There's a middle ground shockingly and I do think it's roughly why this all came up at once.

"Just parent" isn't easy in an age of large numbers of families having to both work and kids having a computer in their hands at all times.

The "please don't say you're 18 if you aren't" standard has NEVER applied for anything else flagged as adult. If you sell products or allow services to a minor without doing proper checks YOU are responsible as the company if it's found to negligent, to the point you can lose your license.

The thing is, you also don't fucking store every single ID you've ever looked at because that's insane, or if you do, you do it for very short periods of time. If a kid gets a fake ID, fine, that's on the kid so long as the company is doing their best.

It's why an "adult mode" local cred on the machine is probably reasonable? If the kid gets a fake cred, fine, that's on the parents, but at least sites can automatically look for the cred and if not provided just bounce.

As it is ALL the onus is on the family, and there's a fuckload of preying on children (especially economically) that's not supposed to be remotely legal that we've just kicked open the doors to because its "hard" to solve.

I know this wasn't your point (and I agree with you here), but I heard the exact same thing, word for word, when the Catholic priest was just breaking.

because parents get to vote same as you, and it looks like they are winning. there are many problems in the libertarian utopia that could be dumped on individuals ("if you don't like it, don't leave your house") but equally unfortunately many prefer a socialist utopia with lots of social and financial controls

“Tell parents to parent” is a nice slogan, but it means nothing in practice. Some parents won’t have the ability to police their kids, some won’t care, etc.

What do you actually think it means to “tell parents to parent”? Be concrete. Do you think there should be legal consequences for people who let their kids on social media? Or just some kind of public service PR campaign?

Anyway, why shouldn’t this apply to everything else? Should we repeal the laws against selling tobacco or alcohol to minors, or against an adult having sex with them? Why not just “tell parents to parent” ?

Other people’s kids aren’t your problem until they grow up and form a deeply unfit electorate and their country, representing less than 5% of the world population, makes an absolute mess of everything. Then they become everyone’s problem.

> I don't care about other people's children getting groomed.

These other people’s children will be your own children’s bullies tomorrow and narcissistic bosses and politicians or similar gang members the day after.

Fact is, we need to find solutions against child abuse in any shape or form that work given the circumstances and decision making of other people around us. We do not exist in isolation. I don’t think age verification in any way contributes positively to this problem space, and I don’t even think online grooming is near any top spot on the list of child abuse vectors that need addressing, but that doesn’t mean that the problem and our contribution to it (like looking away and doing nothing) should be denied as a whole.

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I’m talking about kids on discord and etc

It was a problem when I was younger and now it’s a bigger problem