[pizzathyme]

"so full of holes as to be meaningless"

what is the solution then to age gating apps that the public feels should be age gated? (TikTok, Instagram, etc). it seems like every app implementing its own guessing system would have even more holes, right?

this is one where I am sympathetic. the moment when someone, with their parent, is setting up a device seems like the best point to check age. right?

am I missing something?

[bloppe]

The companies you mentioned are the ones profiting handsomely off their intentionally addictive platforms. They're the ones with massive legal departments. Obviously they should be the ones liable to make sure the kids aren't getting abused on their platforms, not a bunch of volunteer Linux developers who couldn't care less about social media or monetization.

They could've written these laws to go after Apple and Microsoft specifically, and assume that most kids wouldn't have the wherewithal to install Linux themselves. That may or may not be effective. But no, the way the law is written, any hobbyist OS dev is now legally liable for the abuse kids might suffer on massive social networks that are completely unrelated to the OS.

The funny thing is that Estonia actually already figured this all out. Their national ID system allows any platform to reliably verify anybody's age without gaining access to any other information about them. It's the perfect system for reliable checking age while maintaining perfect privacy about all other personal data. But I don't think we'll see that in the US in my lifetime, so we'll just have to keep fighting over all these ineffective privacy nightmares instead.

[duskdozer]

the solution is to remove the bits of those apps that are harmful to children (and adults): the algorithmic data feed, the infinite scroll, the engagement tactics, the advertising

[mminer237]

So, for instance, pornography and gambling should be 100% illegal? Or at the least, all social media sites should censor any discussions that aren't child-appropriate?

[duskdozer]

No, I don't think pornography, or arguably gambling has the same "manipulative addictiveness" hooks in the same way. The equivalent for those would be something like, if a company every time you opened their porn app had your phone emit a silent puff of nicotine (just... imagine that existed for the sake of analogy). It's about the difference between going on to Facebook and seeing your feed of your friends' posts and seeing your feed of posts selected based on content expected to ragebait you into responding.

[pizzathyme]

but how can you remove adult-only features for children only without knowing the age?

[ronsor]

They're saying we should remove the features in general because they're anti-features harmful to everyone, and focusing on children distracts from that fact.

This conclusion is up for debate, but that's what they mean.

[jqbd]

We should ban oil, drive EVs, everyone write Rust only, and invest in index funds. We should, but it's not going to happen.

[justcool393]

don't do harmful things is pretty easy and can apply to adults too!