this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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There is no authority that's trying to verify your information, with the proposal this guy was putting into Linux. It's literally you setting the value yourself. That's exactly how it should work, and that's a good thing.
I already explained that soft solutions are still an issue.
And if it’s such an utterly useless setting, don’t waste anyone’s time with it in the first place as children defeat such weak measures all the time.
It's actually not any weaker than the onerous privacy-invading options big tech is forcing on us regardless. It can be gotten around by accessing sites that don't enforce it, maybe. But a well-made parental control system could actually be far, far more effective. It could block installation of any app that doesn't comply, if the parents choose to enable that functionality. And compliant browsers could, if they wanted, rely on some other crowd-sourced list of sites to block access to sites that don't enforce it themselves.
Being based right in the user's operating system means that if it's well-designed, it maintains complete privacy and is as difficult to bypass as it's possible to devise. The only way I can think a well-designed system could be bypassed would be by the child installing their own separate partition or running a live-USB. There may even be ways that can be prevented; I'm not sure.
But frankly, at that point we're teaching the kids how to be comfortable doing things to take ownership of their own machines. And I see that as an absolute win.
Except that you're claiming it empowers tracking when it does no such thing. The server-side age verification that's happening already, and which this exists as an alternative to are tracking. This is a way of achieving a good outcome (children not accessing porn, and parents being given tools to help parent their children instead of big tech letting them roam free on their harmful addictive algorithms) without tracking.
It does because it legitimises something that should not exist in the first place and is part of a large global push to get verification of users embedded everywhere from the OS level to websites.
Once it’s in place it’s only a matter of time until “this doesn’t go far enough, the bot accounts are set to adult age and bypassing the age check we need them to verify it with us to ensure it’s legitimate”
Wrapping up loss of freedom under “think of the children” is nothing new, and it’s sad to see people supporting it still.
I don't buy the slippery slope argument. Ever. It's fallacious lazy reasoning. If they introduce bad policy, oppose it when it's bad policy. Not when it's a good policy that might later become bad policy if it's changed.
That's not the same, fwiw, as opposing bad policy that's bad now and also has the potential to be extended to be worse policy in the future. Which is where I honestly think you're sitting with this here, based on your other comments. But if that's the case, don't hide behind a comment like this one that entirely rests on "it could be bad in the future".
And I don’t buy the Mrs.Lovejoy. You don’t wait until the car hits someone to tell them to stop accelerating.
There is zero benefit to this, it’s not a good policy at all. If your issue is parental control over children how about you take issue with parents giving their children access without oversight.
And you should be far more concerned over kids playing predator den child centric games like Roblox vs them going to pornhub.
Because that's not a bad thing? Children deserve privacy and the ability to explore. Exactly how much freedom they should have to do that will change as they age. The digital realm is no different in this regard than the physical. A toddler should basically never be out of sight of a responsible adult. A young teenager's parents should probably know vaguely where they're going and with whom, but they don't necessarily need to know the precise details as their child develops their sense of independence. This is a tool that simply helps parents with that. That is unequivocally a good thing.
You're not wrong about Roblox. I agree it needs to be harshly cracked down on. But that's not the subject of this conversation and serves only to distract from the topic at hand.
This whole argument is part of why I never want children. Having unfettered internet access was a hugely formative, largely positive aspect of my childhood, and I would hate to deny that to my children, but I obviously know that you should.
Apparently a lot of people disagree that it's even a good idea.
I grew up without much parental oversight online. And I'm glad for it. But today's algorithmic social media didn't exist when I was young. I strongly opposed Australia's social media minimum age law when it was passed, and still do. But that was because of the manner in which it was passed, and the particulars of its approach.
If it had been done by mandating operating systems provide a feature like this. And by having the Minister designate sites it applies to, instead of applying everywhere, so he can designate Facebook, Instagram, and other sites with known harmful algorithms while not applying to the fediverse, I'd have enthusiastically supported it.
Ironically, this approach would have brought a kid today's experience online closer to what you and I grew up with than what no law whatsoever probably gives them.