These platforms are heavy censored with a direct line to governments. This will push kids to other platforms with less censorship. That's a major benefit.

As we go down this road platforms will need to be banned for everyone. For example VK wasn't on the list and they won't implement age checks. They and many other sites will need to be banned until you are left with a white list of acceptance sites. Add in age verification on those sites for everyone.

Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.

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onion2k 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Kids will learn how to overcome the ban. VPNs will become the standard.

This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.

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Wojtkie 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Historically consumer access to security/privacy tools has always been something the govt has wanted to restrict or prevent entirely.

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jMyles 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> This gives governments an excuse to ban VPNs in the name of 'thinking of the children'. That might be the point though.

...then the rest of the world will see what the people of China and Russia already know: bans on VPNs cause them to explode in popularity and development pace.

There's a reason that the most sophisticated VPNs and tunneling tech are built to evade the GFW.

I recently visited a remote part of Siberia, and I was amazed at the ubiquity of VPNs. Grandmothers who grew up in shamanic traditions knew how to get around apparent traffic shaping (even on youtube!) to listen to their traditional music. It was quite inspiring.

I'm not saying bans are a good idea - I'd much rather the adults in the room read the writing on the wall and bring about peaceful dismantling of legacy states in favor of a censorship-resistant internet.

But it is coming either way.

	▲	zoobab 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		"in favor of a censorship-resistant internet" At least that's a good incentive to build censorship-resistant internet.

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subscribed 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

They already started moving to different platforms. No VPNs needed. At some point they'll stray off the Internet (because gov.au of course barks at every platform except discord, mysteriously).