[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.

[Avicebron]

> 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.

Seeing this as some sort of moral failing isn't the right way to look at it. It's possible that that this person could have done that, but it's also they they really may not have been able to, low wages, bad environment, health issues, all of these compound until "it's not hard to just" is a gross way to interpret their situation.

[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.