Comment by otterley

4 days ago

When you’re young, the overwhelming and irrepressible desire to overcome society's proscriptions to satisfy your intellectual and sexual curiosity is natural and understandable. The open Internet made that easier than ever, and I enjoyed that freedom when I was younger—though I can’t say it was totally harmless.

When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials and people who want to exploit or harm them.

It’s a matter of perspective and experience. As adults age, their natural curiosity evolves into a desire to protect their children from harm.

32 comments

otterley

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phoronixrly  4 days ago

> When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials.

You mean that you shirk your responsibility to teach your child how to protect themself on the Internet, and instead trust the faceless corp to limit their access at the cost of everyone's privacy? How does this make sense...

  • gertlex  4 days ago

    They may be looking at the societal level and saying: "I can attempt to teach my kids best practices, but I've learned I sure can't rely on my peers to do the same with their kids...", then feeling like the outcome of that, if left as-is, is societal decline... and then believing that something needs to be done beyond the individual level.

  • otterley  4 days ago

    If a business demands you reveal your identity as a condition of use, and you would rather maintain your anonymity, you can choose not to use that business. It's not like these companies are providing essential services necessary for life.

    Heck, you can't even obtain housing -- which is an essential service -- without having to provide identity in most cases.

    • 2duct  4 days ago

      Some people would argue though that if the friend group is on Facebook/Discord or whatever, and they aren't going to move off to cater to the person rejecting those services, then those services are at least essential to maintaining those social ties. They decided that giving up their data was a tradeoff worth it.

      What remains to be seen is if the outcome of teenagers becoming social pariahs is really worse than the alternatives.

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subscribed  4 days ago

The only thing this is going to achieve is to bar unverified users form the vaguely reputable and mainstream places into the small, completely unregulated spaces, sites and networks.

I presume you prefer hard requirement of IDs.

I'm saying this will make kids go to i2p, tor, to the obscure fora in countries not giving a f* about western laws.

As a parent to the teens and teens, THIS makes me concerned. The best vpns are very hard to detect (I know, I try it myself).

miroljub  4 days ago

So you basically want to prevent your children from doing what you did at their age?

And you don't mind that freedoms of all of us would be restricted as a result?

And then, we keep blaming boomers for those restrictions.

  • otterley  4 days ago

    Yes, in exactly the same way that my dad would want me to only use SawStop table saws so that I don't lose a finger like he did.

    As for "freedoms," you're not free to vote or drink alcohol below a certain age. And before the internet, minors couldn't purchase pornography, either. Some people perceive this change as a return to normal, not an egregious destruction of freedom.

    • miroljub  4 days ago

      > As for "freedoms," you're not free to vote or drink alcohol below a certain age. And before the internet, minors couldn't purchase pornography, either. Some people perceive this change as a return to normal, not an egregious destruction of freedom.

      I am not talking about pornography or alcohol at all.

      I hope you are aware that requiring an ID to surf the internet leads to total censoring and self-censoring of the complete internet. There goes your privacy, anonymity, and right to free speech.

      If your country's regime really wanted to address pornography or alcohol, I'm pretty sure they would be able to shut it down without requiring everyone's identity. The issue is, they are just using these topics to manipulate people, and you are failing to that trap.

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    • mitthrowaway2  4 days ago

      SawStop table saws still suffer from kickback like other table saws, which is arguably much more dangerous than losing a finger and can even cause lethal injury. The SawStop mechanism might provide an illusion of safety that results in users being less careful with their work.

      I think the solution we really need is age verification for table saws. Of course, it goes without saying that the saw should also monitor the user's cuts to make sure they're connected with the right national suppliers who can supply material to meet their needs, and to ensure that you aren't using the saw to cut any inappropriate materials from unregistered sources.

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