Reminder that crap like this happens constantly across all industries

They want the government to ban kids from talking to anyone on the internet except for their robot pedophile. And some parents think those policies are good for kids.

I’m extremely conflicted about this.

On one hand I believe, ads industry is behind the age verification laws, and governments and law enforcement agencies are taking this as an opportunity to increase surveillance on citizen.

On the other hand, there are genuine risk in not regulating tech products used by kids. Especially AI chats. But I’m not convinced age verification is the solution.

When the IT proliferated in 90s and 2000s, tech companies played the standard game of arguing that the laws present at that time were inadequate for regulating them, and this resulated in the surveillance nightmare we are currently in. The former Commissioner of Federal Trade Commission of USA, Lina Khan, in an interview with Jon Stewart, pointed this out, and drew parallels on how AI comapnies are using the same playbook now.

This is a classic trick played by capitalism, where they push for “unregulated” free market. This usually results in severe harm on kids and marginalized groups in the society, because oppressor get more power and accountability is non existent. But at the same time, every attempt to bring in regulations usually results in increased surveillance by data brokers and governments, which helps these groups to either make money or get into power.

All these power hungry maniacs, and money making machines, don’t care about a common person. People are commodities for them. A resource to make money or get into power. Unless things start to have a people first approach, ironically which is what democracy claims to do, this is going to be bad for a common person like you and me. We suffer, they gain. We get oppressed, and they get more power to oppress.