alt Hacker News> I agree. I also agree with S76 that some laws regarding how an operating system intended for wide use should function are acceptable. How would you react to this law if the requirement was only that the operating system had to ask the user what age bracket it should report to sites? You get to pick it, it isn't mandatory that it be checked, and it doesn't need to be a date, just the bucket. Is that still too onerous?
What's the point in doing any of this if it doesn't result in materially better outcomes?
The point is that I think it's one of a few things that if done together could result in better outcomes. First, it standardizes parental controls, which ought to be so easy to use that failure to do so is nearly always a proactive decision on the part of the guardian. It doesn't need to be perfect, just reduce friction for parents and increase friction for kids accessing the adult internet.
Second, it would signal to worried parents and busybodies that something has been done to deal with the danger that unmediated internet access might pose to minors. I don't think that it's a big issue, but a lot of energy has gone into convincing a lot of people that it is.
The other part of achieving a good outcome would be to disempower those in the political and private sphere who benefit from a paranoid and censorious public and have worked to foment this panic. That's the much harder part, but it's not really the one being discussed here. I'm pitching the low-intrusiveness version to gauge sentiment here for that easier part of the path.