[ericmay]

That's the cynical view, yes, but we can see educational standards and performance going down in the United States, we have seen plenty of scientific and medical studies showing problems with children and more specifically teenagers using social media. I'm not one to want to want to limit someone's rights, but it seems like the trade-off here is in favor of requiring age verification at least for social media companies.

Separately I still don't fully agree with concerns raised regarding social media and identification for everyone. Bots, people who are online just stirring up trouble, &c. are causing pretty significant challenges and problems for society. If you spew a bunch of racist stuff for example I think people deserve to know who you are.

And you know we do this all the time. Folks want gun registries and things like that (and I agree, as a matter of practice, but not principal) so I'm not sure why we're ok with that form of requiring identification to exercise your rights and against this one other than political priorities.

[domador]

Maybe requiring identification to speak online is not the intent but it would likely be the practical effect of the laws that were originally intended just to help children. It's not enough to think about laws' intent, but also their practical effects.

We haven't even mentioned the censoriousness that already takes place in various online forums not because a user said something racist or was stirring up trouble, but because moderators were vindictive, petty, or lazy, or because the automated moderation tools in place were heavy-handed and unintelligent. I don't look forward to that kind of moderation spreading everywhere and made more efficient by reducing everyone to a single identity. (Maybe Joe Contrarian has some opinions worth listening to, but it's just easier for the moderator of a forum to see that he was already publicly blacklisted by another unrelated forum, and just blacklist him on this one, too.)

[ericmay]

At the end of the day they are private websites and the owners get to decide all of that stuff. Start your own, or just stop posting and let such folks have their echo chambers. One of our problems in society is that folks seem to think there is a need to post on the Internet on some forum - stop giving others power over you. You’re just posting to a bunch of anonymous people. They may be bots for all you know. Who cares?

> Maybe requiring identification to speak online is not the intent but it would likely be the practical effect of the laws that were originally intended just to help children. It's not enough to think about laws' intent, but also their practical effects.

Right we should analyze trade-offs. But you are quite focused on censorship which I am also generally concerned with. But are you really being censored by being identified and associated with what you say online? In public you aren’t anonymous - why must that extend to this digital public square?