You’re going to see more of this heavy-handed response, especially from smaller sites or decentralized services.
As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.
For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
rtkwe · 2h ago
There are significant factions who would prefer porn be eradicated in it's entirety and laws like this just use 'protecting children' as the more agreable face to their crusade. Ironically the same people who often crow about parental autonomy and how they should be in complete control of their children's education and lives.
yibg · 1h ago
For all the talk about free speech and freedoms, a significant portion of the US doesn’t actually want free speech. They want free speech only for things they agree with.
qingcharles · 25m ago
It's weirder than that. These people are all downloading porn, but they just want to rally against it to seem pious. Like the politicians voting against gay rights who are frequently discovered in restroom encounters.
Yeul · 1h ago
I noticed that none of our human rights are actually in the Bible.
fsmv · 33m ago
Implying they have actually read the Bible
LadyCailin · 51m ago
In fact the Bible normalizes many anti-human rights. Subjugation of women, slavery, child abuse, etc.
sarchertech · 45m ago
2,000 years ago the accepted belief of nearly every culture we have records for was that rich people were morally superior to poor people because they were favored by whatever gods you believed in, and that slavery was justified because you must have done something to deserve it.
But then the books of the New Testament were written with themes like this:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
ekianjo · 37m ago
Wow, talk about a blanket statement.
krapp · 29m ago
It's true, though.
The New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters, and says women should remain silent and obey their husbands, and not have power over their husbands because the glory of women is childbirth.
The morality of the New Testament - the entire Bible, actually - is pretty vile by modern standards. Which is not meant to be an insult, because it was written thousands of years ago and morality necessarily evolves as societies become more complex. Expecting a modern view of gender equality or innate human equality from the time of the Roman Empire or the Bronze Age would be absurd, that just didn't exist.
But because Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant and absolute word of God, they have to justify the cognitive dissonance between modern morality and Biblical morality by pretending that either modern morality is sinful, or the Bible was actually super progressive all along.
But modern morality is mostly an invention of the Enlightenment creating an alternate, secular model that even Christians eventually appropriated.
hobo_in_library · 2h ago
To be fair, their concern tends to be a more consistent "Don't push these corrupting agents towards me or my society"
If the school curriculum aligned with their belief system, they won't be talking about a need for control
solid_fuel · 1h ago
Except “corrupting” in this case often just means “LGBTQ”. In exactly the same way “corrupting influence” used to mean “music made by black people” or “anything pro-worker”.
Corrupting ideas don’t exist. There is truly no such thing as an infohazard. We, as humans, are capable of making up our own minds about things and we don’t need to give this power of censorship over to people who are not acting in good faith.
Aurornis · 2h ago
> If the school curriculum aligned with their belief system, they won't be talking about a need for control
No they wouldn’t. They don’t want anyone accessing materials they disagree with. Having such materials available on the internet feels like a threat to themselves and their children. They don’t care about collateral damage, they just want more control.
Loughla · 2h ago
If they had control of the school they wouldn't be talking about needing control of the school?
susiecambria · 1h ago
Well, they would be talking about maintaining control. Control requires constant vigilance to reinforce compliance coupled with making sure there is no disobedience. The latter speaks to "needing control."
Does this make any sense or am I full of hot air?
elteto · 2h ago
Just yield and do as they say, and they’ll maybe spare you.
nilespotter · 2h ago
> crow about parental autonomy and how they should be in complete control of their children's education and lives.
Ah yes, those monsters
solid_fuel · 1h ago
James Dobson made a career advocating for child abuse including physical abuse for “strong willed children”. Somehow it’s never Focus on the Family that these people want to ban.
rtkwe · 1h ago
If it weren't so often about denying them medical care or a proper education or about their ability to abuse them in various ways I'd be more sympathetic. Kids have rights too their parent's don't own them to get to violate their rights just because they're their kids.
margalabargala · 2h ago
The US fought a whole war with itself over whether people should be allowed to own other people. They shouldn't, we decided, except on certain circumstances.
Some parents, finding themselves owning a child, decide to push the boundaries of what they get to do with their possessions to the point that it runs afoul of other laws against how humans treat one another.
esafak · 2h ago
I would not call that a decision; it was the victor's dictate.
margalabargala · 1h ago
So is each decision made by an election winning politician? Different word same thing.
frumplestlatz · 2h ago
Conflating parenting with slavery and ownership is not only a category error but an offensive one. Parental authority isn’t ownership; it’s a duty to safeguard children’s developing autonomy and vulnerability.
Pretending otherwise betrays an indifference to children’s actual welfare, and a disturbing form of motivated reasoning deeply concerning in its implications.
susiecambria · 1h ago
It might not be consistent with slavery, but children as chattel was a thing.
It wasn't until 1874 that child abuse was documented with Mary Ellen Wilson and then later that rights and protections were accorded children. Now it's true that foster care and congregate care existed before 1874. But it was Wilson who started the ball rolling.
The hardline parental rights arm does actually believe they own their children and have absolute rights to do whatever they want to their children.
margalabargala · 1h ago
I'm conflating slavery/ownership, and certain styles of parenting. Most parents are not described.
If you were offended by my comment, perhaps it felt a little too close to home?
gjsman-1000 · 2h ago
That’s idiotic; as the amount of control parents are allowed over their children has never been lower compared to historical norms. We’re at the point a minor can get an abortion without parents being informed; which would have been unheard of and unthinkable 50 years ago, let alone the idea that a government would even mandate leaving parents unaware of a sexually active child. That idea didn’t even occur to the most rabid of socialist dreams.
margalabargala · 1h ago
No, that's not true at all. There are ample examples from the past of children being both more and less controlled by parents. It's mainly upbto the parents and how they choose to parent.
You're correct that recently the most overbearing, authoritarian parenting styles have received a minor legal haircut, where the worst abuses must be done either in secret or not at all. The parents who feel victimized by this new norm would like things to go back to how they were when no one asked why their kids had so many bruises on their faces.
john01dav · 2h ago
Children are human beings who need growing autonomy as they mature, not property of parents. I have several (adult, to be clear) friends who have suffered serious damage due to overly authoritarian parenting.
sarchertech · 2h ago
I agree kids need growing autonomy. Not unlimited autonomy though. The law clearly recognizes this.
Kids can’t sign contracts, I’m liable for damage caused by my kids, I go to jail if my kids skip too much school etc…
roenxi · 2h ago
In legal terms, children aren't full humans. They literally don't have fully formed brains and there isn't an expectation that they can make decisions that consider the consequences of their actions.
In the sense that a phrase like "growing autonomy" doesn't really mean anything, sure they should get that. Practically, they shouldn't have a lot of autonomy. The concept of childhood education is largely predicated on the idea that children have no idea what is going on and someone else should be inculcating knowledge, values and beliefs in them while making long term decisions on their behalf. And there is a pretty good argument that those values and beliefs ought be aligned with their family.
card_zero · 2h ago
Does the brain form fully all of a sudden at age 18, except in Mississippi where it takes until 21?
bigstrat2003 · 1h ago
No, but the law is not a thing of subtlety and nuance. It is a thing of bright lines. It would be infeasible to have a law that says "children can make adult decisions when their parents think they're ready", so we have to pick a cutoff point which tries to strike a balance between giving too many immature kids power over their lives, and restricting too many mature kids from making decisions with their lives. Some kids will be unfairly held back because they are very mature at 15, some will ruin their lives because they are completely immature at 18. It's imperfect but no perfect solution is available.
gjsman-1000 · 2h ago
Really? Now do the math on all the kids harmed by overly lax parenting. Many of them are literally dead.
No comments yet
Braxton1980 · 2h ago
They are monsters because of what they will do to obtain their goals.
Avshalom · 2h ago
I mean yes, treating children as property that you control rather than people you are obligated to care for does make you a monster.
frumplestlatz · 2h ago
Guardians with a duty of care necessarily exercise control. That's not ownership, it's responsibility.
hyperadvanced · 2h ago
Evil little fuckers. Who even thinks that the US Federal Government isn’t totally qualified to be in complete control of their children’s education and lives, anyway? Probably some racist Ruby Ridge types (/s)
ForOldHack · 2h ago
The hypocrisy is very clearly evident.
And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance.
They do need to keep the morons, and knuckle dragging lawyers off the platform simply because of their felonious actions and prison records.
frumplestlatz · 2h ago
> And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance.
I've heard that it's full of furry porn and worse. Is that not the case?
TheCleric · 1h ago
I wouldn’t say “full of”, but like other mostly uncensored social media sites like Twitter, it’s definitely there if you’re looking for it (and sometimes even when you’re not).
gjsman-1000 · 2h ago
It is. OP has cleverly redefined everything as being age appropriate with guidance, for convenience.
UncleMeat · 2h ago
This isn't even really it. If you read the section of Project2025 about porn and these sorts of age laws, then barely talk about porn at all. They lead with "transgender ideology" and such. The goal isn't to keep porn away from kids. The goal is to keep anything that offends their desired hierarchy away from kids.
gjsman-1000 · 2h ago
Everybody has a desired hierarchy; and you have one too. Own it; fight for it if you can; and recognize someone has to lose.
MostlyStable · 2h ago
This view is the antithesis of the entire, pluralistic, classical liberal project that this country was founded on. Everybody has a hierarchy, and people should, for the most part, be allowed to choose their own hierarchy. The problem isn't that someone dislikes porn or whatever, it's that they try and force it on the rest of us.
UncleMeat · 40m ago
Of course. I think that theirs is horrible. I'm not saying that having a preferred way of ordering society is bad. I am saying that oppressing LGBT people is bad.
dwattttt · 2h ago
With no recognition of what harm the desires result in? This is a fast way to all out war.
Have you considered finding middle ground and compromises? Or is war the only option?
some_furry · 2h ago
Hierarchies are in and of themselves stupid.
If you think they exist naturally, you're only looking at one of thousands of independent variables. If you average them out, we all tend towards mediocrity.
When someone appeals to hierarchies (e.g., "there's always a bigger fish"), they're just admitting to using a painfully one-dimensional worldview.
Bender · 17m ago
For my silly little semi-private sites I will just shut off the clear-web daemons and stick with .onion hidden services. Some will leave and that is fine with me. It's just hobby stuff for me. I will still use RTA headers [1] in the event that some day law makers come to their senses. Curious what others here will do with their forums, chat servers, etc...
I know people whose kid got a hand me down android from a friend and connects through neighbors open WiFi, public open WiFi etc…
And from what I’ve heard it’s not that uncommon for kids to do something similar when parents take away their phones.
It’s easy to say that parents should just limit access and I think they should. I definitely plan to when my kids are old enough for this to be a problem.
But kids are under extreme peer pressure to be constantly online, and when a kid is willing to go to extreme lengths to get access, it can be nearly impossible to prevent it.
There’s also more to it than what parents should do. It’s about what parents are doing. If something is very hard to do most people won’t do it. As a society we all have to deal with the consequences of bad parenting.
We don’t know the consequences of kids having access to porn, but we have correlative studies that show they probably aren’t good.
I’m more concerned with social media than porn though. The correlation between social media use and the rise in teen suicide rates looks awfully suggestive.
stego-tech · 19m ago
> But kids are under extreme peer pressure
Here's the thing: kids are always going to be under peer pressure, and time and time again we keep falling for the pitfall trap of harming adults under the guise of protecting kids.
When it was the drug scare of the 80s, entire research about the harms of DARE's educational methods were ignored in favor of turning an entire generation of children into police informants on their parents. When it was HIV and STDs in the 90s, we harmed kids by pushing "Abstinence-only" narratives that all but ensured more adults would come down with STDs and HIV as adults due to a lack of suitable education (nevermind the reality that children are often vehicles for new information back into the household, which could've educated their own parents as to the new dangers of STDs if they'd been properly educated). In the 2000s, it was attempts to regulate violent video games instead of literal firearms, which has directly contributed to the mass shooting epidemic in the USA. And now we're turning back to porn again, with the same flawed reasoning.
It's almost like the entire point is to harm adults, not protect children.
john01dav · 2h ago
> I’m more concerned with social media than porn though. The correlation between social media use and the rise in teen suicide rates looks awfully suggestive.
This problem isn't specific to children. Addictive and often otherwise manipulative too feeds affect people of all ages. Instead of age checks, I'd much rather address this. A starting point for how to do this could be banning algorithmic feeds and having us go back to simple algorithms like independent forum websites with latest post first display order.
ForOldHack · 2h ago
So you are saying that we should buy stock in VPN companies that serve Missashity?
Braxton1980 · 2h ago
"As a society we all have to deal with the consequences of bad parenting."
Then why isn't that significantly regulated?
sarchertech · 2h ago
It is. We force parents to send their children to school until they are 16 or educate them themselves—along with many other regulations on how you can raise your kids.
We also put limits on brick and mortar business to help parents. We don’t allow liquor stores to sell alcohol to kids. You could argue that parents should be the ones preventing their kids from buying alcohol, and requiring everyone to submit ID in order to prevent underage drinking is the state doing parent’s job for them.
aprilthird2021 · 2h ago
> As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.
> For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
Well, they are implementing the block through political pressure, and it's working
rpdillon · 3h ago
> That’s why until legal challenges to this law are resolved, we’ve made the difficult decision to block access from Mississippi IP addresses. We know this is disappointing for our users in Mississippi, but we believe this is a necessary measure while the courts review the legal arguments.
I strongly agree with this. All these jurisdictions and politicians are passing laws that they don't understand the technical foundations for. Second order effects aren't being considered.
gmueckl · 2h ago
Sometimes (only sometimes, I promise) I wonder whether this kind of legislation is being dreamt up by a think tank tasked with planning how to implement some ulterior goal (e.g. massively increased surveillance to fight crime - it's far too easy to unsert something more nefarious here). The politicians then just follow the action plan and repeat talking points from party advisors.
ForOldHack · 2h ago
Like the German Socialist Democratic Party did in Germany in 1933? How well did that go?
poly2it · 3h ago
How can we be sure they don't understand at this point? They'd really have to be morons, how can they even take care of themselves?
dhosek · 3h ago
Have you listened to any legislative debates on technical issues? “A series of tubes” was the high point of political understanding of the internet.
ForOldHack · 2h ago
Wait! What? The high point was a stunning display of the Dunning-Kruger effect?
We should pay John Cheese to call them all personally.
ToucanLoucan · 2h ago
Have you seen Congress? It’s like Denny’s on senior appreciation day.
They had to wheel McConnell in not long ago because he physically couldn’t walk.
And like I don’t mean to shit on the elderly (directly anyway) but I dunno just spitballing here, maybe we could get some folks in there who weren’t born yet when the civil rights act was passed???
Braxton1980 · 2h ago
Why would that matter? There are many young members who congress who also support the same things.
mindslight · 2h ago
Tell me you've never taken care of an elderly person without telling me you've never taken care of an elderly person.
alsetmusic · 3h ago
> We think this law creates challenges that go beyond its child safety goals, and creates significant barriers that limit free speech and disproportionately harm smaller platforms and emerging technologies.
This is the only correct response to such onerous legislation. Every site affected by such over-reach has a moral duty to do the same. Not that I expect them to do so.
nickff · 3h ago
If you think this is bad, you should see the regulatory burden imposed on small manufacturers. This is nothing. The problem is that voters don’t seem to care about regulatory requirements.
duxup · 6h ago
I can't find the comic I saw but I can't find that notes how we tell people and kids to not give out personal information on the internet because that's unsafe.
Now we demand they give all their information and depending on the situation smile for the camera ...
WrongOnInternet · 2h ago
...And also lets make it so they can't encrypt their messages either. Big Brother needs to make sure they aren't sending nudes to people that shouldn't be seeing them.
ForOldHack · 2h ago
Wait! Wait! Is this the same state that wanted welfare recipients to be tested for drugs and it was found that the drug use by legislators was ten times higher?
Hobadee · 2h ago
All arguments about age checks themselves aside, why can BlueSky implement age checks in the UK, but not Mississippi? Seems to me like the only difference would be Mississippi requiring everyone to log in, whereas currently I assume UK requires a login just for age-restricted material. (Although I don't use BlueSky in the UK, so shrugs)
sys_64738 · 2h ago
I'd prefer all businesses impacted by the draconian Brit legislation block the Brits geo completely.
none_to_remain · 1h ago
Their wording had me imagining technological schemes that blind BlueSky from knowing but reading again I think what's going on is:
Mississippi: They track "underage" and "adult"
UK: They track "unknown [treated as underage]" and "adult"
kayodelycaon · 2h ago
The UK only requires verification for specific content. Not the entire site. Also, the identification and tracking requirements are very different.
kg · 2h ago
Yes, they explained that the UK's regulations are less aggressive so it's possible to comply with them
Braxton1980 · 2h ago
They could based on group but you can get around that. Maybe they are concerned that a user using a VPN from Mississippi would cause them to break the law.
nashashmi · 2h ago
We might need a centralized age verification system. A person verifies their age using an app. The app is on the phone of the user and confirms opening new account.
Then you have accounts that are age verified and accounts that are not age verified. Age verified accounts have the privilege of seeing sensitive content. Unverified accounts don’t have that privilege.
Some might see this as gravitating to bad laws. I see this as an attempt to address a prohibition on doing business.
Aurornis · 51m ago
> Then you have accounts that are age verified and accounts that are not age verified.
Creating an immediate market for age-verified accounts.
18 year old want some spare cash? Create a few dozen age verified accounts on your phone and sell them off for $1-2 each.
The next step is then tying logins to devices, and devices to identities. Then by using a website you must volunteer your identity. Dream come true for ad serving.
nashashmi · 13m ago
That might be a circumvention. But law is not about rooting out all circumventions. It is about intent to creating a certain system. Similar to sales tax. Just because there are ways around it, doesn’t make the law meaningless.
wmf · 59m ago
Google and Apple are already building this.
t-writescode · 1h ago
A more appropriate route to that is to create incentives and grants for companies to be created that can accomplish this age verification infrastructure (ideally with its own privacy guarantees, etc), and make a declaration such as “in 5 years, you will be expected to validate and track the age group of all users on your platform. We have created grants to help create technology companies and a platform that will help to implement and privatize this service”.
That way you get both:
* companies that can provide the service (yay capitalism, middlemen and jobs!)
* compliance with the new laws that help to stratify users so that < 18 and > 18 users are identified and segregated.
nashashmi · 12m ago
Yeah, that should have been part of the bill.
proteal · 1h ago
Figured I’d ask the HN crowd- what’s the best way around these geofence blocks? Have you had success with a system that can work smoothly on mobile/desktop without any of the disastrous privacy and performance implications that VPN services are prone to?
herf · 2h ago
Assuming mobile platforms weigh in with an API sometime, it's notable that the only people allowed online by default would be minors who are using parental controls, because they would be able to prove (a) age and (b) parental consent on day 1.
leecoursey · 2h ago
Is there not some way to route Mississippi's Bluesky traffic through a third party (Cloudflare?, etc.?) that can provide age verification and parental consent as a service, so that it doesn't require every individual online service to implement it separately?
kayodelycaon · 2h ago
I don’t think that service exists yet. These laws are very new.
Kamillaova · 21m ago
just... why? why contribute to this nonsense?
djoldman · 2h ago
I wonder if a business could be successfully sued for denying service to people OVER a certain age.
It's interesting that age seems to be a protected class if you're above a certain age and not below.
ekianjo · 28m ago
Notice their stance is that they are not against these kind of checks but it costs too much to implement. Basically if it becomes cheap to implement Bsky will be happy to oblige.
> Unlike tech giants with vast resources, we’re a small team focused on building decentralized social technology that puts users in control. Age verification systems require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring — costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers.
radium3d · 2h ago
Way to blow it, Mississippi
GuinansEyebrows · 1h ago
I don’t know how this works: how can Mississippi compel Bluesky to pay these fines for breaking a state regulation if they’re not based in Mississippi?
TheCleric · 1h ago
Because if they have users in Mississippi they are doing “interstate commerce” and a federal court has the ability and jurisdiction to compel them to pay those fines.
LadyCailin · 43m ago
Are users, who are not transacting with the platform, doing commerce? What if the platform were hosted in, say, Europe?
jmclnx · 3h ago
I am curious how many other "social" sites took this stand.
I think what bluesky did is the only way to fight these laws that all it will do is be a boon to people who obtain and sell PI.
For people in Mississippi, you can always get a VPN. You should avoid Free VPNs, but that is your decision.
mrtesthah · 3h ago
So, does Mississippi's age verification also apply to Twitter, Truth Social, Rumble, etc.? Curious what these right-wing platforms are doing about age verification. Surely Mississippi's attorney general will go after those platforms too...
tenpies · 1h ago
It does, but almost all the major platforms/companies are members of NetChoice, a trade organization that fights this sort of thing. This presser from Bluesky doesn't mention it, but the case is "NetChoice vs Mississippi", so that's how involved they are to this.
Truth Social, X and Rumble are all backed by the very people who wrote the law, so will not be sued. Get Out Of Jail Free cards.
Braxton1980 · 2h ago
Reminder
Republicans, for many years now, have run on "stop big government regulations" without being specific.
MostlyStable · 2h ago
That republican party has been dead for a while now, to the extent that they won't even be ashamed. They think that government should be big, and doing the things that they want it to do.
The name is the same, but that's pretty much all that's left compared to 20ish years ago.
rjbwork · 1h ago
Just a dog whistle for "stop taxing rich people" and "stop providing services to everyone else". They're very much in favor of restrictive regulations for the hoi polloi.
Kye · 6h ago
Answer to the obvious question:
>> "Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children."
As I’ve argued on past threads about these laws: the internet was neither built nor intended for children. Nobody can get online without some adult intervention (paying for an ISP), and that’s the only age check that’s ever needed.
For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
But then the books of the New Testament were written with themes like this:
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
The New Testament tells slaves to obey their masters, and says women should remain silent and obey their husbands, and not have power over their husbands because the glory of women is childbirth.
The morality of the New Testament - the entire Bible, actually - is pretty vile by modern standards. Which is not meant to be an insult, because it was written thousands of years ago and morality necessarily evolves as societies become more complex. Expecting a modern view of gender equality or innate human equality from the time of the Roman Empire or the Bronze Age would be absurd, that just didn't exist.
But because Christians believe the Bible is the inerrant and absolute word of God, they have to justify the cognitive dissonance between modern morality and Biblical morality by pretending that either modern morality is sinful, or the Bible was actually super progressive all along.
But modern morality is mostly an invention of the Enlightenment creating an alternate, secular model that even Christians eventually appropriated.
If the school curriculum aligned with their belief system, they won't be talking about a need for control
Corrupting ideas don’t exist. There is truly no such thing as an infohazard. We, as humans, are capable of making up our own minds about things and we don’t need to give this power of censorship over to people who are not acting in good faith.
No they wouldn’t. They don’t want anyone accessing materials they disagree with. Having such materials available on the internet feels like a threat to themselves and their children. They don’t care about collateral damage, they just want more control.
Does this make any sense or am I full of hot air?
Ah yes, those monsters
Some parents, finding themselves owning a child, decide to push the boundaries of what they get to do with their possessions to the point that it runs afoul of other laws against how humans treat one another.
Pretending otherwise betrays an indifference to children’s actual welfare, and a disturbing form of motivated reasoning deeply concerning in its implications.
It wasn't until 1874 that child abuse was documented with Mary Ellen Wilson and then later that rights and protections were accorded children. Now it's true that foster care and congregate care existed before 1874. But it was Wilson who started the ball rolling.
More on Mary Ellen Wilson and child abuse, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ellen_Wilson, and the history of child welfare, https://blogs.millersville.edu/musings/a-history-of-child-we....
If you were offended by my comment, perhaps it felt a little too close to home?
You're correct that recently the most overbearing, authoritarian parenting styles have received a minor legal haircut, where the worst abuses must be done either in secret or not at all. The parents who feel victimized by this new norm would like things to go back to how they were when no one asked why their kids had so many bruises on their faces.
Kids can’t sign contracts, I’m liable for damage caused by my kids, I go to jail if my kids skip too much school etc…
In the sense that a phrase like "growing autonomy" doesn't really mean anything, sure they should get that. Practically, they shouldn't have a lot of autonomy. The concept of childhood education is largely predicated on the idea that children have no idea what is going on and someone else should be inculcating knowledge, values and beliefs in them while making long term decisions on their behalf. And there is a pretty good argument that those values and beliefs ought be aligned with their family.
No comments yet
And there is nothing on Blue sky that is not appropriate for children over 13-with parental guidance.
They do need to keep the morons, and knuckle dragging lawyers off the platform simply because of their felonious actions and prison records.
I've heard that it's full of furry porn and worse. Is that not the case?
Have you considered finding middle ground and compromises? Or is war the only option?
If you think they exist naturally, you're only looking at one of thousands of independent variables. If you average them out, we all tend towards mediocrity.
When someone appeals to hierarchies (e.g., "there's always a bigger fish"), they're just admitting to using a painfully one-dimensional worldview.
[1] - https://www.rtalabel.org/index.php?content=howtofaq#single
And from what I’ve heard it’s not that uncommon for kids to do something similar when parents take away their phones.
It’s easy to say that parents should just limit access and I think they should. I definitely plan to when my kids are old enough for this to be a problem.
But kids are under extreme peer pressure to be constantly online, and when a kid is willing to go to extreme lengths to get access, it can be nearly impossible to prevent it.
There’s also more to it than what parents should do. It’s about what parents are doing. If something is very hard to do most people won’t do it. As a society we all have to deal with the consequences of bad parenting.
We don’t know the consequences of kids having access to porn, but we have correlative studies that show they probably aren’t good.
I’m more concerned with social media than porn though. The correlation between social media use and the rise in teen suicide rates looks awfully suggestive.
Here's the thing: kids are always going to be under peer pressure, and time and time again we keep falling for the pitfall trap of harming adults under the guise of protecting kids.
When it was the drug scare of the 80s, entire research about the harms of DARE's educational methods were ignored in favor of turning an entire generation of children into police informants on their parents. When it was HIV and STDs in the 90s, we harmed kids by pushing "Abstinence-only" narratives that all but ensured more adults would come down with STDs and HIV as adults due to a lack of suitable education (nevermind the reality that children are often vehicles for new information back into the household, which could've educated their own parents as to the new dangers of STDs if they'd been properly educated). In the 2000s, it was attempts to regulate violent video games instead of literal firearms, which has directly contributed to the mass shooting epidemic in the USA. And now we're turning back to porn again, with the same flawed reasoning.
It's almost like the entire point is to harm adults, not protect children.
This problem isn't specific to children. Addictive and often otherwise manipulative too feeds affect people of all ages. Instead of age checks, I'd much rather address this. A starting point for how to do this could be banning algorithmic feeds and having us go back to simple algorithms like independent forum websites with latest post first display order.
Then why isn't that significantly regulated?
We also put limits on brick and mortar business to help parents. We don’t allow liquor stores to sell alcohol to kids. You could argue that parents should be the ones preventing their kids from buying alcohol, and requiring everyone to submit ID in order to prevent underage drinking is the state doing parent’s job for them.
> For everything else, it’s up to parents or guardians to implement filters, content controls, and blocks.
Well, they are implementing the block through political pressure, and it's working
I strongly agree with this. All these jurisdictions and politicians are passing laws that they don't understand the technical foundations for. Second order effects aren't being considered.
We should pay John Cheese to call them all personally.
They had to wheel McConnell in not long ago because he physically couldn’t walk.
And like I don’t mean to shit on the elderly (directly anyway) but I dunno just spitballing here, maybe we could get some folks in there who weren’t born yet when the civil rights act was passed???
This is the only correct response to such onerous legislation. Every site affected by such over-reach has a moral duty to do the same. Not that I expect them to do so.
Now we demand they give all their information and depending on the situation smile for the camera ...
Mississippi: They track "underage" and "adult" UK: They track "unknown [treated as underage]" and "adult"
Then you have accounts that are age verified and accounts that are not age verified. Age verified accounts have the privilege of seeing sensitive content. Unverified accounts don’t have that privilege.
Some might see this as gravitating to bad laws. I see this as an attempt to address a prohibition on doing business.
Creating an immediate market for age-verified accounts.
18 year old want some spare cash? Create a few dozen age verified accounts on your phone and sell them off for $1-2 each.
The next step is then tying logins to devices, and devices to identities. Then by using a website you must volunteer your identity. Dream come true for ad serving.
That way you get both:
It's interesting that age seems to be a protected class if you're above a certain age and not below.
> Unlike tech giants with vast resources, we’re a small team focused on building decentralized social technology that puts users in control. Age verification systems require substantial infrastructure and developer time investments, complex privacy protections, and ongoing compliance monitoring — costs that can easily overwhelm smaller providers.
I think what bluesky did is the only way to fight these laws that all it will do is be a boon to people who obtain and sell PI.
For people in Mississippi, you can always get a VPN. You should avoid Free VPNs, but that is your decision.
Here's their write up on the Mississippi case: https://netchoice.org/netchoice-v-fitch-mississippi/
And obligatory Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetChoice
Republicans, for many years now, have run on "stop big government regulations" without being specific.
The name is the same, but that's pretty much all that's left compared to 20ish years ago.
>> "Mississippi’s new law and the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) are very different. Bluesky follows the OSA in the UK. There, Bluesky is still accessible for everyone, age checks are required only for accessing certain content and features, and Bluesky does not know and does not track which UK users are under 18. Mississippi’s law, by contrast, would block everyone from accessing the site—teens and adults—unless they hand over sensitive information, and once they do, the law in Mississippi requires Bluesky to keep track of which users are children."