We've covered here before on individual US states setting up their own age verification laws, and now a new US Congress bill has been proposed for it.
  • badbytes@lemmy.world
    14·
    9 hours ago

    All operating systems! ALL OF THEM. Bet not one of the politicians would be able to even define what the fuck that even means.

  • Iced Raktajino@startrek.website
    58·
    12 hours ago

    This appears to be part of the “Parents Decide Act”

    Sure would be nice if parents would decide to parent their own kids instead of making it everyone else’s problem.

    • slowcakes@programming.dev
      11·
      12 hours ago

      And of they can’t, because they can’t. Every parent is not the ideal parent and will never be, heck there’s parents who are retarded (in the literal sense).

      But lets say it’s the average tech illiterate parent, who thinks computers are a gaming machine for kids. Imagine the amount of social engineering and how the marketing departments of companies trying to make kids addicted to their platform. The industries are pouring trillions of dollars in marketing, are you confident that regular parents have a chance of competing with them?

      i’m in no way of supporting this because it’s done for other nefarious reason, just commenting on the troupe that parents is responsible for their own kids. We can say that all day, but the reality is that they don’t know what impact it has on their kids mental health and how damaging short term dopamine addiction is for their children. Society is still responsible to help parents navigate healthy behavior for their children.

      Tbh if children was the concern of this law, then you would allow parents to sue tiktok and other platforms that have made their children addicted to the platform. You should also be able to sue influencers for promoting stuff to children (they know the age of their userbase).

      Still parenting is hard, especially when you are competing with phds in behavioral science or psychologists that help these platforms design their addiction mechanism.

      • pluge@piefed.socialEnglish
        14·
        11 hours ago

        “Parenting is hard” doesn’t take the responsibility away from parents to actually parent their kids and to be aware of what their kids are doing online. I’m not saying everyone will magically start doing that, or that we should expect them to. I’m saying it’s not the government’s job to close that gap. The government doesn’t know what’s best for kids. It’s extremely self evident in the whole age verification push itself. Completely tech illiterate boomers making flawed assumptions about how to handle a situation, and destroying everyone’s privacy in the process. They don’t get to do that just because the US is full of idiots who don’t know how to be parents.

        • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          This commenter is pointing out that - definitionally - most parents lack what they need to mount an effective defense or even understand one is needed, because of how the deck is stacked. It isn’t random uninvolved people making the tech addictive and harmful, (contrasting with parents as a group) - it’s roughly the people best on the planet at making those things damaging, who are doing so.

          Commenter is not inviting government overreach, but lamenting that every parent is being asked to defend against this most pernicious force, and it’s unrealistic to expect them to succeed. As we clearly see, they don’t succeed, they lose! State of mental development for kids in the US for example is in absolute shambles.

          Doesn’t seem very controversial at all, kind of just an obvious observation tbh.

          • pluge@piefed.socialEnglish
            2·
            9 hours ago

            Ok, but what’s the solution then? Certainly not the age verification pushes we have seen recently. The tech itself should be regulated, not the users.

            • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              1 hour ago

              Very difficult question.

              For the record, I am extremely hostile to government privacy violations in the name of “protecting children”, which the approach under discussion clearly is. We all agree about that.

              I don’t have great solutions, but none of mine revolve around shaming parents or insisting they become magically aware of information they lack (and may be flat out unable to really comprehend). That’s not to say you were doing that.

              Community wise we can do a lot more educating about the harms. Legislatively and technologically, zero trust indications allowing specific categories of content - very coarse categories and simple binary “allowed / not allowed” - nothing to do with age or PII - would be approaches worth considering.

              But fundamentally doing these things wrong is at least as harmful as leaving parents to solo the task. I’d prefer it be up to the ill-equipped and wildly varying parents than to anything centralized unless the centralized approach has verifiable transparency and all the right goals and approaches (a pipe dream). But if nothing else we should require our education and government systems to take a clear stance about educating re: harms.

      • ragepaw@lemmy.ca
        8·
        11 hours ago

        Tbh if children was the concern of this law, then you would allow parents to sue tiktok and other platforms that have made their children addicted to the platform.

        Already happening

        You should also be able to sue influencers for promoting stuff to children (they know the age of their userbase).

        Absolutely yes.

        We can say that all day, but the reality is that they don’t know what impact it has on their kids mental health and how damaging short term dopamine addiction is for their children.

        We absolutely do know. Which is why we stopped giving cocaine and heroin to kids.

        But lets say it’s the average tech illiterate parent, who thinks computers are a gaming machine for kids.

        Yeah… Are you seriously advocating that parental responsibility shouldn’t be a thing? If someone is that stupid, they shouldn’t have a kid. And yes. That’s epic levels of stupid.

        • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          10 hours ago

          Are you seriously advocating that parental responsibility shouldn’t be a thing?

          Very clearly not advocating that, what an uncharitable read.

          • ragepaw@lemmy.ca
            2·
            9 hours ago

            I don’t think it’s uncharitable at all. That sounds entirely like it’s saying parents shouldn’t be held responsible for knowing about the things they buy their children.

            If anyone buys their kid a phone/tablet/computer and gives them unfettered access to the Internet because they think it’s “just a gaming machine” is irresponsible.

            I’m not saying a parent should, or could deny their kid access, but you need to AT THE BARE MINIMUM understand what you are putting in that kid’s hands.

            • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              1·
              1 hour ago

              How many adults can say they understand what devices they put in their own hands? Practically none.

              I’m merely pointing out the huge difficulty here, these things are engineered to manipulate us. It’s not as simple as “well, parents should simply know what to do”.

              Your read was uncharitable cuz the comment you replied to directly said they “in no way support this”, and was written from the very first premise as being ABOUT parents who DO NOT or CAN NOT understand the danger you go on to strawman and bitch about.

              Again - your reading was uncharitable, it did not try to take the commenters actual point of view, it simply ranted about what you felt like talking about, that they never said.

  • entwine@programming.dev
    2·
    8 hours ago

    The sponsor of this bill is Josh Gottheimer. Ballotpedia says the Democratic primary is on June 2, but doesn’t list any challengers. If you’re a local, maybe you know if he has a challenger?

    In any case, do the following if you live there:

    • Add “fire Josh Gottheimer” to your calendar for both June 2 2026, and November 3 2026

    • Send him a letter/email explaining why this issue is important enough for you to vote Republican if it goes through, and maybe include a screenshot of that calendar entry just for fun

    If enough people send a message like that, he’ll hopefully work to kill it.

    If you don’t live in New Jersey, write and send a similar letter/email to your own representative. If you’re a Republican, say you’ll be willing to vote Democrat instead.

    Regardless, what you shouldn’t do is bitch and complain on the internet to strangers on the internet.

    Congress people are mostly tech illiterate and willing to eat whatever bull$hit big tech lobbysits feed them. They are not, however, stupid enough to ignore constituents who are angry enough to send them a letter. Why? Because most Americans only ever vote in presidential elections, so the population of people who will vote in a midterm (much less a primary) is very small. Going through the effort to write an email (or mail a physical letter) is a strong signal that you are one of those people who will get their ass out to the polls on election day and hurt their chances.