[iamalizard]

Wouldn't the correct solution be to empower those parents with subsidies or free child care? If you have to work 3 jobs, parent or not, there is something wrong with how we've structured our society. Banning social media in your example seems like a bandaid put on a person with external and internal bleeding. You'll stop some of the bleeding but the person will still suffer and die.

[AmbroseBierce]

Yeah, there is almost always better solutions to all problems than the one society goes to, but history has taught us that that a lot of times if we wait for the "better solution" we end up years and even decades without either solution.

[iamalizard]

But this solution has several negatives that likely make it net negative.

It normalizes age verification online which will likely lead to a less free internet. We could wait for decades until a really privacy-preserving way of age verification will come but what will happen is we'll have to give up our privacy and anonymity to a few large governments and companies.

It opens to door for regulating any kind of communication channels amongst the people. It will start with big social media but it will likely expand to any kind of forums, chats and even open protocols like AT. It will normalize the government interfering in all kinds of online activities.

These may seem distant and abstract to most people but the people in power want or will want to get power over every kind of communication. We should oppose this now, not when it's normalized and has happened for "platforms bigger than X users".

The people should be able to form any kind of group where they communicate freely. If you want to regulate commercial addictive algorithmic content suggestions... OK, maybe, sure. Do it. Don't regulate where people communicate, how they do it, what they talk about and what they share. People who can use the internet, even children, need a way to share their ideas and concerns. They need to be able to belong to whatever community they please.

[AmbroseBierce]

Did you know the DOJ is starting to use subpoenas to unmask reddit users that criticize ICE? if you really care about free communication that's the kind of stuff you should be worrying about, not shilling for corpos trying to convince your daughter that she looks ugly so she ask her parents to buy more beauty products.

[iamalizard]

I am worried about this and completely oppose these subpoenas. In an ideal world all communications would be over a censorship/subpoena-resistant protocol and the government wouldn't try to infiltrate or stop any kind of online communication. I wish we can collectively ditch Meta, Google, Twitter, reddit and all the other centralized crap for something better. I don't have accounts there and if I had a company I wouldn't even make a company account there even it would mean I'd lose visibility and potential customers.

I hate those companies with a passion. I know most of us here do even if some of us work there (I don't and will not; I'm not even in IT right now). Yet I see how easily regulations against these centralized platforms will expand to regulations on communication in general, whether it's commercial centralized ones or an FOSS decentralized E2EE ones.