It's much easier to give individual users control over their own device than to give a centralized authority control over what happens on everyone's device over the Internet. Local user-controlled toggles are just easier to implement.

All parental moderation mechanisms can and should be implemented as opt-in on-device settings. What governments need to do is pressure companies to implement those on-device settings. And what we can do as open-source developers is beat them to the punch. Each parent will decide whether or not to use them. Some people will, some won't. It's not Bob's responsibility to parent Charlie's children. Bob and Charlie must parent their own children.

To the people arguing that parents are too dumb to control their children's tech usage because they themselves are tech-illiterate: millennia ago, we invented this new thing called fire. Most people were also "too dumb" to keep their children away from the shiny flames. People didn't know what it was or how dangerous it could be. So the tribe leader (who, by the way, gropes your children) proposed a solution: centralize control of all the fire. Only the tribe leader gets to use it to cook. Everyone else just needs to listen to him. Remember, it's all for you and your children's safety.

> we invented this new thing called fire [...] So the tribe leader (who, by the way, gropes your children) proposed a solution: centralize control of all the fire

Of all the things, a "save-the-children prolegomena to the Prometheus myth" certainly wasn't on my bingo card today. So thank you for that, but I'm not aware of any reports of fire-keeping in the way you've described. Societies and religions do have sacred traditions related to fire (like Zoroastrians) but that doesn't come with restrictions on practical use AFAIK.

Am I the only one that is repeatedly amused at how many smart people are just caving to making this about parents/children at all?

We've literally watched things unfold in real time out in the open in the last year I don't know how much more obvious it could be that child-protections are the bad-faith excuse the powers that be are using here. Combined with their control of broadcasting/social media, it's the very thing they're pushing narratives in lockstep over. All this to effectively tie online identities to real people. Quick and easy digital profiles/analytics on anyone, full reads on chat history assessments of idealogies/political affiliations/online activities at scale, that's all this ever was and I _know_ hackernews is smart enough to see that writing on the wall. Ofc porn sites were targeted first with legislation like this, pornography has always been a low-hanging fruit to run a smear campaign on political/idealogical dissidents. It wasn't enough, they want all platform activity in the datasets.

I can't help but feel like the longer we debate the merits of good parenting, the faster we're just going to speedrun losing the plot entirely. I think it goes without saying that no shit good parenting should be at play, but this is hardly even about that and I don't know why people take the time of day. It's become reddit-caliber discussion and everyone's just chasing the high of talking about how _they_ would parent in any given scenario, and such discussion does literally nothing to assess/respond to the realities in front of us. In case I'm not being clear, talking about how correct-parenting should be used in lieu of online verification laws is going to do literally nothing to stop this type of legislation from continually taking over. It's not like these discussions and ideas are going to get distilled into the dissent on the congressional floors that vote on these laws. It is in it's own way a slice of culture war that has permeated into the nerd-sphere.