Idiots
this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
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Or you know, you can let parents take care of their own kids. Stop telling me how to parent my own kids in my own house!
Also obligatory reminder, consumer home routers have had parental controls for years. You can use these functions to whitelist specific websites for your children, while simultaneously block everything not on said whitelist.
On top of this, this is the most privacy respectful option as it means no third party is snooping on what sites your visiting, no one is collecting analytics, and no personal information is made available to said third parties to be hacked and compromised, ultimately protecting you from any identity theft.
Between public wifi's and companies harvesting the data of children; this goes way beyond you or anyone's ability to parent.
The notion that this is a failure of parents is just another lie social media convinced you so they could keep preying upon your children.
Don't trust you kid with public WiFi? Don't give them a device that can use public WiFI. Lock it down or lock it up.
Don't want to put in the effort to supply your kids with a safe device that gives them a filtered experience, well that just sounds like you don't want to be a parent.
Parental apathy is paving the way to a locked down internet.
I don't see how uploading a picture with my personal information to every website I visit would be a solution to this through. Now what about enthusiasts that want to host a website for a blog (like myself) do I need to start to collect your personal information when you choose to visit my website? What will I be able to do with said information?
Instead a simple solution would be something similar to what libraries and librarians do.
Websites should be classified based on age brackets, genres, and any other useful identifying information similar to how books are classified in libraries.
I would propose that a local government funded initiative be setup that to allows the same equivalent of a librarian to curate the internet into defined whitelists based on these criteria.
From there parent then can choose or not choose to activate these specific whitelists either at the home network level or device level.
All this tech already exists, and for tech-savvy users, this functions basically the same way as a pihole or AdGuard, these can also be completely setup both in your home network and still function while out.
You're conflating UK age verification laws for accessing porn with Social Media bans in Australia.
There's a difference between prohibiting social media companies from providing services to 13 year olds and legally requiring companies to verify ID.
So how would any proposed laws be enforceable without some sort of ID verification (ie. Age verification) in place?
Or are we talking a simple "confirm you're not a robot button", but for age? Similar to what porn sites have asking if you're over 18.
Or would you prefer everyone including yourself need to upload something like a drivers license to access websites... Like Lemmy for example?
Yes, there is a difference, but one leads to the other. How do you think the bans will be enforced?
People are so ignorant asking for Australia’s age verification. That’s basically asking Ottawa to take away their freedom.
I mean the better option would be regulating social media companies and forcing them to change their design to not be as harmful or addictive for all users, but that is a lot harder to do, especially as a small country that isn't host to any of those companies.
A social media ban for kids is not as ideal, but it's enactable now and will curb some harm.
The issue is how it will be enacted. It will invariably require transmitting personally identifying information across a network and for it to be stored somewhere for processing. Even if this is done as safely as possible with government systems, there is always the risk of data theft and exposure as well as excluding people that don't trust the government at all, like pretty much every Indigenous person I've ever met.
It as well provides the government with a system and store of information that could be used as tool of oppression.
I mean, in an ideal world, you just implement it at the OS level. You don't need to send PII off device ever.
The problem is that this basically makes these checks mandatory. You can choose not to use Facebook, but you cant choose to not use an operating system. Plus it might mess with linux development to have this at the OS level
Why does it matter if it's a checkbox when you sign up or a number held by your OS? Leave the OS alone and hold parents accountable for the actions of their children.
Simple home router Whitelist enacted through a parental control setting.
Completely "local" and no personal information is given to a third party website.
Now the question is could we create a job/field were the persons responsible would curates and classifies each website? They could classify based on ages, genres and other useful tags.
What could we call these creators of information?
People don't seem to be asking for age verification. They (we) want social media ban. There's no question about age verification in the survey, let alone intrusive software. When asked who ahould be responsible:
More than seven-in-ten (72%) Canadians agree that parents should be primarily responsible for regulating teens’ social media use, not governments.
This could be easily handled by placing the respinsibility on parents, like it is for many other things.
I've said this before and I'll say it again - it's much easier to answer my child's question as to why she's not allowed on social media with "it's illegal" when most of her peers hear the same at home, than some version of "it's bad for you" while most of her peers are allowed to use it.
But how do you uphold a social media ban based on age without some form of age verification process?
No thank you on submitting my ID just for it to be leaked in some data breach down the line.
I imagine like other laws that threaten warnings, fines and such for parents who let their kids do this or that.
No ID submission, def fuck that. If there's an electronic component it has to be gov't-run and it has to just divulge whether the user is allowed to use that service. Not share age, or other info.
But again, ideally I want a law that tells parents to not let children on social media. That would be enough to mitigate the vast majority of the damage. It would let rebels (parents or kids) do it anyway if they're smart enough to not get caught, while keeping the 80% away from it.
Who goes to prison now when a kid is found to be using social media?
And now what counts as social media? Is it only Facebook, or does it include things like WhatsApp, Mastodon, Instagram, Bluesky, Lemmy, a blog or chatroom?
LOL!
It has been known for a long time that social media is harmful for kids. If parents wouldn't parent properly for the good of their children before, then a toothless law (there would be no way to know children are using the sites) won't make them parent now.
How would sites know there are children using the services? How would the authorities know to issue fines? The only way these things happen is with some form of ID system.
Yes I'm looking for essentially a half-toothless law with punishment "if reported" like it is for the laws against leaving your child alone. Someone has to report you. If you're not reported, you aren't punished. Yet everyone I know complies with very few occasional exceptions, even if all of them think it's a stupid law. Even half-toothless laws can change the overall situation. All I need is the majority of her peers to have been forbidden social media. I can do the rest. If everyone she knows is on social... it's my word against the world and while I might be able to pull off argument that sticks, it'll be difficult, and the next guy might fail.