alt Hacker NewsBut they could also just implement verification now, which many governments are trying to do. The idea that you shouldn't let a government do one thing because they might do another thing is flawed if they could already do the other thing.
The danger of a slippery slope comes when one change enables the next change - for example, a law mandating certain kinds of data collection enables a future decision to discriminate or control based on the collected data. But in this case, no data is being collected, there's no step happening here that enables a more dangerous later step.
If anything, I'd argue this makes it harder to implement more invasive measures later, because rather than arguing that some form of age control is necessary, Illinois will specifically need to argue that age verification is necessary over the existing anonymous system. That's harder than saying "there is no protection for children right now, age verification is the only way forward".
'AnimalMuppet has the right take upthread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49249774): "Once you accept their right to ask, then you open the door to their right to a truthful answer, and thus to a verified answer.
> But they could also just implement verification now, which many governments are trying to do.
That itself is a proof: the voluntary age declaration was and is common on all the services that governments are now trying to force to do age verification, and it wasn't enough.
EDIT: in more general terms, and going beyond age verification thing and over many recent developments in information security, the Internet as a culture is missing an on-line equivalent to a key real-life social feature: the ability to answer with a shocked "gross!", followed by slapping the asker in the face.