Comment by naikrovek

Not if you're being pushed down the slope.

It's not an accident that this appeared within a month or two of the California one. I would bet good money that there's someone shopping this bill around.

If you do a frequency analysis of when these bills are being introduced, you'll notice an odd cluster internationally. Less charitably, they're coordinating / talking / being pushed by someone. More charitably, the "idea" is spreading.

It's a very odd idea to spread though. Age "verification" isn't something people are truly passionate about.

I suspect that, long-term, this is about surveillance. The powers that be would rather kill the golden genie that's general purpose compute than have teens and radical youth with compute.

This is going to get bad.

> Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy

How is this a counter-argument? I often read this, as if there's some international trusted organization of logical thinkers that has approved inclusion of slippery slope to a list of logical fallacies that must never be invoked in a conversation.

Every single time five years later it turns out that the slope actually was slippery.

The problem with slippery slope is that every step can be defended as reasonable, but the overall result can't. Pointing out that something is means saying, I can't refute that single step and you know that, but I still am against it, because it is crucial to an harmful outcome that I really don't want. It argues against a policy by putting it into context.

Like gravity, there is some inexorably force drawing the state towards mass surveillance tools as it makes the job easier. Removing friction that fights against that force is real

> it is never too late to lobby against these things.

Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.

Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?

Calling everything a logical fallacy, is also a logical fallacy.

We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.

> Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional.

    First they came for the Communists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Communist

    Then they came for the Socialists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Socialist

    Then they came for the trade unionists
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a trade unionist

    Then they came for the Jews
    And I did not speak out
    Because I was not a Jew

    Then they came for me
    And there was no one left
    To speak out for me