> These are government regulations regarding kids.

No, they aren't just that, because they are government regulations requiring everyone wanting access to something that cannot be marketed to children under the rules to prove that they are not a child, which is not inherently essential to a regulation of what can be marketed to children.

There is a difference between regulating what can be marketed to children and mandating that vendors secure proof that every user is not a child.

(Just as there is a difference between prohibiting knowingly supplying terrorists and requiring every seller to conduct a detailed background check of every customer to assure that they are not a terrorist.)

We're literally at the point where we have KYC laws just to post on the internet.

The slippery slope is long behind us, we're already at the bottom.

The problem is that it's a government regulation regarding everyone, because now everyone must prove that they're not a subject of this new law.

Do you think there should there be police on every corner you must submit your ID to to prove you're not an illegal immigrant?

The government isn't helping you, they just pushed every child in Australia to un-moderated and decentralised social networks. Complete free for alls.

4chan, Mastedon, BlueSky, PeerTube, Pixelfed

They have millions of users. They're about to get more.

No, you can't block these. No, you can't order these to do anything.

So it “helps” so you don’t have to be the bad guy to your kids and instead now everyone needs to give the government a method to tie your online presence and speech to you.

> As a parent myself, it definitely helps when you can collectively avoid having your kids on these platforms. I can’t express how much easier it is to restrict it and not seem like a kook when authorities are also on board.

This pattern of thought is exactly the issue. Stop offloading parenting of your children to government! That won't end well for neither children nor adults.

Personally I'll take "kook" (or worse) as a trade off for safety and sanity of my children any day of the week.

And if the government regulates your children join an after school program where they learn outdoor survival skills, exercise, and learn the popular political parties glee club.

There would be nothing new here?

The argument is that kids being online isn’t the governments business one way or the other.

The slippery slope argument is always secondary, but how often has government regulation not grown in size and scope? Combine that with how norms shift and the type of large scale identity infrastructure put in place to support this, can you honestly say this isn’t going to grow?

All of that also ignores the possibility (read inevitability) that a bad actor/authoritarian would exploit this access further without popular support.