> Separately, and for very different reasons, NetChoice, the trade group that counts companies like Google and Meta among its members, filed testimony opposing the same bill. Its objection was First Amendment law and the risk of exposing sensitive user data, not open source specifically. It’s an odd pairing: a digital rights nonprofit and the lobbying arm for the platforms the bill is supposed to be regulating, arguing against the same bill for opposite reasons. Illinois lawmakers passed it unanimously anyway.

Sure, but Meta also wouldn't mind if age verification of some kind were used, because it would just increase the moat they already have. Meta or Google would have no difficulty complying with any of these laws regardless of how extreme they are, while the mom and pop shops can't comply and are forced out of business.

I have read this before, and while I do not disagree, I am about 100% convinced that this is NOT confined to merely facebook doing bribes. The reason I say this is because you can see many different countries all becoming victim to age sniffing. While in theory a single huge corporation could do that, I am pretty certain that this is NOT only facebook pulling the money-string here.

That's not how ads work. They're done on a bidding system. If the value of each ad impression / click goes down, the bids will go down, but their total revenue would stay the same. It'd have basically zero effect.

The Reddit post you linked to was hallucinated by Claude, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552

Their website (now offline) also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is under "surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This shows how low their standards are.

TL;DR: They claim it's Meta (which yeah it would make a lot of sense).

IANAL but there have been some attempts to argue that forcing operating systems to add any age attestation etc. is compelled speech. Guess the question is which Distro will foot the bill to test this in actual court.

Any advice on how to dismantle and counter such arguments, individually and at scale?

Perhaps they shouldn't be allowed to school until 16? School and other kids can expose theirs to many detrimental things.

> they see the internet, it's too much trouble to keep around, and want it blocked

I can sympathize with this sentiment

in my work and life and personal life the internet is very useful, but as a parent of children and young teens, the internet is really just a PITA that I wish would go away along with all of the games, social media sites, and everything that I have to expend so much energy educating / arguing / instructing / fighting / blocking with my kids about.

It's exhausting because it's everywhere pushing at them from every direction. It's like trying to teach your kids the hazards of cigarettes or vaping to your kids while cool cig pushers are standing in their bedroom talking to them and waiting for them every time they walk out the door.

So yeah, expect exhausted parents who never asked for the deluge of slop, to be supportive of bills -- as ill-conceived or intentioned as they may be -- that provide relief.

And lest you say, "oh but it's always been that way, before this it was the early internet, and video games, and cigarettes". I grew up through all of that, and I can tell you it is not at all the same today. The ubiquitousness of it is what makes all the difference.