alt Hacker NewsThis is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions. Social media relies on network effects, this might weaken those effects and make it easier for individual parents to keep kids off those tools. Not sure why it upsets you so much.
Are environmental laws are a way of off-loading all environmental care to the government?
Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
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I mean, it does invite the Government to your household, just like marriage (which is a legal contract) invites the Government into your bedroom. I oppose both.
Parents are supposed to be parenting, without the help of the Government. You do not want your kid to spend their time on Facebook or Instagram? Do something about it yourself, as a parent. I understand that tech-illiterate people may be at a disadvantage here, but we are on HN and I am pretty sure we are able to:
Set up a Raspberry Pi (or any other SBC, or even an old x86 box) running Pi-hole with custom blocklists, configure DNS-level filtering with time-based access rules, or implement iptables/nftables rules on your router to enforce schedules. You can use hostapd with separate SSIDs for children with different firewall rules, set up a transparent proxy with squid + SquidGuard for content filtering and time restrictions, or configure your router's DHCP to assign specific DNS servers per MAC address with dnsmasq managing time windows. If you want more granular control, there's pfSense or OPNsense with packages like pfBlockerNG-devel for domain blocking and traffic shaping, or you could write a simple cron job that modifies your firewall rules based on time of day. These are all straightforward solutions that don't require government-mandated age verification systems with their inevitable privacy nightmares and implementation overreach.
The technical capability exists; the question is whether parents are willing to invest a few hours to implement it rather than demanding legislation to do their job for them.
> This is not "offloading parenting of your child to the government" it is acknowledging that a certain action can be far easier to take (getting a child off social media) if the government puts in laws to support those actions.
Compromising my privacy in order to allow you to omit having some tough but needed conversations with your child (i.e. _parenting_) regarding harms of social media is not a sacrifice I'm willing to make. Homer Simpson was supposed to be a parody on a bad father, not a role model with his "You're the government's problem now!".
> Are laws against violence a way of off-loading physical protection to the government?
Of course they are! I support government protecting me from violence in some capacity, although I don't support "chat control"-like laws since the cost/benefit doesn't seem to be favorable.