[nine_k]

Missing something? Perhaps.

Pornography is a very convenient pretext. The real target is anonymity and pseudonymity. Both have been abundantly available on the early Internet. Both were and are being gradually squeezed out from it.

Various law enforcement agencies would love to know more, always more. The more the users are required to identify themselves, link their online identity (maybe pseudonymous for other users) to their official offline identity, the easier it is to find and catch criminals. Not only criminals, of course, but even if we assume 0% nefarious intent, and only the desire to catch the evildoers who swindle grandmas out of their life's savings, this still holds.

Operators of big sites also would benefit. Easier to ban disruptive users. Many great ways to turn the precise identity into targeted ads.

The internet has become a very serious, consequential space. More like... the "real world", which was considered separate from the internet in 1990s. Now they are inseparable, so the pressures of the "real world" are equally present offline and online.

[Chance-Device]

Quality comment, this is the answer. Also insightful how the nature of the internet and real world separation has changed with time. This should be obvious but this is the first time I’ve seen it stated explicitly like this.

[gaudystead]

To add to this, I suspect the data broker industry also has an interest in increasing the legitimacy of the data they sell about anyone they can get their hands on.

[throwaway290]

incongruent. first you say "pornography is just pretext" then say "it's like real world now". where in "real world" can preteen kids go and see not just porn but people limbs removed and other stuff?

pretending the actual issue doesn't exist will not help you stop laws like this

[nine_k]

The pornography is a real issue, but not the real issue.

As many people have noted, a different system could delegate the enforcement to parents. Instead of forcing a web site (or an OS!) to collect identifying information and certify the age, we could demand that a web site would send a header stating the legal age boundary. The user's device then would be demanded to honor it, depending on device's settings. Parental controls should work, and parental controls are already there on most devices. Open-source software would have no trouble implementing parental controls, because they leave the responsibility and the choice with the user. No identity info would leak to third parties.

In a more elaborate case, a state identity provider (something that provides birth certificates, passports, etc) would provide an OAuth-like flow that would certify the age of a bearer of a short-lived token to a site which generated the token, without giving any details. This gives the parties more assurance, and gives the state a bit more visibility, but still mostly preserves the user's privacy.

I don't think that these simple ideas never came to the lawmakers' minds, or to their tech experts' minds. But it's less appealing to them, because it results in less control. Why not push for more disclosure when a chance presents itself?

[throwaway290]

if you agree that online safety problem exists then suggest better solution. you do it now of course but not in your original comment.

the parents thing doesn't work. it's one thing if parents don't give a shit if their child sees absolutely horrible stuff (in US those parents probably lose custody these days). it's another thing if parents aren't even aware that their child watches it while quiet in the bedroom. which is the problem here.

"we could demand that a web site would send a header stating the legal age boundary" can be interesting. start a petition go talk to your representstive.

[tad_tough_anne]

> where in "real world" can preteen kids go and see not just porn but people limbs removed and other stuff?

For thirty years now, preteens, whether alone or huddled with peers, have peered at computer screens and sought these things on the World Wide Web. In the 1990s, it was porno tapes the cool kid sneaked from her parents' closet and brought to the slumber party. In the 1980s, it was sticky magazines stolen from the newsstand or an older brother's closet. The technologies that made these things possible is part of the real world.

I can't even buy a sandwich in the "real world" without a computer's involvement in the transaction.

[throwaway290]

> For thirty years now, preteens, whether alone or huddled with peers

This is so wrong I can't even. I recommend you to look some simple things like percentage of preeten internet users in 1996. For rare ones who had it at home think about how they used it. Even in US which was the first it was probably around 2 hours, not per day PER WEEK. Let alone the rest of the world. and on a bulky machine where it's way easier for parents to know when you are doing it.

and this material was very rare. with less people on internet and without total encryption (that was way pre https/tor/vpn) if a psycho criminal posts a video of doing something terrible he can be traced

> In the 1980s, it was sticky magazines stolen from the newsstand or an older brother's closet

The stuff we're talking about is not the stuff of erotic magazines.