Kids act would require age checks to get online

Why don’t we put age verification on the adults?

Parents can whatever they want, it’s a free country, but make it illegal to sell a smartphone to anyone under 18.

Ban them in schools and paint the walls with faraday paint.

But if this stuff is so bad for kids, it’s probably horrible for adults too right? While we’re at it, do the same in restaurants, movie theaters, courthouses, and libraries.

Make some PSAs and put up posters. Maybe put some little cell phone ‘e-smoking’ pens in places where we want to allow this kind of antisocial activity.

Block them in cars. If they want to build cars with data built into the audio stack, fine, but take licenses away for using phones while driving.

Phone free spaces used to be the norm. We can all agree to create some again and still keep the web open to all.

call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this

We're approaching forty years of this:

> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.

> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.

This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to crush those lobbyists that push for this.

By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information? Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged. The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.

Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need?

On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?

Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.

To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.

Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics.

It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better.

It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.

btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?

I'll see your "government wants biometric surveillance" conspiracy theory and raise you a "pedofiles want to keep kids on social media" theory.

What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.

Who wants this?

[dead]

Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s

This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term:

This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL

They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!!

Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not:

* of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE

* of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn)

* or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids.

Really, why doesn't actually matter too much.

The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news.

They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind)

We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices.

How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons.

These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.

Just put the age verification in the browser already.

Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.

That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.

The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.