Two things can be true, and I am in the same boat. Should the next generation have their brains fried by ad-tech corporations and their algorithms? Absolutely not. Should the overdue off-ramp from this trend be the on-ramp to mass-surveillance and government overreach? Also a firm no.

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benrutter 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't buy that mass-surveillance should be required for age verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have created much more complicated things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it.

This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any kind of age verification or safety measures for about 30 years. We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, but instead we've waited till now to decide that everything has to be rushed through with minimal consideration.

	▲	jt2190 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs [of age verification]… There is always a conversation, but it is often not the popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it out. Lawrence Lessig’s book “Code” (1999), for example, talks about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly, and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
	▲	pixl97 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too much money on ads to want that. It seems the other part that want freedom also want so much freedom it gives huge corporations the freedom to crush them. >things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it. The big companies that pay the politicians don't want that, therefore we won't get that.
	▲	jimbokun 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Best time to plant a tree: 30 years ago. Second best time to plant a tree: now.

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svachalek an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Exactly. There's a clear alternative in my mind, one I'm sure is objectionable in its own way but I think is the least evil of the three: require providers to label their content and make them liable for it. This allows parents to do the censoring, which is functionally impossible now because no parent can fight the slippery power of multibillion dollar software investments designed to prevent them from having control over what their kids see.

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ed_blackburn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Absolutely: I said something similar recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46766649

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jimbokun 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

So you're saying these corporations are responsible for verifying the age of their users without verifying the age of their users?

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Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They’re the oil barons of our day. They frack our data and output psychological/social pollution.