Remix.run Logo
jlarocco 3 days ago

There's the possibility that some of the users of these sites voted for these laws and want the verification in place.

pyman 3 days ago | parent [-]

Millions of worried parents, perhaps? Parents who are worried about the negative effects of gambling, tobacco, alcohol, and porn?

patates 2 days ago | parent [-]

There are a lot of very advanced software one can use to limit access to those sites, as well as control the time spent online. I think many tablets/phones even have built in parental controls. Why do you think the government should be involved?

pyman 2 days ago | parent [-]

In theory, yes. In practice, not really. There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye if it means making more money from porn, even if kids can get around the restrictions. Look at Elon Musk, one of the first things he did after buying Twitter was open the floodgates, letting anyone upload or search for porn without any proper safeguards.

Reddit shows porn to kids too, as long as they tick the "Show mature (18+) content" box. Same with Telegram, Discord, WhatsApp, Facebook, and the rest. The only apps that don't seem to turn a blind eye are Instagram and Snapchat. Epic Games and Roblox also do a great job, both have strong moderation teams and built-in tools to protect younger users. Every company should use them as examples. They’ve shown it's possible to build huge platforms without ignoring the safety of kids online.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2 days ago | parent [-]

> There's always a billionaire in the US happy to turn a blind eye

What does this have to do with enabling parental controls? You can define an allow list of websites to visit and disallow installing new applications. A billionaire turning a blind eye wouldn’t affect that, except in ways that would be very obvious to the parents like resetting the control settings.

pyman 2 days ago | parent [-]

> What does this have to do with enabling parental controls?

You're shifting responsibility to parents instead of asking billionaires to check kids' ages before letting them access porn sites, just like other businesses ask for ID when someone tries to buy alcohol or tobacco.

Telling parents to fix the problem isn't the answer, that's what governments are for: to regulate billionaires and hold them accountable.