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There's a lot of legislation going around "for the children" right now that will have the impact of making us all less safe and free, making computers more difficult to use, and generally making life worse for everyone.
Lots of folks are talking about this as if it is the only intended outcome of these laws, but it isn't
Part of these laws are also about children.
About controlling what kids can read, who they can talk to, what they can watch, and how they can interact with one another, making it harder for kids to use digital resources to learn about themselves and the world while at the same time making it easier for abusive and controlling parents to abuse and control their kids.
I got a response to this that has since been deleted (or perhaps I was blocked by the responder, I'm not sure) that I want to talk about.
I can no longer see their posts, so I have to paraphrase their arguments, unfortunately.
The poster made the argument that social media is legitimately harmful to children and restricting children's access to social media is a good thing, and that even if Age Verification laws do some bad things, they are good because they will prevent children from access social media.
I had a hard time believing this argument, and said:
- It sounds like you're saying "its okay if some children get abused as long as no children use social media" and I know that can't be what you mean, but I'm not sure how else to take it.
Before I sent that response, they responded again and said explicitly that keeping kids off of social media was a bigger concern than any hypothetical abuse children might receive as a result of the various pieces of proposed legislation.
This is a shocking argument that I really hope I misunderstood, but it's gone now and I can no longer contact them so I'm going to take a few minutes to talk about this arguement in general and why I believe it is part of a disinformation campaign.
Now, there are several problems with the argument that "social media is harmful to children and access to social media by children should be legally restricted."
1) Prohibition just creates black markets. Children aren't going to stop communicating online because we've made it more difficult for them to use commercial social media platforms, they're just going to move to platforms that have less moderation, less control, etc.
Keeping kids off Instagram isn't going to keep them from posting photos online, it's going to move those photos to unmoderated image boards. They'll just be on whatever the modern equivalent of 4chan circa 2006 is, and anyone who survived the internet of the 00s can tell you that this is going to be significantly worse for the kids that end up there than instagram.
2) Commercial social media isn't just harmful for kids, it's harmful to fucking everyone. These companies are hoping that by pretending to care about "the children" they'll be shielded from any real consequences.
Legislation against Commercial Social Media companies should focus on providing a way out of commercial social platforms.
3) Both of those points are irrelevant in this discussion because they are smokescreens.
These age verification laws aren't about keeping kids off social media, they're about surveillance, control, and locking LGBT people out of public discourse.
It's a fascist power play.
Centering Children on Social Media as the argument for mandating IDs to use computers is a smokescreen, so that we're spending time arguing about how to best solve this very complicated problem, instead of talking about all the ways that this legislation will be used to facilitate the abuse of children and marginalized people.
4) Anyone who sees a conversation about how age verification laws are going to cause widespread significant harm to lots of different groups of people and decides instead to talk about how social media is harmful to children is doing the work of disinformation spreading propagandists.
They might not *be* disinformation spreading propagandists, they might have just been duped by disinformation spreading propagandists, but either way they are doing the *work* of disinformation spreading propagandists.
This is a propaganda and PR technique that is in common use today.
This is how it works:
Person 1 makes a point that is harmful to the narrative the PR firm has been paid to protect.
One or more accounts on the payroll of that PR firm, who usually just posts innocuous stuff but who *always* has an opinion on the topic of the day, chimes in with an indirectly related smokescreen argument, usually accompanied by an accusation or an emotional appeal.
Person 1 then gets bogged down with that argument, tacitly approving that the two topics are in fact one topic.
Lots of people then see the argument, and come to associate the smokescreen with the real issue. Some of them will be swayed specifically by the emotionally appeal ("think of the children") and some of them will genuinely believe in the smokescreen issue ("social media is bad for children") and accept that the smokescreen is important enough to justify accepting whatever the original post was arguing against.
There are lots of these PR accounts floating around out there. They're sockpuppets. They look like real people, sometimes they *are* real people, but they're also sockpuppets.
The end result of that is a bunch of people popping in to conversations about Age Verification laws to talk about separate and legitimately important issues as if those issues and Age Verification laws are the same thing.
And some of those people might be paid PR Sockpuppets, but some of them are definitely real people who really care about the harm social media might have on children.
And so we spend so much time talking about the nuance and potential solutions to this much more complicated problem that the real issue (these proposed Age Verification Laws are actually tools of fascist surveillance and control which will be used to suppress dissent and harm marginalized communities) gets lost.
So, again, these age verification laws aren't about children.
They aren't about protecting children.
They aren't about children on social media.
They are about surveillance, control, and abuse.
If we wanted to make social media safer for children, we would pass legislation that actually addressed the way commercial social media is harmful to everyone: limiting notification frequency, mandating interop and data export-ability, preventing surveillance driven advertising models, mandating algorithmic transparency, and enforcing anti-trust against companies like Meta who buy up all their competitors and unify them.
The recently proposed US age verification laws, the current UK and EU chat control and age verification mandates, these things are about crushing anonymity and preventing digital communications channels from being used to organize resistance to the rise of Fascism on a global scale.
Don't get it twisted. Don't let yourself be led into other conversations. Don't be a tool of a PR firm that isn't even paying you.
Just had another one!
"I'd rather give my 13 year old child a bottle of whiskey than access to Roblox" is a hell of a take, y'all.
I'm not here to argue that Instagram or Roblox are good for kids (the opposite!) but
1) these arguments are still just providing cover to normalize laws that mandate sending government IDs to 3rd parties (like Peter Thiel) in order to use a computer or phone, which we have decided to allow politicians to call "age verification"
2) What the fuck? That's a hell of hot take.
But! It's *exactly* the kind of hot take you'd get from a PR firm sock-puppet or propagandist who is trying to distract from the issue at hand.
It provokes such a clear and immediate negative emotional response that it completely re-frames the conversation away from the very real threat of increased and increasingly inescapable mass surveillance and towards what is more harmful for kids!
That is the propaganda tactic in action!
See it here: https://retro.social/deck/@Mark_Harbinger@mastodon.social/116426651304109650
Oh? You want to talk about Mass survielance? Too bad! Instead we have to talk about how repealing section 230 would kill the social media platform you're using while leaving only Meta and X and Alphabet with enough resources to effectively run a social media platform!
Oh, you didn't take that bait? Well... I guess I'll just give my kids a bottle of Whiskey!
This is exactly what I'm talking about. This is how conversations about important, active threats end up in shouting matches over fucking nothing.
Is Roblox as harmful for kids as alcohol? Absolutely not! Obviously not. It's not even comparable.
But by making that bold and outrageous claim the PR sockpuppet, propagandist, or unwitting tool thereof has effectively shifted the conversation away from Age Gating (and the fact that it is a thinly veiled expansion of mass surveillance) and back to an emotionally driven conversation over the incredibly subjective act of parenting.
So, to be clear, this isn't a choice between "age verification on computers" vs "unfettered internet access for children"
It's an attempt to force a massive expansion of mass surveillance onto everyone with children as a thin, flimsy excuse.
We can absolutely discuss what a safer internet for children might look like, but we can't discuss it in the same breath as "Age Verification" because they are entirely separate issues.
I do hope the PR sockpuppets, Propagandists, and unwitting tools thereof continue to show up in this thread and provide more examples of their techniques.
I feel like this is becoming a legitimately useful operation in how to spot someone arguing in bad faith.
Because "I would allow my children to suffer permanent brain damage rather than let them use a common social media platform designed for children there age" is a really powerful thing to say, that is entirely irrelevant to a discussion about giving Peter Thiel's company a fingerprint of your device and your ID.
In ever direction, PR sockpuppets, bad faith actors, and trolls are all desperate to out themselves as such.
@ajroach42 yeah I agree and feel like the age gating laws are part of the right wings efforts to prevent kids from accessing information that leads to hating republicans.
So information about LGBTQ people, Black people, and global warming
There was a congress bill to block schools from buying "pornographic" books. The last line defined anything about transgender people as pornographic.
@alienghic @ajroach42 it's also about destroying online anonymity, and restricting use of media to approved persons. Once OS level ID is required, a no fly list can be compiled, and you can be banned from the internet for having opinions that Ramses III doesn't like. This is "papers, please" for all communication channels.
@WanderingBeekeeper @ajroach42
The California version doesn't have enough information to directly block a specific user, but the versions that require showing government ID would.
I think they also have other tools that are better suited for hunting down dissidents sharing thought crimes.
I'm sure they want to find the dissidents, its just the age laws might get passed without being able to directly contribute to that goal.
I wonder how many older conservatives in decision making positions have been exposed to difficult questions by their children or grandchildren, due to what these young people have reading/watching.
Somehow I think this has a non-zero effect on all this, I just wish there were enough people in positions to point out how stupid all this control is.
@ajroach42 It has been a recurring point in ultraconservative agendas to attack schools to stop them from teaching kids anything that undermines their abuse and control. In the US you have extremes like abstinence-only sex education, or creationism taught in schools, but the agenda has spread worldwide. Often targeting queer themes, but also history, economy, religion, etc.
The narrative is always the same. Parents' choice, parents' control. Schools are "indoctrinating" kids. The evil conspiracy that includes both government and individual teachers and even other parents. Everyone has an agenda, save themselves... and kids, that can't have a will of their own.
It is easy to look at Facebook and say "hey they are evil, can't let them control what kids do". But somehow, "parents can isolate their kids from everyone and everything" is also nefarious, and far from the only alternative.
@ajroach42@retro.social It's a multi-faceted gem of authoritarianism, everyone gets a chance to submit.
also about advertising access to children - they have to capture children's minds whilst they're small, so they grow up to be good, mindless consumer capitalists.
️ 
@ajroach42 I've been seeing ads for F*c*b**k/Instsacrap that have all these "parental controls". & I think of little Mark, only able to find nerds to talk to online. Gay & trans kids who will literally be killed if their parents find out. No parental controls.
@ajroach42 I let my kid use the Internet freely, but we talk about what is on there and I put things in context for him and warn him about what else he might find. Other parents (mostly a liberal-identifying bunch) are aghast that I'm less controlling, or that I didn't train a camera on him from birth because I don't need or want a cloud-enabled baby monitor.
At parent-teacher conferences, his teachers always tell us how well adjusted and mature he is.
Western society is obsessed with puritanical notions of how to 'protect' children. It's my opinion that giving them the tools to protect themselves and each other is far more effective.
Imagine if, back when, people were told they'd need to show ID to use a telephone.
@ajroach42 @KlausGerdGiesen We get this a lot round here mate... misAnthropic "Mythos" anyone? it is ironically named because attempting to sell it relies on "mythos" so created (and this phenomenon is well documented by Vincent Mosco in "The Digital Sublime", MIT Press) and it's suckered the Davos set already! And it has me champing at the bit to get ahold of a copy of his earlier book "The Political Economy of Communication". But I just "do" IP networking and telecoms, right??
@keithzg judging from my replies here, it still works very effectively as a smokescreen.
@ajroach42 @keithzg I guess that shit works on me as a parent more than I'd like to admit. I think too that many legislators aren't in some grand conspiracy, they are just as susceptible as everyone else to bullshit justification, only a few maybe know the real score, the rest are well-meaning but misguided.
@ajroach42 It's utterly batshit bullshit. The Roblox bogey man is just as much bullshit as the D&D one was.
@ajroach42 Also, I remember being 13yo myself.
I had access to whiskey, cigarettes, and the keys to a car. And I knew how to use them.
Still, I had the judgement not to kill myself, even though this is what all the adults around me were doing.
Sometimes you are better off trusting your kids, because they are thinking more clearly.
@jab01701mid sure! But that's not the real issue. The really issue is using kids as an excuse to give peter thiel and other fashbags detailed fingerprints and tracking ability for all online life.
Love seeing the conversation move away from "how do we stop companies from doing absolutely comic book level evil things like hiring addiction specialists to help them make the app more addictive" and towards "how do we give those companies even more personal data"
@ajroach42 I will not comply.
@theloopfarm what do you mean?
@ajroach42 I will not be legislated into age verification. If I have to use system.d without age verification and compile/spin my own distro like in the old days, then replace every piece of software I use with home built apps, I will.
I will not comply with these ridiculous laws. Openclaw and I can basically build our own legislatively resistant, stripped down linux with all of our own in house apps. I'm already building my own browser.
@ajroach42
A certain class of parents are so wound up about their 'rights' that they've forgotten about their responsibilities
It's upon the parenys/guardians to regulate their children's access to the internet
@DelilahTech @ajroach42 No, it's upon them to respect their children's humanity and teach them the skills to keep themselves and their peers safe from capitalists and other predators. Not "regulate" them. ACAB includes parents.
@ajroach42 Also my childrens information on the internet will not be a corporate product. Even if we have to build our own android for their phones. It is not happening. I will not comply.
One of the strengths of platforms such as Roblox is that kids can find people to talk to all over the world, so a few children across timezones can chat, and learn about different cultures and to respect each other.
Adults on the other hand, start wars, attack each other and cause more problems than kids do, if kids behave badly, usually looking at the parents explains alot.
@zleap that was the mission that initially drew me to the platform. Uniting the world through play, breaking down walls through mutual understanding.
AND NONE OF THIS JUSTIFIES AGE VERIFICATION LAWS
CC: @ajroach42@retro.social
@ajroach42 So. Fucking. Much. Of that Exact Argument. On. Techdirt.
@ajroach42 "I'd rather give my kids' pictures to men in the Epstein files" doesn't have the same PR 
@ajroach42
Also, they have no idea what, “giving a kid weed” means today in the context of the ongoing drug war hysteria which means fentanyl is so common and unregulated that smoking dosed drugs can kill you
Fucking Instagram doesn’t have the same death tole as that policy failure
@ajroach42 from a straw poll of local teenagers the general view is it won’t be long before they find a way around any age bans. Most hackers are teenagers and there’s a reason for that.
It’s absolutely correct to say that the target of verification is not the teenagers but the adults and it’s designed to control the population. It’s designed to make people self-censor when they access the Internet.
Big brother is watching you.
@ajroach42 I gave my child access to Roblox as a tween, with supervision. And I’ve given her alcohol too — little sips of something I was drinking, so she could see what it was. With supervision.
I trust her to come to me when something makes her unhappy or uncomfortable, and she trusts me to listen to her and to only lay down limits and bans for good reasons.
I call this “parenting” and I’m not perfect at it, but I’m doing a fuck of a lot better job than Peter Thiel’s algorithm could.
@ajroach42 have parents forgotten how to parent? You don't want your kid to have access to Roblox - It's simple, you prevent that access as a parent, no laws, special technology or whiskey bottles required.
@ajroach42 there is no EU age verification mandate. and age verification and chat control and different things.
@peter There are multiple EU age verification proposals. They just haven't made it very far.
@ajroach42 @peter
Only if implemented wrong age verification opens the door to surveillance. Should not be possible under GDPR.
Although probably still less surveillance than used in the social media it aims to regulate.
@ajroach42 @jaaphuib I read your thread. it's fundamentally wrong to lump EU country efforts in with the state-level efforts in the US. there are no Heritage Foundation-type orgs pushing a war on sex work and LGBT+ rights via age verification in the EU. that's not what's on the table. they are very different regulatory/political contexts.
@peter @ajroach42 @jaaphuib that's naive, the least