do parental controls" and we're still complaining.

[pluralmonad]

If there is such widespread demand for such mechanisms as some comments suggest, why did it take coercion through law making to bring it to market?

[gzread]

Because manufacturers don't want it because it reduces their revenue?

[nottorp]

Who's we? I personally taught my kid to lie about their age so they don't get silly censorship on the internet.

[gzread]

Good, if that's what you want for your kids, then don't set them up with a child restricted account. It's completely up to you.

[nicman23]

nah let them die i tell you