[eykanal]

Alternative take: The fact that twitter / facebook / whatever allow arbitrary, unverified posting enables large-scale misinformation that led to, among other things, Russia's manipulation the US electorate and ultimate impacting the presidential election.

This one-sided view has some good points, but for goodness sake, don't pretend that the alternative has no downsides.

[CamperBob2]

You'll need to explain how age verification fixes that.

[nradov]

Really? How many Electoral College votes did Russia's clumsy attempt at manipulation actually change? Please quantify that for us based on hard evidence.

[Forgeties79]

That's not what they said.

[Larrikin]

Playing devil's advocate outside of debate club only serves to promote the devil's point of view.

State your well reasoned opinion where you have considered the facts. Or just say you are in support of this openly.

[bit-anarchist]

Disagreed. I'm against invasive age verification methods, but to allow innacurate expectations to proliferate often becomes a bubble that pops, causing many to rebound to the other side, even if it's objectively worse. I much prefer to keep the tradeoffs clear, as it prevent betrayed expectations while still showcasing the unnacceptible downsides.

[Larrikin]

I'm firmly against the idea of Internet arguments presenting an opposing position under the guise of it not being their actual opinion so they can run away from debate. Devil's advocate is a technique that should be used in school to learn how to make stronger arguments.

All it does is covertly promote the idea by presenting it as reasonable and on an equal level to the other idea. While at the same time being able to shut down debate, by pretending they don't actually think that.

Anybody can say something like "but what about the good side of the African slave trade" but they will be debated and the argument shut down if they present it as their actual argument and engage in good faith with the comments. Using the devil's advocate technique is an extremely useful way to argue in bad faith, anonymously on the Internet.

Critique of the author's style is fine. An opposing view should honestly be presented as such.