Comment by theossuary
7 days ago
Why don't we just require kids to price they're an adult before accessing the Internet then? The issue with these laws isn't the goal, but the implementation is fatally flawed. Do you think websites like Worldstar are going to implement age verification? Of course not, no foreign site will. Then the next step for a law like this must be censuring all of those sites across the country.
Who defines what should be censored? The law certainly doesn't; it's purposefully vague to give the most latitude possible to the implementers. There's already been cases with the new UK law where peaceful arrests were censored by the law due to "violence."
VPNs exist, proxy websites are easy to setup, and frankly parents need to take some ownership.
Two alternative laws that'd have been much better: a) Require ISPs to provide a child friendly Internet gateway that would blacklist large weather if the Internet without a login. And b) legally require websites to accurately describe the content on their page and it's age appropriateness in headers sent back to the user, so the ISP or end device can decide whether to age gate a website.
These are much better solutions, the burden on websites isn't so onerous (many small sites have already had to shutdown due to the burden of the UK law). Implementation is distributed, preventing a single state actor from having full control of a censorship machine. Parents are empowered to decide what content is okay for their children. And you don't have to upload your fucking ID to use the Internet.
People who support this crap need to stop believing politicians every time they say "think of the children!"
> and frankly parents need to take some ownership.
This. None of this is the state's job, it's 100% on the parents to educate themselves, their children, and be the responsible party for determining and controlling what their kids can or can't do with technology and the internet.
If the state feels like they need to do something, they would be better served providing education and tools to parents. Hell, for the really tech illiterate the state could just offer a managed MDM service that they could enroll their kids devices into if they really can't figure out parental controls themselves.