I other words, a pipe dream for the likes of weird freaks like Yarvin and Thiel and Musk and Zuck and Bezos and Ellison...
this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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Theres a big wide internet beyond apps and social media.
that space is already pretty much dead, at least here in germany. If you create your own website, you need to have a valid legal notice. if you set up a web forum, you're liable for everything that gets posted there.
Man, parents not wanting anything to do with their kids' upbringing will believe anything, huh. They'd rather offload any and all responsibilities to automation than spend one minute teaching kids how to protect themselves.
Then again, they probably don't know, either.
I see this as more like the patriot act- gover ent and big tech are pushing to elevate concerns of "the children's safety" to violate our privacy and sell data. Same way the patriot act is so you can "keep all the evil bad man terrorists" at bay but really it's an excuse to violate our rights "legally" in the name of "safety".
It seems like a pretty common thing for people to expect that the luxuries of modern technology include not having to do anything you don't want to, including being present for your own life.
People make self-destructive choices every day. (insert "always have been" 🌏🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀)
I think you’re correct in both aspects for sure. Parents are certainly less involved, for the most part, in informing their kids of literally anything. It is much easier to ‘offload any and all responsibilities’ as you put it. iPad kids are a good example of this. Handing a 2yr old a video device and walking away is not parenting. This is an issue with many many topics from internet safety, to general life things, to talks about their bodies. Parents do not want to parent.
I’d also agree, largely, the parents just don’t know, or care. Privacy is, unfortunately, a niche thing to know and care about.
That's the goal.
Anyone think that's not the point?
"Age Verification" is just them attaching "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" to their push to have every single bit of information about every person on the planet.
All the more ironic when you realise that some of the big businessmen and lobbyists pushing for mandatory age verification checks are in the Epstein Files. Basically the kind of people who you don't want to be thinking of the children...
Social media functions as a kind of gatekeeper for public interactions, not unlike credit scores, driver's licenses, and college degrees. The absence of a presence on social media is not only socially debilitating (you're cut out of the information stream for local events and public amenities) but a red-flag for college recruiters and employers. It's much like how not using a credit card regularly in your teens/20s impacts your ability to access low-interest lending in your 30s/40s. Or not having a driver's license interferes with your right to vote.
State officials have been searching for a kind of uniform, iron-clad, easily verifiable public ID for ages. Linking your online presence (a thing that you need for a myriad of daily tasks) to your ID becomes a pathway to this goal. Universal, non-transferable digital ID becomes a wicked two-edged sword as it both exhaustively tracks the "documented" individuals and neatly severs the "undocumented" from society.
Make social media unprofitable instead of this.
Basically don't allow ads for kids and only show social media posts from their friends in chronological order instead of any fancy algorithm. Also make them liable for showing scams to minors. That kills most profit.
Kill it from the other direction. Make it illegal to algorithmically adjust a users experience to prioritize interaction regardless of whether that's positive or negative. Ultimately that's the problem with places like Facebook, they weigh an angry rant the same as a positive one, higher even in a lot of cases. Things that make people angry generate a lot more interaction than positive things so it drowns people in hate and fear. If you treat any interaction as a positive signal things just devolve.
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Which is WHY I SUPPORT it!
-Proton CEO who Endorses the Politicians MAKING this a Reality!
Nobody has better solutions to fight against botnets and targeted misinformation. Like, these are big deals that every Nation needs account for some way some how. A non-anonymous internet for the masses, and anonymous internet for those who know how to get around it should be the standard.
Aaaaand they got you
Clearly this man is a genius.
Crazy I was screamed at on Reddit for pointing out this guys hypocrisy. Glad I left his miserable platform.
The nightmare trap of the Two Party System is that you can look at one party cozying up to Big Tech (Obama in 2009) and conclude the other party must be reflexively in opposition.
Trump was fully surrounded by Thiel goons before he'd even left office in '21. And the relationship only got tighter with his Elon Musk Bromance. But hey, if you'd just elected Kamala Harris and ~~Liz Cheney~~ Tim Walz to the White House, I'm sure nobody would be talking about how much of their cabinet was stuffed with Silicon Valley cutouts.
It's not like a cartel of trillionaires can buy up both parties at once, right?
Sort of, but my point is he made a specific point of praising a demented rapist and lauding the pedophile party as heroes. Silicon Valley cutouts that support Democrats commit the unforgivable sins of praising diversity or working to solve climate problems. They’re not surveilling hospitals for ICE. This guy loves trump because he believes trump has any opinion or knowledge of tech monopolies.
Tone deaf doesn’t cover it. If he sold shoes, it’d be one thing. But he jumped head first into the cesspit for no reason other than he believed it.
And so, even though our opinions on age verification coincidentally align, he can fuck right off.
he made a specific point of praising a demented rapist and lauding the pedophile party as heroes
He made a point of praising a President's pick for the Antitrust Division of the DOJ. He didn't praise Trump and he certainly didn't praise pedophilia.
Slater's tenure at DOJ was short-lived and unremarkable. So feel free to mock Yen on those grounds. But this has dick all to do with Epstein. It has nothing to do with the bloated ICE budget (which received bipartisan approval) or the assorts nightmarish cabinet appointments, many of which enjoyed supermajority support in the Senate (Rub'em All Out Rubio was appointed unanimously ffs).
he jumped head first into the cesspit for no reason other than he believed it.
He's a Tech Goon and Trump had a ton of Tech Goons on his team. These people aren't partisan, they're corporate lemmings. By 2028, I'm sure Yen will be lining up to brown nose the incoming Dem administration. By 2032, he'll be back on Team R, shocked at how the party that did everything Tech wanted has betrayed his customers again. Oh, and incidentally, insisting that the only way to protect yourself from Mean Old Big Government is by upping your Proton License to Double Super Secure.
And so, even though our opinions on age verification coincidentally align, he can fuck right off.
He's endorsing the poison so he can sell the antidote.
He didn't praise Trump and he certainly didn't praise pedophilia.
Disagree. “Great job Mr. president!” is praising trump, and praising trump is praising pedophile protectors. It’s noteven a big leap, or unconfirmed rumors. We have multiple witness accounts to his actions and nothing has been done - legally- following the initial release of many documents.
It has nothing to do with the bloated ICE budget (which received bipartisan approval) or the assorts nightmarish cabinet appointments, many of which enjoyed supermajority support in the Senate
Also disagree. Eighth-graders know what trump is about. Andy Yen knows what trump is about. Corruption, fascism, incompetence. Yeah let’s send a hoo-rah tweet to my (whatever # followers)
(Rub'em All Out Rubio was appointed unanimously ffs).
Yeah that’s disgusting. Although I assumed he was just stupid and corrupt, not flat out evil as has revealed himself to be.
These people aren't partisan, they're corporate lemmings.
He’s both. There’s no non-partisan support of trump, he’s made sure of it.
By 2028, I'm sure Yen will be lining up to brown nose the incoming Dem administration. By 2032, he'll be back on Team R, shocked at how the party that did everything Tech wanted has betrayed his customers again.
Yeah, that’s probably right, but all the reason I’m kicking him to the curb now.
Yeah, this was inexcusable. Trump's been cozying up to the tech billionaires for years.
Anyone who could not see that Trump was going to extort business for his own personal gain was clueless to Trump and his cabinet of blackmailers.
Anyone of color giving support to White Nationalists is fucking insane and shows a complete lack of understanding of current US politics.
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This whole conversation is such a false dichotomy. The laws can absolutely be written such that companies are required to suspend service to any suspected child without requiring ID to use the service.
But just like pollution and everything else we've let them push the buck to us.
The problem is that politicians don't want to legislate enforcement/oversight entities as those would piss off their owners.
Democracies need to replace their lame duck politicians with ones that aren't bought and owned by the shareholder class who also own the social media corporations.
The laws can absolutely be written such that companies are required to suspend service to any suspected child without requiring ID to use the service.
The laws shouldn't focus on "harming children" so much, but on "harming humans".
The big tech companies should be held responsible for the actual damage they are inflicting upon society, and their methods to artificially inflate "engagement" (or whatever the hell they call it) should be held to scrutiny. Whether or not the damage is inflicted upon an underage person or an adult, is merely a distraction.
Those assholes would love it if we all had to identify ourselves and prove our age, if it means they get to keep inflicting their shit upon us.
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