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by Matl 60 days ago
Why am I being forced to prove to my OS that I am an adult just because of your inadequate parenting skills?
3 comments

Isn't the OS thing specifically California state law? If so, the answer is "California is unfortunately very influential": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_effect

(And I'm saying this as someone who doesn't live in the US, nor care to).

It is but the point is once you are OK with some invasive age verification laws, because they may simplify parenting, you get others imposed on you that might not be OK with you.

Therefore I am in favor of none.

That applies to all laws, not just all "invasive age verification laws".

You may be a libertarian, I basically was when I was a teen, but since then I've seen how people act and how this makes everyone miserable.

> You may be a libertarian,

I am not. I don't label myself, but if I were forced to slap a label on myself it would be something like an anarcho communist. It's not that I don't believe in regulations helping, is that I feel like this is plastering over a deeper issue, which is parents having children, but not having enough economic security to have the time and resources to devout to their parenting properly and so turning to the state for oppressive restrictions in favor of good parenting.

It's the reasons teens spend time on these apps that should be looked at by the state, not how to block them from doing so in other words.

> parents having children, but not having enough economic security to have the time and resources to devout to their parenting properly

> anarcho communist

I like this post about how having a box to type an age into is unreasonable since we haven’t tried simply doing… global communism?

> I like this post about how having a box to type an age into is unreasonable since we haven’t tried simply doing… global communism?

I like this post setting up a straw man when I am not talking about a box to type age into (existed since the 90s) but about you needing to photo ID to access your OS/your OS preventing you from doing this unless you photo ID.

I'm also not sure where you get any kind of global communism from but then I am not sure you know what that even means.

> I am not. I don't label myself, but if I were forced to slap a label on myself it would be something like an anarcho communist.

Good to not label yourself, but that is functionally equivalent, the "anarcho" part was the point, not communist or capitalist.

> It's not that I don't believe in regulations helping, is that I feel like this is plastering over a deeper issue, which is parents having children, but not having enough economic security to have the time and resources to devout to their parenting properly and so turning to the state for oppressive restrictions in favor of good parenting.

People have been saying stuff like that since time immemorial (or at least BC), and most eras since then. Simultaneously with other people saying the exact opposite, and calling for those very same laws.

Almost never does anyone in either group actually agree on specifics over vibes. Closest was probably the US having alcohol prohibition (but even then some of the supporters were expecting the ban only on liquor not beer) and similar sized nations setting obscenity and blasphemy laws.

> but that is functionally equivalent, the "anarcho" part was the point, not communist or capitalist.

I don't think they're functionally equivalent today. A libertarian today is most commonly understood as someone who, while not trusting state institutions, fundamentally trusts and embraces corporate power because of self-correcting market forces of competition keeping them in check, as they would say.

They also don't believe in 'handouts' (i.e. social safety net) and certainly not in a collective ownership of the means of production.

While I am skeptical of much of state power, I most certainly do believe in a generous social safety net, safety regulations as it relates to food, water, oxygen etc. just not things that approach totalitarianism, and I certainly do not believe 'competition' in the 'free market' will keep corporations behaving nicely.

Therefore I do not think libertarian would fit. May be the original left wing kind of libertarian. But that's not what is understood under that term today.

Because lots of people have inadequate parenting skills (last time I checked you didn't need a license for parenting) and tech companies are actively exploiting that.
So stop those tech companies from exploiting people

We're about to own goal because... what... because suddenly everyone ran out of ideas? Because suddenly it's too much work?

But it wasn't too much work to build the torment nexus?

Tech work underinvests in customer support and safety.

If they spent what they had to, they would crater their revenues, because support does not scale like code does.

So introduce that license.
Internet usage must not ever be restricted, but restrictions on parenting are fine?
If the quality of parenting is so bad that it harms societal well-being as is being argued here, yes. It ought to be a license that one can reasonably obtain, though.

One can link government benefits to it, like Austria does with the Mother-Child-Pass. You need to have it filled out by the doctors and hospitals to prove you took reasonable precautions to ensure the child's safety, only then are you eligible for government benefits.

Wait what? How did we go from "Users of social media need to be at least 16" to "Users of OSes need to prove they are adults"?
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws

I have nothing against Instagram asking me if I am over 16, but these laws end up with my OS not allowing requests to instagram unless I prove to it that I am over 16 with a photo ID is where we're going.

Sounds like the situation might end up with Instagram not accepting requests unless you're using an OS that follows those sorts of laws, which is kind of an inversion of what you said, and I think I'm fine with that outcome if so be it. Websites should be allowed to decide who's visiting them, unless they're government, utility or other basic needs portals.
> Websites should be allowed to decide who's visiting them

No, hold up, you just casually introduced a dystopian goal of facilitating the casual collection of government ID by website operators. I absolutely do not want the equivalent of South Korean ID numbers in order to do pretty much anything online.

Anyway as I always point out when these threads come up we've yet to try the simple and noninvasive solution. Websites should be required to send a content categorization header. Large enterprises that fail to do so should be fined. If that were uniformly happening it would then be possible to do proper client side filtering (right now that fails miserably).

Before anyone asks, app stores could be required to implement the equivalent of the header in an appropriate manner of their own design.

Fair, maybe. That'd be the better case I suppose. However that be more like banking apps not liking rooted phones. The California law is more like your OS not allowing you to access resources unless you prove your age, not the external resource doing so.