Google asks Congress to not ban teens from social media

"...like forcing users to upload copies of their government IDs to access an online service."
"Some states, like Louisiana, have tailored their bills to ban kids from seeing online porn by forcing everyone, including adults, to verify their age before using the site. Google’s proposal does not oppose age verification on porn and gambling sites."
That's terrifying. Signing up for Lemmy would require uploading a government ID. I don't know the solution to this problem, but I'm not confident this proposal is the right one.
- If it's from Louisiana, it's probably a bad idea. Except for gumbo.
  
  I live in Louisiana and we don’t enforce the important laws; we definitely aren’t enforcing that one. I’m not a connoisseur de porn sites but I think Pornhub is the only site that has an ID requirement and they probably just complied so they could file a lawsuit.
  Also, I could take a street car to the French Quarter right now for $1.25 and get motorboated for one additional dollar if I wanted. I have no idea what the state legislature thinks passing a porn ID law will accomplish. But rest assured, their laws mean nothing in New Orleans.
  
  And jambalaya
- Who fucking cares about porn?
  
  https://youtu.be/j6eFNRKEROw
  But also the anonymous Internet is important.
  Also, do you think the proposal will actually have the intended effect? Do you think COPPA has been successful? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children's_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act#Criticisms
  Children under the age of 13 absolutely have Facebook accounts. Children of all ages have DEFINITELY seen things that no one should see.
  I'm not saying this isn't a topic worth discussing, but further restrictions is not the right answer.

Ban them, exile them all!
Edit: Ok, i may have been a bit too vague with this comment. So i'll be more specific. ⬇️
Some platforms like Tiktok, Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube have been nothing but harmful to youngsters (from all ages), due to their manipulative algorithm and poor content management.
So i do believe there should be a much more stronger restriction in access to those platforms.
Something like, you can register at 16 with your parent's permission, or something like that.
Now i now that sounds very drastic, but consider this:
1- It has been proven time and time again how social media has done more harm than good to teenagers.
2- I'm only talking about about platforms owned by the big corporations, platforms here on the Fediverse are (from my perspective) much more safer (in the sense that you don't really see harmful content if you don't want to).
- I'm a teen and I second this opinion.
- 1- It has been proven time and time again how social media has done more harm than good to teenagers.
  2- I’m only talking about about platforms owned by the big corporations, platforms here on the Fediverse are (from my perspective) much more safer (in the sense that you don’t really see harmful content if you don’t want to).
  Where has it been proven that its done more harm than good? Have studies been done to actually explore what 'good' it has allowed, or is the litmus test for it only about what harm may have been affected on teenagers? Whats your basis for this claim?
  The Fediverse is equally unsafe if you consider your take in an objective manner rather than just play on what you feel moment to moment.
  What's your take on 4chan?
  
  Ever since teens had access to social media, there have been studies on the matter, (i'll admit, that in early years they were pretty scandalous, but now they try to act as more of a guide or recommendation for parents).
  Here you got one source (again, of many):
  https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/news-and-events/news/2023/10/06/new-study-reveals-teenagers-social-media-use-and-safety-concerns.html
  The Fediverse is mostly handled by moderators and the community (like Reddit used to be), so when there's an issue regarding ill behaviour, it is usually handled inside that community. (And besides, instances have their own rules too.)
  It's toxic waste, get the hell out of there. 💀☢️
- Something like, you can register at 16 with your parent’s permission
  Point is - how do you prove the person is of the "right" age noninvasively? Not like the mainstream social media platforms were already friendly to anonymity, but all the methods I can think of are on a whole another level.
  
  I know, that's very muddy waters right there.
  But again, i only meant that for the big platforms.
  I don't think age verification should be necessary on the Fediverse.
- Why?
  
  Because a vast majority of teenagers misuse/overuse social media (cyber-bullying, social isolation, phone addiction, and so on...)
- The irony of this being commented on a social media post is amazing.
  
  There’s a difference between reading-based social media and a feed of overstimulating videos designed to get kids hooked
  
  Dunno why you'd assume that they're a teen
  
  It would be more ironic if the one posting it was a teenager.
  
  Not really, i'm 23.

"think of the children" is always a poor excuse to strip away citizen freedoms. Usually never actually helps them anyways.
- I would usually agree with this statement, but the truth is that social media does way more harm than good when it comes to teenagers.
  
  Is it really the government's job to police what every teen does on the Internet though? I think that's for the parents to do.
  
  Then let parents deal with it. This conservative "for the chillldrun" talking point always ends in cons trying to take us back to 1750.

Anyways, the practice of age verification itself I don't have a problem with, but any implementation I can conceive is full of glaring issues that render it impossible without us forfeiting our rights to anonymity and/or surrendering our data to an untrustworthy source and or just being plain unreliable to attempt to use.
- Yeah Louisiana implemented a government portal that does exactly what you claim through the driver's license app. Their database was hacked a little under a year ago with basically all private citizen information stolen.
  If you set up a system to use these mechanisms the data WILL BE stolen or mishandled.
  
  We have eID features withiut such big problems.
  Simply because the data resides on the card itself and can only be read using a certified terminal.
  e.g. A website can get a certificate to establish a secure tunnel between them and your card through e.g. your phone.
  Then the certificate only allows getting specific data e.g. if you are over 18 or not.
- This idea scares me as well. State would have it so much easier to track what adult content you are visiting. Not a fan, even though I personally only do pretty tame stuff.
- You dont have e-ID features? Wild..
  Just last semester i learned how they are implemented and which protections they have in place to preserve privacy like specific identifiers
  So a certain terminal can only get certain information e.g. over 18? yes/no
  Our cigarett dispensers use this feature (those without a person to check)
  
  You have unmanned cigarette sales? What country, if you don't mind my asking?

I think we need to keep children off the internet but there’s not really a way to do that other than having parents be more responsible. I think public shaming could work wonders in this area
- for fuck's sake why does this get upvotes here
  For teenage me the Internet was the only escape from the horribleness and stress of my offline life. Probably for many current teenagers too (if you are one of them: trust me, life will get better as an adult). There is no way I will ever support "keeping children off the Internet" and not just because it requires adults too to verify their age, also because it is a bad idea in the first place. Teenagers might not always make great decisions about everything, but this is also true of adults.
  
  I completely get where you're coming from and this is something I think about a lot. There are so many people I know (myself included) who have benefited as kids from being able to access the internet and find a community, but overall the data I've seen shows a net negative in terms of social outcomes. And to be completely honest I just think that a lot of spaces on the internet suffer from having too many adolescents around.
  I don't want to enforce a law or something but I think we just need to be more socially aware of the kinds of spaces that kids have access to
  
  They probably had a privileged childhood, not that I didn't too, but in some things the internet was the only out for me and helped me a lot, so I'll agree with you. I do see their point about the exploitative nature of the current landscape but that's a systemic problem that won't be solved by banning children from accessing the internet

Let their parents do it.

But didin't Google already track your age?
I remember that in 2014 Google erased my first Gmail account because i was -15 and that didin't aligned with their new "policies".
- You were negative 15? You were still nutrients in the soil thay made the food your parents ate to make you?
- YouTube in the UK already refuses to show some videos if their data gathering & marketing system didn't know enough about you to guess your age.
  
  That's... good actually.

This is why I vote Democrat. The idiots back shit like this and we shame the shit out of them until they stop because of the obvious overreach, but the "Parental Rights!" "Small Government!" (Louisiana) crowd fucking eats it up and runs with it without any forethought or sense of hypocrisy before it's even an actual law.

As if teenagers would actually go on a service that forces them to upload a government ID.

This is some Red State nanny government shit. This os a foot in the door for neonazis to control Internet access.
They hate when we share organization dates and information.