alt Hacker NewsA lot of issues require holding two ideas in your head at once. Age verification chips away at privacy and internet freedom. It likely also reduces harm to some/many/whatever children, even if it’s imperfect and won’t stop everyone. The interesting question is where the right trade off sits. People often end up arguing only one side.
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Massively downplaying it to say "chips away" this takes a sledgehammer to the core of internet privacy. In all cases in the world where this has been done before like China or Russia, freedom is also lost shortly after. Of course people only argue one side, the stakes are losing internet privacy and freedom in the entire world if the west also succumbs to these authoritarian policies. It isn't the government's job to prevent your child from getting access to a phone/ipad, that's your job as a parent.
counterexample, the government could quickly institute a law stating that individuals knowingly allowing children to access tik tok must pay a fine. instead, government has teamed up with big business ... ostensibly to save the kids, however these actions conveniently benefit government and business alike (because ad tech can now seperate AI from human activity, and police/three letter orgs are granted automated citizen tracking). big fan of collectively considering contrasting ideas man but yeah i dont see how its ever going to be in the common mans best interests for the public and private sectors to team up.
A point I don’t often see made is: the argument that “the parents need to parent” is unintentionally classist.
Wealthier people who can afford to have one parent stay home or have babysitters or nannies who will actually supervise the kid can do a much better job monitoring and redirecting than when both parents work long hours and have no money.
So poorer kids are going to spend more time scrolling brain rot, which may lead to worse academic performance and concentration problems. They’re also more likely to get sucked into any number of garbage social media propagated cults, wacko ideologies, and dumb fads.
I don't think facebook needs some kind of age verification scheme at all. They are already fully aware of how old their users are. The kids post photos and messages every birthday. They use these platforms talk with their school friends. The platforms know who the children are. They already target them with ads and algorithmic manipulations accordingly. They don't need our biometric data to know that we're adults, they just want it anyway and this is their excuse.