Comparing today's internet to the 90s is hardly fair. It has become extremely predatory, and most places youth gravitate towards are controlled by algorithms with the goal of getting them hooked on the platforms to make them available for manipulation by the platform's customers.

Of course, there will be stories of smart kids doing amazing things with access to vast troves of information, but the average story is much sadder.

The EU is working on a type of digital ID that an age-restricted platform would ask for, which only gives the platform the age information and no further PII.

Companies (not talking about system76) amazingly always find the shittyest interpretations of their obligations to make sure to destroy the regulations intention as much as they can. The cookie popups should have been an option in the browser asking the user whether they want to be tracked and platforms were meant to respect this flag. Not every site asking individually, not all this dark pattern annoyance. It's mind-blowing that that was tanked so hard.

▲

whywhywhywhy 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

None of this is for what you're describing though, there is no reality where such wildly different countries and states in different corners of the world all decided coincidentally to all do this within 6 months of each other. We know it's not "well maybe they saw X country and thought it was a good idea" because even percolating the policy would have taken over a year.

Protecting kids is just the PR reason, the real goal is requiring ID auth for every action taken on a computer. If we normalize it for downloading apps or using websites the next step is to authorize it for connecting to HTTPS at all and then the next step is requiring it to unlock your CPU cores.

If people don't push back on this now there is no world where we get out of 2030 without requiring government ID auth to install linux on your own computer not connected to the internet.

End to end silicon to server auth is absolutely possible and someone is working really hard to make it a reality.

▲

mendyberger 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Comparing today's internet to the 90s is hardly fair. It has become extremely predatory...

I think you're missing the point they're trying to make. It's not that the problem isn't real, it's that the solution won't work. Kids will find a way around. They have a lot more free time than us.

▲

gzread 12 hours ago | parent [-]

If you're geeky enough to install a virtual machine and know that will break the restrictions, you're probably mature enough to not need them.

Banning pubs from selling to minors doesn't work, but we should still do it, right?

	▲	hellojesus 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Physical is different from digital. Sure, today many kids don't know or care about VMs, but they certainly will know and care tomorrow when this regulation hits. And that info will spread like wildfire all over social and blog posts. About a week after the policy goes live it won't just be the geeks that know, it'll be everyone in the 4th grade.

▲

deno 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> The EU is working on a type of digital ID that an age-restricted platform would ask for, which only gives the platform the age information and no further PII.

Sure, it might start out that way, but once adoption reaches anything critical the PII will be required to squash free speech as soon as possible. But by then the interaction flow will be familiar, hardly anyone will even notice, never mind care.

The EU has the best frog boiling experts in the world.

▲

vladms 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> ... will be required to squash free speech as soon as possible.

Maybe pointing the obvious but things happen if enough people care about them or do not care to oppose them.

From my perspective speech became "more free" lately - meaning everybody says all kind of incorrect, wrong things without fear of retribution even if there are laws against some of those, because people just don't care.

So maybe we should also focus on teaching people what is free speech, why is it good for them, why they needed, rather than worry about some hypothetical mechanism that someone will prevent it.

Of course both can be done, but I find it a bit funny that if the focus in mostly on not having mechanisms to prevent free speech, we might still end up in a situation that there are no such mechanisms but on the other hand nobody speaks freely because they don't care or only stare at their tiktok.

▲

deno 14 hours ago | parent [-]

The whole point is they cannot introduce those laws outright for the obvious reasons they have to sneak it in covertly in guise of safety.

▲

gzread 12 hours ago | parent [-]

By this reasoning we should oppose every law in case it's a foothold to sneak in a different law.

The CA/CO parental controls API law is very reasonable. It only mandates each OS must have a parental controls API, the use of which is up to the parents.

	▲	deno 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> By this reasoning we should oppose every law in case it's a foothold to sneak in a different law. That has been the successful strategy for e.g. NRA w/ regard to 2nd amendment and they have been proven correct every single time.

▲

abc123abc123 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yep, the digital wallet will become the authoritarian, beating heart of your life. If you don't comply with the EU, you can say bye, bye, to your bank account, any online interaction, they block your right to travel and so on.

The corona passports showed the way to achieve ultimate control of the population, and the EU digital wallet will be a permanent corona passport.

The public sheep, in their ignorance, are cheering this on, without knowing what will await them. It is our responsibility as technologists to fight this, and to educate the sheep.

▲

sham1 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

One question about this doomsday scenario: "cui bono"? What does the EU gain from squashing free speech in your mind?

	▲	deno 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That’s the problem with censorship, isn’t it? It’s always in someone’s interest. What speech will be silenced depends on who is in power at the time. If we can’t mount a strong defense of free speech on principle alone then it’s doomed anyway.