Comment by djaro
3 days ago
The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents" and children dont deserve to be taken advantage of by trillion dollar corporations for the crime of having bad parents.
3 days ago
The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents" and children dont deserve to be taken advantage of by trillion dollar corporations for the crime of having bad parents.
That's the classic question of when the state should step in to correct bad parenting, and when it should leave well enough alone. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is one of the "step in" times, but I think the negatives for doing so seem far too costly.
At any rate, with age verification, un-concerned parent will likely just want their kid to shut up, and will verify using their own details to give the kid the (adult) access they want. So I don't think that changes much here.
> That's the classic question of when the state should step in to correct bad parenting, and when it should leave well enough alone
Well, no, this is the slightly different classic question of whether, in order to prevent (or, more realistically, on the pretext of preventing) bad parenting, the state should impose a universal totalotarian papers-please approach to basic life activities which requires everyone to prove identity to refute the assumption that they are a child so that it may impose its own (also bad, because totally one-size-fits-all and corcumstance blind) parenting on every child, without regard to the imposition on the liberty of every adult necessary to do so.
Stepping in to correct bad parenting happens when there is a system to identify bad parenting requiring correction and intervene only where such is identified, not when you are imposing a universal regime on everyone on the justification that without it, some will act as bad parents. While both are approaches frequently proposed, they are different and should be distinguished.
What are the negatives for doing so?
Forcing literally everyone else on the internet to give up privacy. No kids ever use my devices (there are no kids in my household), but in order to protect the non-existent children who theoretically would use my devices, I'd be forced to share information I don't want to and blindly trust that the process is done in a way that magically doesn't increase the ability to track me across websites.
2 replies →
- at a minimum, your id will be stored on random servers where it can be stolen
- at a medium, you will have annoying and intrusive identity checks required to use many common websites
- at a high medium, you will not be able to use a non trusted computer and identity stack: get on a windows, apple, or google device and use their identity services in their browsers, or else you cannot use the internet
- at a maximum, all activity you and everyone takes online will be monitored and faithfully tied to your or their verified identity. This total loss of privacy will result in a total loss of freedom of speech and assembly online.
That last point is the direct aim of the people driving these laws.
These parents will do age check themselves on kids devices. Why? To not be bothered or to elevate the kid in peer group.
No system is going to fix "unresponsble" parents until we end up with a state completely replacing parent like in Brave New World.
You should look into Paul Krugman’s research on nudges, and how he won a Nobel prize showing that extremely small changes can have significantly beneficial effects across an entire citizenry.
You’re the person saying that we shouldn’t be default people to contributing to their retirement because people may choose not to. It’s not about perfectly capturing every possible person - you’re running a country, not a concentration camp.
> The problem is that not all parents are "concerned parents"
Unfortunately, this doesn't address that problem.
Children also don't deserve to have uncaring parents