207
Zuckerberg’s “Fix” for Child Safety Could End Anonymous Internet Access for Everyone
(reclaimthenet.org)
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
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Sure, thank you for not being a prick in your approach like everyone else.
A few reasons:
First, your private info is already out there. Either it's hanging out on Spokeo (and you should go there, look yourself up, and request that they delete it.) or one of Google/Meta/Whatever's servers. Thanks to the video disclosure in the Guthrie case, we know definitively that all of those cameras you have in your home and around your neighborhood are recording you and feeding the information to the government without a warrant for permanent storage. Further, providing ID is something we do for a lot of things that are appropriately age-gated already.
Secondly, and I think this is the bigger point, is the mounting evidence of detrimental effects social media is having on kids' cognitive abilities. It affects adults too, but to a lesser extent, likely because our brains have already matured. I know schoolteachers who can't get their kids to answer a question correctly when the answer is literally written on the dry erase board in front of them, to give one example. The other problem here is the effects on self esteem and mental health, as algorithmically-elevated content is designed to isolate, anger, and cause mental health problems. Happy people aren't buying every piece of shit they're fed in their feed's ads.
I would prefer to see the companies themselves held accountable and these algorithms made illegal, but I don't think that will realistically happen, so age-gating via ID is, to me, the best that can be done right now, and I think it's essential.
What’s your address and phone number? Since they’re “already out there” you can just tell me.
While I think your intent is fine, there’s no way I’d trust a for-profit company– Facebook no less– to be the gatekeeper. Their priority is and will always be to wring every possible cent out of your data/privacy. That it might align with children’s safety is coincidental at best, and in any case temporary.
TBH, I don't trust them any further than I can throw them. If it comes to that, I'll use an old ID with invalid info, but thankfully I don't use Meta but maybe once a week to check work-related DM's.
This is a lesser of two evils thing.
The answer (IMO) isn’t to succumb to their demands, it’s to cease using their platform. I promise you, you can do without Facebook (or insert any other problematic platform).
Besides, it’s not like age gating is going to prevent children from getting on under their parents ID. My kid has been trying for months to get us to use our IDs to get them full access to Roblox. My spouse might cave but for my annoying and stubborn insistence that that’s a line we do not cross.
Unfortunately, in some communities, that's still impossible to do fully.
Hopefully that'll change with time. I'd love to see another mass migration to federated platforms.
Inconvenient ≠ impossible.
Exactly what I'm saying to the kids who argue that they can't function without it. My generation did, and it's easier for them having text and email, which I didn't have until I was in my mid-teens.