> but really, I think it's a good idea.

> Yes, it removes the "free" internet

> Yes, it opens up the way to a police state without anonymous internet access

Is anyone else as stunned as I am by how many posters on tech websites have suddenly gone full anti-free-internet and embracing the police state?

The internet I grew up on was all about freedom and resisting the police state. Now the top voted comment (at least at time of me responding) is an open-arms welcoming of the internet police state and voicing support for removal of the free internet?

How did people become so naive to believe that this will benefit them? That the regulations are only going to impact kids who use the “bad sites” and not start reaching for your group chat rooms and your social news sites, too?

Do people not realize that they're going after Reddit, YouTube, and other sites, too? It's right there in the article. Think about how this has to be enforced: The only way to guarantee under-16s are banned from these sites is to force everyone to produce ID. You think it's a good idea to force us all to produce ID to watch YouTube videos or read a post on Reddit? This is what you want?

I disagree. I don’t have a huge problem with the UK government monitoring my online presence; I’m reasonably sure my ISP is siphoning all that information to them anyway. That may be problematic for some, but I’m ok with it.

My problem is that this info doesn’t go to the government; it goes to persona and Yoti. We are literally giving government issued IDs to tracking platforms to tell Meta, Google, ByteDance, Reddit who we are.

This isn’t about keeping children safe - if it was the law would be to mandate parental controls on devices. I’d stand behind that law.,

> as drugs

Because war on drugs has been such a successful policy...?

I want you to imagine the sentiment here if it was "Russia set to announce social media ban for under-16s".

"Yes, it will lead to mass surveillance but who cares anyway? You can't just argue against that, that's anarchism!"

Do you know how you sound? Stop falling for these tactics, no one is caring for the children while making these laws.

Keeping children off social media, or to a very limited children only social media seems obviously a good thing.

My issue is the UK “free” speech standards seem to be something like free speech as long as its reasonable, doesn’t offend or excite too many people, cast aspersions on those in power etc, in other words not very free at all. And any form of internet registration could be used to tie more people to their posts.

Of course restricting posting some benefit exists as we seen in the US with robust free speech and twitter being overrun with third world posters attempting to influence domestic politics.

Isn’t it already impossible to be anonymous on the internet without flawless opsec? I’m surprised there isn’t a TV Tropes article about it but whenever a character in a show needs to be perfectly anonymous they visit an Internet cafe with a baseball cap and glasses - which while it’s a trope I think it also plays on our cultural understanding that significant diligence is required to maintain anonymity.

Edit: though I suppose the counterargument is that we shouldn’t make it any easier for surveillance states, especially technologically inept ones, to perform dragnet surveillance.

> Yes, it removes the "free" internet as it was 20 years ago,

social media is not, and never was the "free internet" we all get nostalgic about. maybe the first couple of years was something tangential, but that died very quickly. since then it's been a nightmare-ish hellscape of surveillance, manipulation and hate.

> Yes, it opens up the way to a police state without anonymous internet access, but arguing against any law to be against that just seems like straight up anarchism to me.

anyone claiming something like that is happening here is just spreading paranoiac FUD via a cheap and lazy straw man. if UK law starts requiring me to provide ID just to read rust crate documentation or connect to the internet then that is an issue. i would be very unhappy about it. but that is not happening here.

let's not be drama queens about it.

> Honestly, treating social media, porn, and other things as drugs would probably even be the right step.

i've asserted for a very long bloody time that major social media platforms, not the internet in general, should require government ID verification of some sort to have an account. would likely make it far easier for the police to prosecute a lot of the nasty shit that only happens on those platforms.

having said that, these platforms are designed to prioritise engagement and angry, toxic and hate-filled people click more. so it's the platform's fault but as ever they're not cleaning up their mess.

if folks on HN wanna blame someone or get angry then get angry at the platforms for letting it get to where we are today. it's their own fucking faults.

>Yes, it removes the "free" internet as it was 20 years ago, but that's gone already anyway.

The "free" internet is there, just the same as before. The proportion of people using it in the way they used to might have changed.

A better measure would be to mandate that social media platforms can only show you content from people you follow, and in chronological order.

I'm generally in agreement on social media bans for children, but the proposed solution is age verification on all platforms which has a huge amount of problems.

Why can't we just ban the use of smartphones without parental locks for under 16-year-olds instead? That's not perfect but would already be a huge improvement and adults wouldn't be affected by it.

The post was edited?!

This is not about the good of the people. And the sooner you realize that this type of regulation will be used to manipulate you as much as what you fear is happening already the better.

The government is an entity that acts to protect itself. It has and always will fear an open and informed public.

It's a good idea, as long as this clown show of a government doesn't link it to mandatory digital IDs.

> it removes the "free" internet as it was 20 years ago

I’m not sure free internet was ever good for us. I didn’t need to see all those beheading videos.

Right. A lot of "Internet Freedom" is just dishonest Anarchism. A thought terminating cliche that halts otherwise brilliant people from actually considering the tradeoffs of policies like this.

The whole appeal of Anarchy is that The State always has the potential to become Evil. So, at a (very quick) first pass - eliminating The State kinda seems like it heads off some bad futures.

While some of the HN commentariat may be anarchists, you and I at least are not.

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> Honestly, treating social media, porn, and other things as drugs would probably even be the right step.

Adopting the drug prohibition model is fine, if what we want is to lavishly enrich the social media cartels, and visit upon the rest of the world needless crime, misery, addiction, and death.