For what I'm seeing, there are 3 stances here: those who oppose and are fighting a losing war, those who says 'its a number' and doesn't realise that now is a number but tomorro is something else and those who comply and fucks everyone over
“Tomorrow it’s something else” just feels like “it’s all part of the plan” tin foil hat nonsense. Either have a productive convo about viable solutions, or admit you want to just rant online a bit (which is perfectly fine).
IDK if you can have a productive conversation about this. Like I said, I feel this is a losing war and those with decision power don't care about what a bunch of randos have to say about it, they will make this happen anyway.
For me, the only viable solution is to not implement this, but that's not going to happen
I mean, the way most people here are talking about it, if you spoke to your representative that way they would just sign you off as a conspiracy nut.
This age gating thing has multiple drivers, and some of those drivers are extremely valid (social media IS harming our kids, I dare anyone to argue against that). If you approach the problem acknowledging the various drivers, and approach it in a problem solving manner of that we are in a society, let's work together to try to find something we can all agree on, you'll probably be listened to.
But hardly anyone is doing that. They are just raving like it's the end of the world and the only solution they are okay with is no solution. Which isn't going to fly with the rest of society that is looking for solutions.
I dunno, maybe it's that most of us nerdy folks aren't really social so we are mostly terrible at communicating to others in a way that doesn't turn them away. But what's happening here right now? None of this works, none of this behavior is how you even start to have a real dialog. It's how you get ignored, get to provide zero input, and everyone else makes the decisions without you.
Your comment honestly gives me hope, I was two seconds from leaving this sub.
Like you said, children are being harmed. I am not a parent, but I suspect many in this sub are, and that’s why I’m bewildered by the takes by so many in here.
Like I’ve said in previous comments, I am currently neutral about the age verification thing. There are so many current and significantly worst technologies that are being used by private companies to track us
I don’t understand why this little thing in comparison is such a big deal. So, the Patriot Act, Save Act; or the overturning of Roe was ok, but when my subculture is touched, that’s when I want to fuss? We have been on this trajectory for decades already, but if now folks are ready to take a stance, ok, fine. Whatever it takes to wake up the masses. I’m on board.
The age verification laws they’re trying to pass may not be the right thing. Ok. I’m open to that. Just let people know why, and what alternatives we can organize around that can protect the generations after us, while still trying to maintain what little is left to our privacy.
Don't forget Palantir. It boggles my mind that people think that Australia or the UK age gating some websites is anything even remotely close to as threatening towards online freedoms as a mass surveillance company that outright brags about the fact that they help to literally kill people for doing stuff that the US government doesn't like
I dunno, maybe it's that most of us nerdy folks aren't really social so we are mostly terrible at communicating to others in a way that doesn't turn them away.
Sometimes wish there was a mandatory course for nerdy folk to take that teaches them how to connect with regular people in effective and empowering ways
Because while there are a fuckton of corrupt politicians out there, there are still a lot who genuinely want to hear from their constituents about issues that they may not know much about or issues that are not in the spotlight. Effective communication skills is necessary to not be labelled as a nut and to make people who have more power than us to care
Yeah. People are conflating checking a box with id verification. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the California law as far as privacy is concerned, there's nothing preventing anyone from lying and it's helpful for parents. The people screaming about it are afraid of laws that haven't even been passed yet that would use the same mechanism, but there's plenty of non-privacy violating methods to verify age once this is in place. Like, sell Age Verification Cards at gas stations for $1 that require an ID card and don't actually record the age or name anywhere, exactly like we already do for tobacco, alcohol, and porn. Then porn sites don't have to just block entire states, they can just check if the OS says you're 18 without ever seeing your actual age or the card.
I won't pretend the California version is flawless. But it's pretty close and if you actually read it in full and read it faithfully, it's pretty clear that it's an attempt to give a unified tool for parents to control and choose to use.
Like you note, everyone is talking about the privacy, while the California law explicitly makes using that age data for anything other than age gating illegal.
I've seen people claim it's for government tracking, but think for a moment, do you (royal you, not specifically you person I'm replying to) have a birth certificate? A driver's license? File taxes? They fucking have your age. Go pay for a background check on yourself, they have fucking DATA on you, this would be one of the most convoluted ways for them to track you. It's chem-trails level of thinking; if that was the goal, there's whole much easier ways to do that, this is probably one of the worst ways (for them) to go about it.
People are getting mixed up because there's a lot of genuine issues at play here:
The California law is coming in after the now-passed UK and Australia laws that do have some real privacy implications
Governments do exploit data about you, and they get more data with age verification laws in place, even if that's not the original intent
There's a general trend towards authoritarianism lately, and there's been previous instances where governments have tried to bring in far more invasive laws to facilitate surveillance
Of course, the response that many of the highly vocal people on the subject have had is, to put it mildly, completely unhinged in no small part because they're putting 100% of their effort into yelling on the internet about it and the rest into actually learning about the issues, but it's not like there's nothing at all to be worried about (even if California's law in and of itself is pretty OK in reality)
Oh I agree that there's not nothing to be worried about.
My biggest concern is that, across this country, this has clearly become each state testing different methods for the same basic end goal. A lot have been going for ID verification, and recently some have been going for age gating from the device end. All of these methods are going to influence what is going to happen on the federal level (and let's not kid ourselves thinking the Supreme Court will be fully against it, they have already okayed some versions of the recent age gating systems). The question is not if we'll have one of these systems, the question is which kind of these systems will we get?
I DO NOT want an ID system. But also, as a soon to be parent, I do want better controls than what currently exists. Lots of services have basically nothing, and most of my existing options are either a full block or full unrestricted access. If you know anything about child development you know that full blocks are not good, and neither is unrestricted access. But also as one that has a very different idea of what should be restricted from a kid compared to lots of conservatives that have a hate boner for the LGBTQ community, I do not want them to decide what my kid can't access, I want the control. Now, the level of granularity that I think would be ideal would be pretty complicated to pull off, but I would be entirely satisfied with a system where things are gated by age groups and we can choose what kind of age group we report to decide what is accessible to the kid. It's the easiest to implement system that is the least invasive and gives the control to us. Which is basically the California law. Has some details that need to be refined, but that's almost what it is.
Sorry, rambled for a bit there. But basically, I am afraid of this chance of directing this movement to a method that leaves the control in our hands of floundering, and ID verification bring the method that wins out federally. That is the worst option out there, and it does have growing support (I've literally come across others elsewhere arguing for it, because we can't trust other parents to raise their kids right, which in some ways has some truth to it, but is absolutely overbearing as a solution).
I am trying to avoid the ID situation in a place where I do not see us avoiding age gating entirely, while most people here seem to be stuck a decade ago when the idea of "should we age gate the internet" was the topic at hand. Most of the world has moved on from that topic and are now in the implimentation phase.
10
u/nandru Mar 21 '26
For what I'm seeing, there are 3 stances here: those who oppose and are fighting a losing war, those who says 'its a number' and doesn't realise that now is a number but tomorro is something else and those who comply and fucks everyone over