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Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression.

It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this.

Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.

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Don’t forget the second amendment.
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There's a defensible empirical basis for that one (it's trivial to demonstrate places with fewer school shootings).

You may think your rights are still inviolable but it's materially different from claiming you're somehow against, say, interracial marriage to protect children.

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You're on HN. Expect downvotes.
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whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.

___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____

meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that died.

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More useful idiots are born every day, most of them never are educated and do not see their past blunders as anything wrong happening, they are completely blind to the real implication of their actions.
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I know some idiots that read newspapers and technical papers and yet would rather have company like discord providing safety for their new born daughter but would vote for small govt republicans (or democrats, i don't care, it's just a label that is applicable now. they are mostly all the same) and do nothing about calling out the actual child predators and taking proper action against them. It is bonkers
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Age verification doesn't stop determined bad actors, it just builds a database of everyone who cooperated...........
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Know they sheep, the better to keep them penned.
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Exactly my point.. And all the industry experts who they must have consulted in to write the laws are coincidently invested in personal data harvesting. Who could have foreseen this happening.
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Now do Covid… tracking the non-compliant is surely the smaller task.
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A much better approach would be to hold platforms responsible if they allow a stranger that does not have explicit parental consent to communicate with or get information about a minor.

This would block the most common classes of abuse on platforms like Roblox, Fortnight, Lego (kids) Fortnight, YouTube Kids, Minecraft, and "educational" social networks / games.

Note that it doesn't require any centralized surveillance at all. Parents just need to control the kids' ability to create random accounts, by (for example) turning on parental controls as they already exist on most tablets/phones, and blocking app installation / email applications (or other 2FA vectors).

When the parent allows an account to be created, they just tick the "kid mode" box. This even works with shared devices that don't support multiple accounts (so, iPads and iPhones).

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