zlacker

>>mmaria+(OP)
We require people to verify their age in person to access pornography, it doesn't seem like that far a stretch to require it online. You can't even by a ticket to an R-rated movie without age verification. That seems reasonable to me. I see I'm in the minority here. I understand the slippery slope argument but if we succumb to that then nothing could be done anywhere ever. I understand this could be abused, but it's up to us to make sure it isn't. I think that's why people don't like it, it requires diligence and effort to keep things sane. Much easier to just allow children to view content they absolutely shouldn't then be politically active and make sure our laws are sensible and our representatives are held accountable.

>>thinki+1i4
With in-person access it’s easy to do two things:

1. Verify the ID without storing it in your system. Someone just looks at it.

2. Visually confirm that the photo on the ID matches the person entering the building.

Neither of these apply online.

Has everyone forgotten how kids operate? They’re not clueless. They’re going to realize that they don’t need to submit their ID. They just need to submit someone’s ID.

At first they’ll just use fake ID generators and submit those photos.

If that loophole gets closed somehow, a market will appear for buying ID verified accounts for trivial prices. People will create ID verified accounts and sell them cheap for side money. The only way around this is to start storing ID information for every account to make sure IDs aren’t used multiple times.

It’s one giant slippery slope of consequences for the adults forced to submit IDs, while the people who want to work around it do so trivially.

>>Aurorn+Pm4
Right. Just like kids would hang out outside a 7-11 and ask someone older to buy them a Playboy. Or pay a homeless person to buy them beer. Should we remove the age limit on alcohol purchases because kids aren't clueless? That's not a rhetorical question. Should we remove all laws that can be abused? Your argument falls apart very quickly.

>>thinki+yn4
The Internet itself is the loophole in this analogy.

Minors shouldn't have unfettered + unsupervised access to the Internet, that's the solution.

The open Internet isn't a kid friendly place, isn't meant to be, and won't be no matter how many laws you pass.

Children grow up to become adults, and spend most of their lives as adults. It's important to weigh the lifetime cost of safety laws.

A child with unfettered access to the Internet at say 8 years (IMO, way too young should be 15+) is only protected for 10 years. Then goes on to spend ~60 years negatively impacted, fighting ever growing censorship and risking extortion/blackmail when data leaks. It just doesn't seem worth it in this case.

I'd much rather laws mandate special child-safe phones/laptops that could only access a subset of the Internet, rather than forcing every website/app to collect PII and inconsistently enforce age verification for all visitors for all time.

And all of this is besides the point anyway. Social media and cyberbullying are the real threats to minors online. Porn access isn't good, but it's not causing suicides and mental health crises left and right.