[api]

EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it.

Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd.

I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need.

In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it.

Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops."

Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.

Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."

That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.

I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.

Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.

[edot]

You are missing half of the story. This is not “caring legislators punishing big bad tech”. This IS big bad tech. Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. More than wanting to get kids addicted, Big Tech and the intelligence community wants perfect observability into online activities.

This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. If they do get age verification, they get to see what everyone in the world thinks and is interested in, all linked to government ID.

Edit: the one outcome big tech does not want is anonymous age verification. This is technologically extremely possible, but that would be a lose/lose for big tech because they would lose kid (aka future consuming adult) addiction AND lose perfect tracking linked to government IDs.

[microgpt]

Big Tech, most of all, wants a liability shield for the people it turns into school shooters. Because if Big Tech had to pay for the consequences of its algorithms it would be bankrupt.

[api]

I'm telling you why ordinary people support this, and I can tell you they overwhelmingly do... at least those with children.

I'm also aware of what you're talking about. That's called regulatory capture. They know this kind of regulation is coming and want to make sure they're the ones writing it so they can use it to entrench their oligopolies.

My point is that something like this will happen unless we find an alternative. The longer it goes on, the worse the backlash will be.

[edot]

There is no technological fix for the issue you raise. The issue being parents not wanting to bother raising their kids, and thus giving the state and corporations control over what they can and can’t do. That’s a cultural issue. No idea how to solve it.

[microgpt]

Were you raised solely and exclusively by your parents or did you also, say, attend school?

[api]

It's largely a wealth inequality issue.

Rich parents can have nannies, expensive software, or a parent who stays home from work. Poorer parents do not have time or energy to police this stuff or supervise their kids. They're too busy putting food on the table and paying rent or a mortgage.

[Avicebron]

Absolutely, it's the system failing and predatory actors seeing a crisis they can exploit.

I was at the laundromat and a woman with kids was complaining across the room about how she only had $700.00 in her account. Note, she had a car, wasn't homeless, but this is actual reality for a huge number of people in the US.

[microgpt]

For me that would be a crisis. I always want to have at least a few thousands and then if something unexpected happens, that other people will go into a small debt for, I will just be able to spend the money and not go into debt. And it's not like it's hard to save up a few thousand dollars in a time frame of years, so I don't understand people who don't.

I think it may be that people grew up accustomed to having everything constantly taken away from them, so they learn not to save stuff.

[pessimizer]

Rich parents can not prevent their children from accessing pornography and social media on the internet, and will also not be able to do so after this legislation.

Pornography is often delivered by people who don't care about US legislation, and social media is carefully left undefined, intentionally confounded with algorithms used to surface content (which people actually do object to at least the opaqueness of.)

I, like most, don't think that the totalitarianism is an unfortunate side-effect of the attempt to protect children online. I think legislation, and legislation like this, will only be successful in increasing surveillance and public manipulation, and that it will have virtually no effect on childrens' consumption of pornography and social media. If you really wanted to protect children, there's better legislation to write and technical solutions to implement.

[pessimizer]

> I'm telling you why ordinary people support this, and I can tell you they overwhelmingly do

This is a claim without backing, and if there were backing to be had, it would constantly be thrown in people's faces by the various administrations that suddenly decided this was a problem that had to be stopped now by any means necessary.

They do not need any public support to implement this, they need opposition to sleep for 5 minutes. It is being advanced by the most unpopular governments in the entire histories of the countries that it is being introduced in.

Your children had access to porn 30 years ago, they will have access to porn after this. There is no actual impetus behind any legal blocking of gambling mechanics in games targeted at children, because they are unbelievably profitable (unlike children as a market for pornography.)

I'm telling you that if you fight invisible enemies, like these campaigners for online age verification (who don't exist), you are fighting a senseless battle.

I'm not dismissing the scenario and your illustration of the mindset of these fictional hoards - if I were concocting a biography and argument for age verification activists, I would come up with the same dynamics and resentments. But it's not real. There are no million-mom marches in DC for age verification on the internet, and certainly not ones so advanced that they've decided that no other method will work: that device/OS/browser level verification of identity is the only way from keeping little Kip from accessing Cambridge Analytics's Russian-Chinese hardcore trans pornography.

They don't exist. Or rather, the bulk of them are Keynesian Beauty Contest judges who have concocted a public opinion that they've followed like lemmings, and only update their vision of public opinion based on new claims from politicians and their PR departments currently pushing the legislation. They don't really believe that age verification is a good solution, but they understand why most people do. I claim that the vast majority of people don't. I'm not even sure I could find a single person to support it in real life if given a 2 minute speech about the obvious and basic privacy and civil liberties implications of such a move, and the many alternative ways to attack the same issue. And governments are prioritizing it, with no hint at all that they will see a reward at the polls. In fact, almost all of the people who are pushing it are unpopular lame ducks who have no ability or no reasonable chance to serve again. They're lining up their next jobs and securing their fortunes.

[microgpt]

It's not the only way. The California way is much better. If we implemented that ten years ago there would be no excuse for ID verification now. But we didn't do that, did we? Instead we pushed for unlimited social media access for everybody, destroying an entire generation and now we're surprised when the chickens come home to roost?

Enough with this "but they can work around it" argument, too. Kids can get adults to buy cigarettes for them, we still ban them from buying cigarettes because it's a very useful roadblock.

[tiahura]

big tech wants a safe harbor.

[throwthrowuknow]

This is just the latest incarnation. They’ve already used the same tactic successfully to remove other freedoms not related to tech. Just compare the stories from older people about their childhood experiences (when they’re being completely open and honest) with the way children are raised now. My own parents did things that would get them on a terrorist watch list nowadays like building explosives and home made mortars or even just walking through town with a shotgun to go down to the creek for duck hunting at the ripe old age of 13 (with no adult supervision).

[api]

Personally I find everything you listed here safer than letting a kid have unfiltered unlimited access to TikTok.

You know a gun or a bomb is dangerous, so you'll probably be careful with it. The gun and the bomb are not engineered on purpose to hook you by exploiting your dopamine pathways and get you to shoot yourself or blow yourself up.

EDIT: I'm being a little hyperbolic here, but I'm also talking about aggregate harm and intent to harm. I'm really being hyperbolic to bash what I consider to be the key villain in this story: addiction engineering, a.k.a. "maximizing engagement." This is the root of all evil.

[zimpenfish]

> You know a gun or a bomb is dangerous, so you'll probably be careful with it.

The statistics on people killed/injured by their kids accidentally discharging firearms in the US disagree[0]

[0] eg. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/unintentional-shootings... "At least 157 people were killed and 270 were injured last year in unintentional shootings by children" (2024)

[stephen_g]

I’m not a TikTok fan by any means but that really does feels to me like bordering on delusion…

[microgpt]

Why?

[pessimizer]

> Personally I find everything you listed here safer than letting a kid have unfiltered unlimited access to TikTok.

This sounds like you have a media addiction. This is the kind of extreme hyperbole that we spent a year or two saturated with when a bunch of states and a bunch of billionaires decided that American people were saying too much on Tiktok about Israel, and something something China evil.

[PinkSheep]

This kind of restrictions expects account control to work. For example, parent's account & separate child account on a device. For the same reasons you describe, it will be ineffective: not tech-savvy. Children will use their parent's/grandma's account on TV and phone, one that has long been verified as "adult" despite the Youtube recommendations consisting of 6-13yo content.

If there were an organic push by parents, they would be happy to buy and promote products today, without waiting for legislation to catch up. Where are these local parental control products?

Speaking of social media and Youtubes of the world, why can't I, as account owner/parent, totally blacklist some "recommendations"?

Age verification is not a fit tool for content filtering. Users want the latter, but get switcheroo'd into the former.

[microgpt]

You're assuming the politicians think this will be 100% successful and not, say, 80% successful.

[PinkSheep]

I assume ulterior motives for politicians. It's their PR campaigns that do make it seem like it will solve all children's issues, if only we sacrifice a little privacy for their control. One thing that's never mentioned is increased vulnerability when (inevitably) personal data (of children) leaks.

[microgpt]

I think politicians treat IDs as public info. Theirs are, and they have access to a lot of databases of all citizens.

[exceptione]

The logical conclusion is to shutdown Meta, Youtube, TikTok, Twitter to name the biggest offenders. And why on earth would algorithmic manipulation, brain washing and exploitation of adults be allowed via the same platforms?

I am not disagreeing with you, but the conversation to be had is far, far wider than "think of the children!". Part of any deal would have to be: privacy of citizens is not a business model. But then you are facing the full might of Corp Inc, including their legislative powers.

[spartacusnacho]

This could be a backdoor to accomplishing just that, which I would welcome

[Hizonner]

> Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring.

It is far more common for that child to be targeted by parents, and maybe by people they know in person, especially because of the lousy social environment their parents have pushed them into, and therefore to have limited offline support systems, and you are now trying to take away all they do have.

[microgpt]

that much is true, but there are also online bullying rings. Note that this happens on social media but the opposite - information about being trans - is not only on social media.

[Hizonner]

There are a few online bullying rings. A few people get struck by lightning.

... and information isn't really the question. Not that there's actually any good definition for "social media".

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

The truth hurts and you're getting downvoted for it.

The public at large have real issues with the current state of the internet and people here don't want to hear it or address it so we get this.

[roryirvine]

Exactly. People are genuinely angry that the social media giants seem to have known for years that their products are harmful.

And, more so, that they've had a decade to reduce or mitigate the harms but have consistently (some might think deliberately) failed to do so.

So now we have the sledgehammer of legislation being wielded to do the job instead.

It's not an ideal outcome by any means, but what did people think was going to happen?

[microgpt]

HN is a venture capital place, we are the ones financially benefiting from destroying children's minds so of course we don't want them to put a stop to it.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

Maybe. I see a lot of canned responses to privacy, freedom of speech, "it's not really about protecting children," etc. That might all be true but it doesnt address the problems that people have with the current state of things.

I've said it in other threads but the worst thing you can do is tell people their problems aren't real.