this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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No; it's not inarguable.
I do feel that some minor limitations around social media should exist; such as hours of the day you may not be allowed to read or post; but they should be simple age-gates created to privately verify a person's age via a simple SSO/OAuth style token. If you can't authenticate against some privacy respecting identity proving entity you probably aren't old enough and any account(s) you create would be limited.
Not all social media needs to be age-gated either; but social networks could be forced by law to avoid monetizing your account or habits at all if you don't willingly identify. (and by doing so; also CONSENT TO THIS MONETIZATION) In short; if you are not verified they're required to assume you are a child and handle your data as such...with utmost respect to your privacy.
Man, I still really struggle to understand how we can reliably age-gate anything on the Internet without sacrificing privacy for everyone.
IRL you can just show your govt issued ID, but there's virtually zero privacy risk doing so. Bouncers don't register ID scans, typically, and they're just one person. The govt doesn't know you went to that club or drank at that one bar, unless they're actively surveilling you.
But if I needed to identify myself as an adult online, simply by virtue of how digital systems work, that probably requires checking against a govt database, and that database will keep logs, and now Trump knows I went to Pornhub, and likely also exactly what I watched or searched for.
Maybe I'm dumb, but I really don't know any way around this sort of thing.