[harshreality]

They would be a solution if almost all parents used them, but parents don't want to socially isolate their kids since a lot of "social" activity is now on social media. It's kind of a prisoner's dilemma.

There's not necessarily wrong. Despite the vapid and damaging nature of most popular online media, isolating a child from it might have even worse social consequences when their real-life peer groups discover that they're not on social media or that their parents have neutered their phone. Some kids would turn out fine after that. Others would be socially destroyed for life (maybe with the right therapy they could become well-adjusted, but high quality therapy is rare).

[JoshTriplett]

> They would be a solution if almost all parents used them

No, they are a solution for parents who want to use them, and that's all they should be. Their existence demonstrates that it's possible to handle this without regulation, other than the desire of some people to inflict their preferences onto other people's kids.

[sumeno]

You haven't tried to use parental controls much have you? They are all terrible. They are insanely difficult to get set up properly and even when you do there are a lot of tradeoffs that come with it.

[JoshTriplett]

> even when you do there are a lot of tradeoffs that come with it

Absolutely, but those are nothing compared to the tradeoffs of putting attestation or identity verification (sometimes incorrectly described as "age" verification) on numerous sites and inflicting them on everyone.

[palata]

> but those are nothing compared to the tradeoffs

And my whole point is that it's possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving manner, and before complaining about the tradeoffs, you should get informed about what they are.

[JoshTriplett]

I'm well aware of those possibilities. The two biggest problems with them are that 1) they still apply to everyone, rather than only to those who opt into them and 2) governments and companies are in practice going to push for the versions that identify people and provide more information.

If you make it possible for governments to decide what content is "limited to adults", they can and will abuse that capability. "Porn" is the battle cry, to make it uncomfortable to argue against; often, other information the government wants to restrict becomes a target. The only way to prevent that is to deny the capability in the first place.

[palata]

Yep, I think this would be a totally valid debate. But my frustration is that it's not there at all. We're at "people make it sound like it's technologically impossible, like the ChatControl for E2EE".

It feels like trying to debate about whether 5G is good or not, and the debate is stuck at people claiming that 5G boils your blood. There are valid reasons to oppose 5G, but if people choose to be so wrong that it sounds like bad faith, they surely won't convince me of anything.

[fc417fc802]

I have yet to see a scheme that would robustly preserve privacy and freedom floated by any of the major efforts. I think the onus is on you to present a workable scheme, but even then I'm not going to support the major efforts which at present are malicious.

[palata]

I keep mentioning it. Read about Privacy Pass, there is a goddamn RFC for it.

[Asooka]

Parental controls can set browsers in "child mode" where the browser sends an "I am a child" header to the server and social networks etc. need to honour it. This has existed for twelve years already: https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2014/07/22/prefersafe-mak... . It can probably be amended with a more granular set of levels, but that would be the best way forward.

The problem of "parents are negligent" is also solved by existing laws which have fines for parents who are negligent towards their children, and governments absolutely love collecting fines, so all the incentives are properly aligned.

[malfist]

I should not have to surrender my anonymity because parents are too lazy to setup parental controls.

[palata]

And it's possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving manner. I'm tired of repeating it, people should get informed before they complain.

We could totally discuss whether or not privacy-preserving age verification is a good thing. But we can't, because most people can't be arsed to read about what age verification implies, and complain about something that is fundamentally wrong (i.e. that they would have to surrender their anonymity).

[duskdozer]

How about we just ban entirely the harmful social media that we would need to attach all our IDs to our internet activity in order to protect the children? Very strange that that's not part of the discussion!

[palata]

Because privacy-preserving age verification is less extreme than banning them entirely. It should be strictly easier to get it accepted.

Except that people can't read for 5min and understand that age verification can be done in a privacy preserving manner.