The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

>But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives. That's not the question. Some group is obviously pushing this agenda globally. Who?

Its so good Meta is sponsoring a bill that removes necessary accountability on their side by pushing responsibility to a third party, while at the same time getting accurate headcounts for the ad platform /s

That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it. It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278

In Australia, the government has certified OAuth2 Identity Providers which act as a broker between social media sites and a provider that can verify your age, such as a bank. This allows age to be verified by a provider, with the social media provider having no access to your identity. If the social media companies chose to support this, they would be complying with the legislation. It's not the government forcing you to identify yourself.

> It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. Is is an excuse for some, sure. But we will fail at pushing back if we ignore that there are a meaningful number of concerned parents who support solutions like this because they have become aware of the danger that social media presents. For many of them, self-attestation of age at the OS account level is likely sufficient, not to mention much simpler to implement and use. But others are working hard to shift the narrative away from age attestation towards age verification or even identity verification. Government officials (on both the right and left) want to be able to police speech based on what is acceptable to those who are currently in power. Companies want to verify humans for advertising and training purposes. And some privacy advocates intentionally conflate age attestation (like California AB 1043) with age verification because it is an easier strawman to attack.

the effort is being driven by a handful of tech and social media companies who have suddenly realized they cannot close the pandoras box of AI. without a meaningful headcount of real users, advertisers will begin to push back on cost or even reduce and eliminate spending on social media altogether. by proactively identifying real humans, you prevent the collapse of major social media outlets. by tracking their age and location directly, you restore that which AI took away from advertisers in the first place. age verification makes sure surveillance capitalism continues to function.

Yes, but do you have any specifics? No one seems to have any specifics. I don't mean "plausible explanations of what the government might wish to to" -- I mean "specific actors pushing specific agendas."

Of course, but why now?

For the deep-pocked advertisers, this is a loss. Because big players have systems to fill in those information gaps, they have a moat that protects their position in the market. If the data were instead just handed over, that would weaken those moats.

I agree with this especially as these laws specifically still allow kids to carry smartphones and use them away from parents watchful eye. There is no protection here. Get the kids off of the internet, there is nothing good for them there. Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids.<country> as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that. The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.

Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts. Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't about protecting children or anything about ages. It's about locking down anonymity, and money for a few interests who want to be the verifiers and craft a future where they hold the keys.

Our environment contains harms. Vehicles are several tonnes traveling 60+ mph, they make guns look safe. The calculation is a risk-reward one. The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these "protect the children" laws are worth the internet freedoms they are about to erode. I would argue not. 1. It is not the state's responsibility to raise your children. They should ensure that safety is available, they should have some ability to deal with clear cases of abuse - but otherwise you're on your own. Anybody who thinks they want a nanny state just has to imagine the worst possible government abusing this power. 2. On the basis of providing safety, it would be enough for example for mobile phone OSes to provide parent restrictions (as they currently do). Kids can't afford to buy phones, so it's the parents in almost all cases giving them unfiltered access. If you really really want to ensure that all children have filtered access on phones, just spot check kid's phones and confiscate them if they do not have the locks enabled. It seems insane to me that so many parents believe they have zero responsibility for their children's access to the internet, despite being the source of that access. I'm sorry, parents need to step up.

there are plenty of alternatives if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process (and probably retain) personally identifiable information.. significantly safer too. But that wouldn't come with baked in surveillance, so "what else can you do" sounds a bit unnerving.

I had an idea the other day that children could have some kind of jewellery that they can't remove like a curfew device. Probably impractical but at least it matches - children=limited rights and need protection. Once of age, no need, come of age, can remove.

Oh good, there have never been studies coordinated to come out to influence public opinion based on shoddy science before; just ask the tobacco industry

The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity

Its reasonable to agree a problem exists and that we don't yet have a solution worth implementing. Until there's a solution that actually addresses the problem without creating more, we should just try to make sure more people also know the problem exists and try to help equip parents to deal with it as best they can for now.

Well, I guess there is no other option then. Follow the science.

> What else can you do? Educate the parents maybe?

Can you give some examples of such studies? The ones I've seen are all pseudo-scientific or provide very low grade evidence, often nothing more than simple correlations. The default value assigned to a social study from academia should be zero these days, so there merely being a lot of them doesn't mean anything. You really need some very high quality evidence to justify this kind of huge change.

If there was to be a small silver lining out of all this, then a way to verify human comments would be nice. But it's not worth the privacy impacts and chilling of free speech.

Nothing wrong with burning books if they're bad/problematic/unacceptable books. Get 'em from the library, get 'em from the store. Burn 'em on video. Share it round. Scare the bigots.

I originally read it as EVIL/UPDATE. Anyway, Meta, really? Just to have more of our data? For the absolutely pedestrian explicit purpose of providing more information to advertisers? This is why I don't buy into conspiracy theories. The truth is typically really boring and predictable - evil corporations will evily corporate. I half wish for a more exciting villain that would give people a noticeable reason to stand up against - not just annoying people with intrusive ads.

Also in DC, eg, at the Bilderberg meeting. Somehow the US ones always fly under the radar: Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Jackson Hole banker meetup, Bohemian Grove, etc.

I don't know who you're talking about. Am I missing some context here?

Just to piss off the downvoters more, here is a link https://www.afr.com/technology/australia-takes-social-media-...

It's not about the kids. It's so Facebook can prove to advertisers the views are not bots/AI.

I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up. > So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it? I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.

>people have noticed the harm at around the same time the harm being us proles being able to communicate and organize. they don't give a fuck about kids, algorithmic feeds, or Russian/Chinese/other villains of the week disseminating propaganda to other bots in Facebook comments. they care exclusively about regaining some degree of control over the flow of information. consider this: how many people in Europe would be against the ongoing replacement migration if it was still 1999 and 95% of people were still getting news exclusively from the TV and papers, where most incidents of cultural enrichment would never ever be mentioned? and on the other end of the spectrum, consider this: would the BLM protests of 2020 have the same scale and impact if there was no medium for people to spread the video and organize? TLDR: Arab spring good, American/European spring bad.

I find it kind of hilarious that we spent ages trying to make teenagers not hang out in public spaces, not to drink, not to fuck. And now they have finally obliged, we start to take their obedience as a sign of declining mental health. Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.

>Young people are barely living Yeah, I wonder what caused that? The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.

> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.

Instead of social media we should focus on other things that happened in that same 20-year period, which probably have a bigger effect on mental health. For example in the country I live in psychiatric help has been systematically de-funded during that period as well as support for sports, education and more.

> There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before. Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them. And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days). Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten. In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either). > and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.

> Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before. Two of those three are probably better outcomes.

> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here. if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?

Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health? It feels absurd to even ask.

> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things. .... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that? Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?

The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now. Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse. Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered. I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.

It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well. Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.

there is a reason the gambling regulations are being eased up on and polymarket is so popular. Gambling addiction is notably harder to get rid of the earlier you acquire it.

but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child" which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?

The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"

Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.

Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.

Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. Sustained.

I don't know what that means.

There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised any one thing at all, ever.

There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.

That's true, but the bank also already knows my age. Also, a bank would not satisfy section 201 (B), (C), or (D), so it wouldn't be a covered platform anyway. (I should have left "bank" out of my original post, I was really thinking more about discussion sites like this one, blogs, etc.)

Wouldn't imply their needing any more information than they'd already have.

You're looking at section 102 of the bill, which is a different part than the one I was looking at (and that the EFF article is referring to). The bill is a mismash of several different proposed bills all squashed together into one. Title I, which is what you're looking at, is more restrictive about what platforms it applies to than Title II, which contains the section I quoted.

> Is 99.9% of all websites. Not at all. You named eleven. Even if I'm generous and raise that by a couple of orders of magnitude, it's still a miniscule fraction of all websites. Of course it's close to all big tech platforms, but that's not the same thing. And if one of the results of this whole kerfluffle is to make more people realize that the big tech platforms are not the same as "the Internet" or "the Web", that would be a good thing. > Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm. Which makes it even more important to ask the question of whether "exception" websites like this one can continue to survive if this bill becomes law. Sure, HN users are a tiny fraction of all Internet users. But that's supposed to be one of the things the Internet is for--to give even very small communities a place where they can be a community, and not have to worry about all the other crap that's out there, and not have to be micromanaged by politicians and lobbyists and tech giants. > It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead Not all blogging platforms use targeted ads. And if this gives more of them an incentive not to, that would be a good thing.

You're way underestimating how many boring websites there are. County records websites, tax filing websites, dmv portals, shipping trackers...

But there are also other requirements in section 201 for a "covered platform", which advertising-funded sites that aren't "social media" most likely don't meet. For example, a typical personal blog, even if it shows ads, doesn't meet subsection (C), because its primary purpose is not to share user-generated content (e.g., comments by readers)--it's to share the blog author's content. (HN itself doesn't meet at least one other requirement besides subsection (E): subsection (D), "Uses a design feature to promote user engagement on the platform".)

Only if it's targeted.

I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.

You can control which apps children can install, how much time they are allowed to use those apps a day, decide if they have access to the web, which web sites they can visit, and decide who they are allowed to communicate with. What features are missing that makes everyone giving up their privacy a better option?

Parents have the ability to take any phone or pad out of their hands.

> Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms. So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong. Not only does this moot the demands for capture of photo ID, beefing up the parental controls that already exist in every major OS means that -say- adults caring for their dementia-damaged parents can restrict those adults' access to things that could be very dangerous to them and/or their finances. A strictly-age-based "protection" scheme absolutely does not do that. One might argue that one could "merely" require a "This adult is seriously intellectually damaged. [0] Make sure to protect them from scammers and predators!" flag that can be flipped on by a Registered Caretaker. I humbly suggest that that is information you should never disclose to a company that makes its money by trading in dossiers of its users. [0] Dear downvoters: I understand that this isn't the PC term for the effects of these sorts of ailments. If you've ever had to watch over and care for someone who gets cored out bad by this shit, it's hard to describe it as anything else.

There's a big difference between your kid accessing inappropriate things at a friends house for a few hours a month and having that stuff at his or her fingertips 24/7. If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.

> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. We could lock every kid and adult in a padded cell to prevent kids from being harmed, so why don't we pass a law requiring that? Because its not a proportional response, just like demanding mandatory age verification for every adult is not proportional either.

Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.

You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way. More technological solutions to social problems.

> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device". The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?

That's how we end up with stolen generations of kids taken from parents. It was bad and suggesting state violence for lack of compliance with your world view is bad.

> If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar. So the solution to parents deciding to give their kids access to stuff is to make me flash my ID every time I go online on one of my devices that I use in my childless household? And you're confident that there won't be plenty of parents who just put their ID information in for their kids anyhow?

I don't have kids but I do wonder if maybe the downsides of WhatsApp etc outweigh the benefits? Lack of practice with face to face communication, near inability to talk on the phone, less quality connection with people in general, craned necks, myopia, hidden bullying, privacy violations, dependency on a US company etc And what do you mean by "can't talk to anyone"?

At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion. For instance: https://idtechwire.com/spains-pm-proposes-mandatory-digital-... https://www.weforum.org/publications/reimagining-digital-id/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/davos-agenda-digital... Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact. The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.

When nobody's done something before, there are lots of unanswered questions. Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google? Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.

Because the internet is global and the negative effects of the internet are happening everywhere at the same time. Also, politicians look at other countries for ideas.

Because it is an organized attack. The lobbyists got their orders, now they pull it through. It is kind of fascinating to see though - I bet many people don't realise this coordinated attack. To me it is blatantly easy to notice. I am glad to not be the only one here.

Globalism + Oligarchy

When did you grow up? The internet in 2006 and 2026 were nothing alike.

Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

Money is a poor substitute for people who care. The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.

Espiallat ($9.5 million) vs Darializa (350k) Money matters but a popular movement is more powerful still in some places look up DSA

Which generation of people and with what? Kazaa or porn? I presume the former because the latter is about as old as the civilisations.

Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?

[deleted]

you dont need to buy your kid the internet.

Yeah but don't expect much sympathy on a forum full of uber rich folks whose very income is directly tied to the same revenue streams you mention. I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.

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.

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.

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).

The median age of a youth extremists is 19 [1], with the mean being ~20 (study rounded up). The main issue with this bill is that it requires a huge cost in civic freedoms, with questionable benefits to societal stability. Not only do most youth extremists first offend past the threshold this age verification would catch, this legislation lets big tech off the hook for designing addictive algorithms in the first place, since "there are no kids on the platform anymore, and if there are, they're breaking the law". [1]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2025.2...

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.

> 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.

The true solution to these problems is to be a parent. If you don't have the time to be a parent, then don't have kids. If you have kids, it's _your_ responsibility to keep them alive and healthy, both mentally and physically. > 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 > 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. No access is the solution here. Tools are not expected to be perfect. The railing on a balcony is there for accidents, not to stop you from jumping off headfirst. > 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." Take away their internet access. If your child spends 90% of their time on phub, _take away their internet access_. If they spend 90% of their free time doomscrolling, _take away their phone_. If they need Internet access for school work, the can either do their school work at school, or you watch them do their schoolwork, or you find someone else to watch them do it. If you cannot do this, then you cannot be responsible for them and they should be removed from your care. This is basic mental health. > 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. This isn't a third party policing the industry, this is telling the industry to police itself...by reaching inside my pockets to check my ID. Invasive security like X-ray machines at the airport aren't there for _your_ safety (regardless of what they say), they're there for _everyone else's_ safety: we're making sure you don't kill others. > 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. > That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately). That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately). Privacy can be taught. We don't anymore. Nobody objected when platforms like Facebook started requiring real identities, but the simple answer to this is to not give out your information.

This is an outrage zone. Leave your rationality at the door please.

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.

Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children. They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984. Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy. Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID. Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases. All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit. What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.