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EU age verification app announced to protect children online (www.dw.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

Protection from media at the government level should not happen, that's the slippery slope. Very few policies aside from educate children about topics, has ever actually helped a child. This shit is about data and overlord control. Devices should not have age verification.

Very little good comes from arbitrary control, particularly based on age, and always has been that way even on other topics that are age restricted. Education is a far more effective means, and doesn't trample everyone.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Thanks for clarifying.

    For the record, I think this mechanism is indeed far reaching, simply because the current criterion of "age" is arbitrary in the proposed mechanism.

    Not sure if the "just education" part is realistic, though. The whole point is that children cannot make responsible decisions like adults can. We accept that for driving, sex, drugs and weapons.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Agreed they make irresponsible choices sometimes, and we can think that policy can protect them, but we have no control over most of those choices when it comes to seeking behavior. Driving starts at early teens a lot of places anyway, and cars can be stolen, and the cost barrier to entry is super high. There're other separate regulations about weapons, and kids with weapons are already getting them from an adult or stealing them, barrier to entry is high for purchase. Sex you absolutely cannot control and thinking you can is absurd for germane topic of seeking behavior, barrier to entry is effectively zero. Drugs are illegal or stolen from the start so moot point.

    The only way to really curb any of these seeking behaviors is to educate the child and give them some experience with it. Enforcing age barriers doesn't really work much for these, why would digital age barriers do much for media or anything else? You make responsible people out of children by educating them and giving them responsibility experience to make better choices, and some will always have seeking behavior and age checks don't really stop them... It just invades the privacy of the rest of us.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    We definitely have some control over each of those points:

    • We don't let kids drive, the lowest driving age seems to be 15 and is usually 18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_driving_ages. Kids obv would have access to their parents cars.
    • Knives, Guns etc cannot be sold to children and I hope you would agree that this is a good thing.
    • having sex shouldn't be controlled but providing or paying for sex work, "adult" events, sex parties etc definitely should be restricted.
    • Legal drugs (alcohol, tobacco, weed) should be restricted for children. Illegal drugs are indeed hard to specifically regulate but e. g. selling illegal substances to a minor should carry a higher sentence.

    after typing all that out I wonder what we are even debating. those are obvious examples to me where actual restriction is necessary. and to cycle back to the start, why would media be fundamentally exempt from that?

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