That they instead chose to expand surveillance [1] tells me they have ulterior motives.
[1] They claim it'll be privacy-protecting. I'll believe it when I see it.
Do you have experience as a parent with teens?
Sure, some kids will find a way to get an unlocked device, and use it enough to cause "harm", but they would have probably found a way onto foreign sites that don't comply with EU rules anyway. I don't see why we should assume this digital ID check will prevent "harm" so much better than the alternative I proposed, especially without even trying the alternative first.
But it seems impossible for me to imagine that parents could manage teens' devices. I saw numerous examples of teens evading their parents' or society's authority. Teens do many weird things that are impossible to imagine as an adult.
It is reasonable for society to set standards. Enforcing online standards is appropriate in my opinion. It isn’t in yours. I hope your view does not have broad support.
What those standards are, and how they are enforced, matters. We got a glimpse of what can happen with the UK online safety act, as websites went offline or left the UK - even when their content was as mild as a bicycling forum, they couldn't handle the burdensome bureaucracy and vague demands [1] imposed on them. Laws have consequences beyond their stated intentions. And this seems ripe for such abuse - corporations will be falling over themselves to keep the under-18 market, and the call-out to "harmful content" tells me they'll do their best to ban topics that whoever is in power currently could deem "harmful".
You don't trust parents to enable a filter on their kids' devices. I don't trust the EU to shape online discourse and determine what is harmful information, to act as censor for the coming generation's upbringing.
[1] They don't tell you exactly what to do or what is banned, but give vague outlines, forcing you to guess. If you guess wrong and censor too little, you are liable. If you guess wrong and censor too much, no problems.
Parents can teach their kids the topics that government bans on social media.
It's always possible that a more accure translation into common English would be "not as privacy-compromising as it could be".
gasull•8mo ago