Comment by rpdillon
15 hours ago
> That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal arguments.
I strongly agree with this. All these jurisdictions and politicians are passing laws that they don't understand the technical foundations for. Second order effects aren't being considered.
Sometimes (only sometimes, I promise) I wonder whether this kind of legislation is being dreamt up by a think tank tasked with planning how to implement some ulterior goal (e.g. massively increased surveillance to fight crime - it's far too easy to unsert something more nefarious here). The politicians then just follow the action plan and repeat talking points from party advisors.
Like the German Socialist Democratic Party did in Germany in 1933? How well did that go?
Very well, until it didn't.
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This is the only mention of "age verification" in all 900 pages of Project 2025:
"In addition, some of the methods used to regulate children’s internet access pose the risk of unintended harms. For instance, age verification regulations would inevitably increase the amount of data collection involved, increasing privacy concerns. Users would have to submit to platforms proof of their age, which raises the risks of data breach or illegitimate data usage by the platforms or bad actors. Limited-government conservatives would prefer the FTC play an educational role instead. That might include best practices or educational programs to empower parents online."
The policy recommendations for "Protecting Children Online" are found on page 875. The two main recommendations they make are:
"The FTC should examine platforms’ advertising and contract-making with children as a deceptive or unfair trade practice, perhaps requiring written parental consent."
"The FTC can and should institute unfair trade practices proceedings against entities that enter into contracts with children without parental consent. Personal parental responsibility is, of course, key, but the law must respect, not undermine, lawful parental authority."
https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
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How can we be sure they don't understand at this point? They'd really have to be morons, how can they even take care of themselves?
Have you seen Congress? It’s like Denny’s on senior appreciation day.
They had to wheel McConnell in not long ago because he physically couldn’t walk.
And like I don’t mean to shit on the elderly (directly anyway) but I dunno just spitballing here, maybe we could get some folks in there who weren’t born yet when the civil rights act was passed???
Why would that matter? There are many young members who congress who also support the same things.
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Have you listened to any legislative debates on technical issues? “A series of tubes” was the high point of political understanding of the internet.
Wait! What? The high point was a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
We should pay John Cheese to call them all personally.