Give in 20+ years and you'll be called a kook for thinking otherwise.
Maybe I will have more energy for it tomorrow, I've been through this probably a couple dozen times on HN and I don't have the energy to go through the whole rigmarole today because usually it results in 2-3 days of someone fiercely disagreeing down some long chain and in the end I provide all the evidence and by that point no one is paying attention and it just goes into this pyrrhic victory where I get drained dry just for no one to give a shit. I should probably consolidate it into a blog post or something.
It's incredibly sad as an optimistic person trying to find any silver lining here.
William Tong, Anne E. Lopez, Dave Yost, Jonathan Skrmetti, Gwen Tauiliili-Langkilde, Kris Mayes, Tim Griffin, Rob Bonta, Phil Weiser, Kathleen Jennings, Brian Schwalb, Christopher M. Carr, Kwame Raoul, Todd Rokita, Kris Kobach, Russell Coleman, Liz Murrill, Aaron M. Frey, Anthony G. Brown, Andrea Joy Campbell, Dana Nessel, Keith Ellison, Lynn Fitch, Catherine L. Hanaway, Aaron D. Ford, John M. Formella, Jennifer Davenport, Raúl Torrez, Letitia James, Drew H. Wrigley, Gentner Drummond, Dan Rayfield, Dave Sunday, Peter F. Neronha, Alan Wilson, Marty Jackley, Gordon C. Rhea, Derek Brown, Charity Clark, and Keith Kautz
--
Always operate under the assumption that the people serve the state, not the other way around. There are some names in that list that are outwardly infamous of this behavior, and none are surprising considering what type of person looks to be an AG. Maybe fighting fire with fire is appropriate - no such thing as a private life for any of these people, all their communications are open to the public 100% of the time and there are precisely 0 instances where it is not the case. It's only fair considering that is what their goal is for everyone not of the state.
Recent New York Times headline: "Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts". I'm sure the administration would be very happy if there was a database of government issued photo ID's for every account on Facebook. And if the government gets the ID's of those accounts, I'm quite sure nothing good will come of it for either the individuals involved, or the ability of the people to understand whether the government department in question is going about its duties in a way that respects the law and the Constitution.
[1] My username refers to an anonymously published pamphlet that played a key role in US history.
The worst that can happen is you don't change things.
The best? Maybe you'll find a receptive ear. Your lawmaker stops co-sponsoring KOSA. Your state AG stops pushing for it.
You need to make it easier for your lawmakers to be on that list too. Show them there's people who won't rake them over the coals for bowing out.
putting the consiracy hat on, the exploit is to direct as many installed AGs to push for such bills, with no big letdown if they dont pass, why/because, the demographics on dissention are valuable and are, passed to a hostile federal government.
So the worst that can happen could be worse than nothing.
[] https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/department-of-homeland-s...
No.
I said your state Attorney General's office and your elected federal Senators and members of the House.
So I reiterate - the worst that can happen is you don't change where things have been going to.
The best? Your elected officials bow out of this.
Here's the actual title of the article, which is much more concerning than the HN title.
"The attorneys general argue that social media companies deliberately design products that draw in underage users and monetize their personal data through targeted advertising. They contend that companies have not adequately disclosed addictive features or mental health risks and point to evidence suggesting firms are aware of adverse consequences for minors."
Okay, so why aren't they going after the social media companies?
That doesn't mean they should get what they might want, or that its Constitutional.
But: what methods could that reduce the harm that anonymous internet discourse so often produces? People send death threats, threats of sexual assault, harassment of all kinds, unsolicited pics of their genitals, swat attacks, just absolute nonsense all day every day, hiding behind the veil of anonymity and the asymmetry between the cost of sending such trash and the cost to track it down and do something about it.
There is, quite unusually in politics, a bit of a bipartisan consensus that this is a real, real problem, and that steps like this, or repealing Section 230, would help. Would it, or would it not, and if not, what alternatives are there?
also need a more informed citizenry able to see through propaganda.
"Many social media platforms deliberately target minors, fueling a nationwide youth mental health crisis."
". These platforms are intentionally designed to be addictive, particularly for underaged users, and generate substantial profits by monetizing minors’ personal data through targeted advertising. These companies fail to adequately disclose the addictive nature of their products or the well-documented harms associated with excessive social media use. Increasing evidence demonstrates that these companies are aware of the adverse mental health consequences imposed on underage users, yet they have chosen to persist in these practices. Accordingly, many of our Offices have initiated investigations and filed lawsuits against Meta and TikTok for their role in harming minors. "
Yet, the comapnies aren't being regulated, nor the algorithims, the marketing or even the existence. It's the users that are the problem therefore everyone has to submit their Identity to use the Internet if this passes.
I suggest to (re)read
- https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Global%20Trends_Mapping%...
- https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%2...
These predictions have largely come true.
You can’t illegally retaliate against citizens if you don’t know where they sleep at night.
This loophole, “think of the children,” would not exist if SV had gotten over itself and not called very solution unworkable while insisting that any solution parents receive, no matter how sloppy or confusing, is workable.
Aren't there sound reasons to support anonymous whistleblowing?
Would there be critical feedback without pseudo-anonymity on the internet?
But you folks just have to dom all the haters.
What is their favorite thing: stuffed animal brand, candy, musical artist?
But then wouldn't undercover ops be obvious?
Is this similar to the "ban all crypto" movements that periodically forget everything we've learned about infosec and protecting folks?
Do protectees' deserve privacy for their safety?
In the 1990s, they told us kids not to use our real names or addresses on the internet.
The idea would be that devices could "opt in" to safety rather than opt out. Allow parents to purchase a locked-down device that always includes a "kids" flag whenever it requests online information, and simply require online services to not provide kid-unfriendly information if that flag is included.
I know a lot of people believe that this is just all just a secret ploy to destroy privacy. Personally, I don't think so. I think they genuinely want to protect kids, and the privacy destruction is driven by a combination of not caring and not understanding.
Never mind thinking about how legitimacy was laundered through scientific institutions, and extrapolating to wondering how much that same dynamic applies to "save the children" lobbying NGOs and whatnot.
Even better, make the flags granular: <recommended age>, <content flag>, <source>, <type>
13+, profane language, user, text
17+, violence, self, video
18+, unmoderated content, user, text
13+, drug themes, self, audio
and so on...
ASACP/RTA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
PICS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...
POWDER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_for_Web_Description_R...
Tools avaliable for decades.
But as said multiple times, the childs are the distraction, the targets are privacy and freedom.
Foreign sites, places that aren't trying to publish things for children? The default state should be unrated content for consumers (adults) prepared to see the content they asked for.
0+, kid friendly, self, interactive content
It doesn't even matter if you can get something that technically works. Half the "age appropriate" content targeted at children is horrifying brainrot. Hardcore pornography would be less damaging to them.
Just supervise your damn children people.
Also, not all 13-year-olds are of equal level of maturity/content appropriate material. I find it very annoying that I can’t just set limits like: no drug-referencing but idgaf about my kid hearing swear words.
On other machines: I do not want certain content to ever be displayed on my work machine. I’d like to have the ability to set that. Someone who has specific background may not want to see things like: children in danger. This could even be applied to their Netflix algorithm. The website: does the dog die, does a good job of categorizing these kinds of content.
- It's much easier for web sites to implement, potentially even on a page-by-page basis (e.g. using <meta> tags).
- It doesn't disclose whether the user is underage to service providers.
- As mentioned, it allows user agents to filter content "on their own terms" without the server's involvement, e.g. by voluntarily displaying a content warning and allowing the user to click through it.
That's why I have a hard time crediting the theory that today's proposals are just harmlessly clueless and well intentioned (as dynm suggests). There are many possible ways to make a child-safe internet and it's been a concern for a long time. But, just in the last year there are simultaneous pushes in many regions to enact one specific technique which just happens to pipe a ton of money to a few shady companies, eliminate general purpose computing, be tailor made for social control and political oppression, and on top of that, it isn't even any better at keeping porn away from kids! I think Hanlon's razor has to give way to Occam's here; malice is the simpler explanation.
This could pretty easily be solved by just giving sites some incentive to actually provide a rating.
Some people have enough self control to do that and quit cold turkey. Other people don't even consciously realize what they are doing as they perform that maladaptive action without any thought at all, akin to scratching a mosquito bite.
If someone could figure out why some people are more self aware than others, a whole host of the worlds problems would be better understood.
But I strongly prefer my solution!
Parent's proposal is better in that it would only take away general purpose computing from children rather than from everyone. A sympathetic parent can also allow it anyway, just like how a parent can legally provide a teen with alcohol in most places. As a society we generally consider that parents have a right to decide which things are appropriate for their children.
Spot on! The "technical" proposal from Google of a ZKP system is best seen as technically-disingenuous marketing meant to encourage governments to mandate the use of Google's locked down devices and user-hostile ecosystem.
The only sane way to implement this is to confine the locked-down computing blast radius to the specific devices that need child protection, rather than forcing the restrictions onto everyone.
Overall I think while there is a reasonable argument in favor of age verification for some types of sites, the harms of implementing it would drastically outweigh any benefits that it should not be done.
Keeping parents in control also lets them make decisions contrary to what the corporate surveillance industry can legally get away with. For example we can easily imagine an equivalent of Facebook jumping through whatever hoops it needs to do to target minors, perhaps outright banned various places but not generally in the US. If age restrictions are going to be the responsibility of websites, then parents will still have been given no additional tools to prevent their kids from becoming addicted to crap like that.
Shooting from the hip about the situation you describe, I'd be tempted to give a kid a locked-down phone with heavy filtering (or perhaps without even a web browser so they can't use Facebook and its ilk), and then an unrestricted desktop computer which carries more "social accountability".
As opposed to censoring internet content in general, which does not work because there will always be sites not under your jurisdiction and things like VPNs. I don't support any such censorship measures as a result.
Also, we're getting the locked down computing devices anyway - mobile phones as they are right now are a sufficient root of trust for parental purposes. So it seems pointless to avoid using that capability (which corpos are happy to continue embracing regardless) but instead put an additional system of control front and center.
Why do you think there would be regulation to honor the "underage signal", but not explicitly ban social media sites for "unverified" users?
> seems pointless to avoid using that capability
It's not pointless, because relying on it will soon make these locked down devices mandatory for everyone under 18, and they will keep using it past 18. Everyone will lose general purpose computing, along with adblocking and other mitigations that protect you from various harms. It also leads to widespread surveillance being possible as parents will want to be able to "audit" their teen's usage.
> put an additional system of control front and center
The problem should be controlled at the source, not the destination, if feasible.
Our ancestor comment still has the direction backwards. This is the specific dynamic that makes sense to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47027738 .
This means any legislation should be aimed at directing device manufacturers to implement software that can respect content assertions sent by websites.
> relying on it will soon make these locked down devices mandatory for everyone under 18, and they will keep using it past 18
Okay, but in 2026 we're basically at this point. Show me a mobile phone that doesn't have a bootloader locked down with "secure boot." For this particular threat that we had worried about for a long time, we've already lost. Not in the total-sweeping way that analysis from first principles leads you to, but in the day to day practical way. It's everywhere.
The next control we're staring down is remote attestation, which is already being implemented for niches like banking. The scaffolding is there for it to be implemented on every website - "verifying your device's security" - I get that on basically everywhere these days. As soon as 80% of browsers can be assumed to have remote attestation capabilities, we can be sure they will start demanding these signals and slowly clamping down on libre browsers (as has been done with browser/IP fingerprinting over the past decade)
Any of these talks of getting the server involved intrinsically rely on shoring up "device security" through remote attestation. That is exactly what can end ad-blocking and every other client-represents-the-user freedom.
> The problem should be controlled at the source, not the destination, if feasible.
You've already acknowledged VPNs and foreign jurisdictions, which means "at the source" implies a national firewall, right?
Unless your goal is to undermine any solution on this topic? I'm sympathetic to this, I just don't see that being realistic in today's environment!
In principle I agree with keeping some content away from children, but I don't think any of the implementations will work without causing worse problems, so I disagree with implementing those.
> in the day to day practical way
There's a world of difference between practically required and it being illegal to use anything else, even if initially for a small set of population. You still have a choice to avoid those now. Moreover there is a fairly large subculture of gamers etc opposed to these movements, and open computing platforms will take a long time to fizzle out without intervention.
If you mandate locked down devices for kids, it will very quickly become locked down devices for everyone except for "licensed developers", because no one gets a bunch of new computers upon becoming an adult, and a new campaign from big tech will try to associate open computers with criminals.
Advancing a case for a precedent-creating decision is a well-known tactic for creating the environment of success you want for a separate goal.
It's possible you can find a genuine belief in the people who advance the cause. Charitably, they're perhaps naive or coincidentally aligned, and uncharitably sometimes useful idiots who are brought in-line directly or indirectly with various powerful donors' causes.
I wouldn't say it's a lack of understanding, but that any compromise is seen as weakness by other members of their party. That needs to end.