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I somehow managed to delete my long-winded reply while I was typing it, so I'm gonna try to condense it down into something semi coherent.

In short, it's not the anonymity that I'm arguing for (though I think there's a very important debate to be had about the erosion of privacy through removing anonymity on the net), but the strengths of social platforms on the internet that are being abused by bots and AI slop. I think that a blanket ban is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We need to regulate the bad actors somehow and moderate the amount of social media that kids use, but to effectively ban kids from being able to interact with people outside of their local communities is a bad precedent.

The big strength of the internet (and why it's so important in empowering oppressed groups like the queer community) is in the ability to connect people and rapidly spread information regardless of distance. They want to take over TikTok because it's been credited as a major platform in dispelling the Israeli funded myths about the genocide of the Palestinians. Protests of college students broke out on campuses all over the US over colleges getting funding from Israel and the production and sale of weaponry. That didn't just appear out of nowhere, that information was spread through social media in real time. You can't get that from a book at the local library (you should still support your local library though, they do so much for a community beyond being a source of knowledge). But this rapid spread of information is exactly what makes the AI slop and all the other garbage (ads, misinformation, the list goes on and on) such a problem, because the bad stuff makes money for the big corporations who run the social media platforms we use. But that doesn't mean we should ban a tool because people use it maliciously or excessively to the point of harm. Nobody is calling for a ban on TV for kids under 16 despite it having a negative effect on our attention span and being filled with channels like Fox News.

Plus, I am always wary of these "protect the children" campaigns because they are often a false flag to actually restrict minorities' rights - often queer people. You see this most prominently with porn bans, but stuff like this that allows a government/group to better censor information and control the narrative come up time and time again. There was an attempt not long ago to get rid of Massachusetts' multi-grade standardized test program called the MCAS. Standardized testing has its issues, but the groups pushing for the removal had no plans to replace it with any form of statewide teaching standards or anything, they just wanted to be able to teach kids that evolution is fake and gay kids go to Hell.

Also, I work with teenagers. They can’t read. Every year standardized tests get easier. The average ACT score in Florida is now 18. That’s almost the same as answering at random, and these kids pay for the exam in an effort to go to college.

I hate to tell you this, but I think this is a Florida issue. Florida is one of the worst states in a country that has been fighting against intelligence for decades now. Boomers but proudly illiterate is exactly what those in power - especially people like DeSantis - want. But the same internet that allows this to happen can also be used to give these kids a better chance. I go on YouTube and see videos of people making a fully working jet engine out of a can of Coke or a hobbyist launching a 3d printed rocket that breaks the sound barrier. I see kids learning about orbital mechanics and reentry heating through Kerbal Space Program and simple circuitry through Red Stone Minecraft tutorials. I see trans elders supporting trans kids who may otherwise never make it to adulthood - sometimes even to the point of telling them their legal rights and helping them get out of abusive households. I see up to the minute medical research news coming from furries who worked on the COVID vaccines on Bluesky. I see so much art, music, and support for passion projects that introduce people to interests that they never knew they had. And I would never want to take all that from kids.

Why if? It happened and it was a fucking drop in the bucket to their profits.

And they'll do it again

I've got a bit of an ignorant question and I think all the downvotes here make this a good place for someone to set me straight.

One of my pet peeves in the last few years has been booking an Airbnb and the host pushing you to their system where you need to fill in all the same information Airbnb has and this includes uploading some form of ID. Around the same time period, airport checkins have also required uploads of your passport.

Are these two examples that different from the changes that a lot of people are saying will be terrible and risky, or am I just missing something? Agreed it's increasing the attack surface but I'm also a bit curious why there isn't public pushback on these systems if that is genuinely a large concern

Edit: Most of these are international so that probably explains the lack of pushback on these systems

Cybersecurity: where defenders have to win every day and attackers only have to win once.

Anything like age verification should probably be handled with absolute minimum identifiable information (i.e. you're older than X true / false) from an authoritative source like say the people who give out IDs (because if they're broken into everyone's screwed anyway). Instead OzGov has dumped it in the laps of the corpos, who will hoover up pictures of IDs or faces instead. As of a couple of days beforehand there's still no actual information on these age verification protocols to my knowledge, very untransparent, very disturbing. Corpos being required to moderate their platforms would be good, this is not that.

If a website is so questionable it might leak, it probably shouldn’t be in common use

Tell me you know nothing about software without telling me you know nothing about software.