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.
  • Iced Raktajino@startrek.website
    74·
    8 days 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
      10·
      8 days 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
        151·
        8 days 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.

        • slowcakes@programming.dev
          1·
          8 days ago

          I understand what your trying to say, but realize we have probably vast amount of laws today that only exist to protect people and children on the same basis i’m arguing.

          Think about anything that is harmful and illegal, we can say well, you as a person should know that you shouldn’t eat moldy meat, so why do we need laws for selling moldy meat. (bad example, but you can probably find a better one)

          Also reflect about the legal process and how do they compare. For example if you start a beer brand and market towards minors via different ways ( or another product that is definitely illegal), vs you own huge social platform which you market towards kids, but you platform has ads or content that is illegal to market in traditional media. I would guess that your beer company would automatically end up in court via existing court processes, and the social media platform might be sued by private citizens and if they are lucky they might settle out of court.

          And why is that? Why do we have a bunch of protection laws for simpler things, that I would consider is easier for a parent to understand and educate their children about and say we as a society have to take the responsibility to ensure that kids or grownups have vast amount of protection.

          if we expect parents to SOLE responsibility for what their kids are doing online and what they are subjected to, then why would we not require the same for other things that are illegal today, alcohol tobacco, driving a car, not wearing seatbelt etc…

          How much money do we spend to educate people on drugs and alcohol harms, compared to harms of internet?

          Personal opinion, we have all been lobbied that platforms don’t have same responsibilities to ensure that they benefit society. our opinions don’t come out of the thin air, they spend huge (billions of billion world over) amount of money to shape laws and public opinion, this is more or less a fact.

      • ragepaw@lemmy.ca
        7·
        8 days 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.

    • onlinepersona@programming.dev
      21·
      8 days ago

      I love it how irresponsible people always make it harder for the rest of us. You know who I’m talking about. Yes, the fucking rich that’s who. They don’t pay taxes on their wealth and barely do on their income. All that money is missing to educate adults and children alike.

      If adults had the time to be educated and to educate children, there wouldn’t be such a stupid bill. There aren’t enough teachers, parents dont earn enough to take the time to learn about technology, and children go to underfunded schools lacking teachers who have the time and pay to learn about this stuff and teach it to kids.

      The rich are the source of all the problems here.

  • badbytes@lemmy.world
    21·
    8 days 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.

    • ITGuyLevi@programming.dev
      9·
      8 days ago

      I wish they would attempt to do that to all operating systems, that’s a hell of a wide net and I’m damn sure not holding up my ID for my thermostat.

    • logging_strict@programming.dev
      2·
      8 days ago

      Yee of so little imagination, this is a FAFO opportunity!

      Next step would be ageless approved license(s). Aggressively charge companies or individuals using ur copyrighted work if it’s combined with any software which violates user privacy or that differentiates children from other users.

      license violation fee

      Charges a licensing fee, not per user, but per “affected child” globally or number of children globally whichever is greater, exp the national debt. Which will quickly approach infinity. This fee no longer applies when there are no longer any legislation globally which targets: freedom of speech, journalism, privacy, fuel efficiency, vehicle regulation, or gun control. Anything they compulsively cannot stop legislating.

      Add executable poopoo, to compliment peepee, that runs software which violates this license. Along with a software package that has an ageless approved license. Distribute out to all linux distros, especially distros with server releases.

      This would be much quicker than making suggestions to developers to promote packages with an ageless approved license.

      My point being, collectively, tech copyright owners have outsized power greater than all the Mega IT corps combined. You flex that muscle by writing more aggressive licenses. Permissive and GPL might be a thing of the past cuz more aggressive licenses are required for the current era.

      Otherwise legislators will tell you what you can write by threatening coders.

      CC John McCardle (have messaged him with a link to this comment)

  • entwine@programming.dev
    6·
    8 days 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.