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In my ideal world a law would:

1. Require device manufacturers to allow the device owner (which covers parents of minors' devices) to set policy for the device, including allow/blocklist for apps and sites, and allow/blocklists for content categories.

2. Require browsers to respect the device's policy for site allow/blocklist

3. Require browsers to set a certain header for allow/blocklist of content categories

4. Require websites to respect that header.

No need for age verification, no need for the government to decide what is/isn't allowed and for free you allow gamblers to prevent gambling content being shown to them etc.

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This AZ law is frustrating because by targeting the app store it's actually taking a step towards my vision... but in a way that multiplies the harm of age verification instead of diminishing it.

It's not implemented like that because the true goal of these laws has nothing to do with protecting children or age verification, and instead have everything to do with completely eliminating anonymity/pseudo-anonymity online.

They want to ID everyone, and have all user generated content attributed to a known, identified individual.

I think it's mostly easy to identify anyone if you actually want to - if you buy anything online you are 100% identifiable for example.

Given the pros/cons in context, I think I'm in favor of it for social media, at least. I'd actually argue you would want to go further and you should have your full address, employer, and more available online. LinkedIn is a cesspool of awful salespeople, but you know what it's not? A massive Russian/Chinese/Maga disinformation site. Maybe you should think twice before saying something online you wouldn't say while standing in front of your house or at work.

Anonymity on social media has brought a lot of problems and I'm not sure what the benefits are. Some point to a small percentage of folks who would be "outed" but, given that the alternative seems to be an emerging dystopia of bots, malicious actors, propaganda, and more, maybe actual transparency is better even taking into account potential harmful effects.

I'm open-minded on this and see pros/cons either way. Though I think if you find yourself worried about this stuff you can just delete your accounts and move on with your life. Trust me you aren't missing out on anything.

Fortunately your opinion doesn’t trump the Constitution or settled law. Anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) speech has been a feature of American discourse since before the Revolution.

Without anonymity, you lose whistleblowers, effective criticism of the powerful from the weak, and “public interest” leaks like the Snowden revelations. You lose outlets where the abused can ask for help and advice in escaping bad situations. You lose any/all criticism of employers current and past; who wants to hire a complainer? You silence people who are afraid to give their opinion because of their employer or parent.

So no thanks.

I do agree that most people are able to be easily identified, and that anonymity has created problems, but people should be able to both use the internet and remain anonymous as without the anonymous or pseudonymous transmission of information a democracy can't function and makes it trivally easy for the state to further limit the rights of an individual

"Anonymity on social media has brought a lot of problems and I'm not sure what the benefits are"

Anonymity is a shield against public lynching for communities that are targeted by hate groups such as LGBTQ+ (one example, there are plenty).

But that is happening today with anonymity, but then we have all the negative stuff too.

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> Maybe you should think twice before saying something online you wouldn't say while standing in front of your house or at work.

then I'd never say the things i'm saying about Russia/Putin as i still have a family there or in case US kicks me out back there.

Right, there are trade-offs.

it isn't trade-off. You're supporting a systematic chilling effect on legal free speech.

> it isn't trade-off.

Yes it is.

> You're supporting a systematic chilling effect on free speech.

No I'm not.

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There's no point in free speech if the only free speech is from bots and propagandists. Social media platforms aren't free speech platforms either, you're subject to their terms and conditions.

> Social media platforms aren't free speech platforms either, you're subject to their terms and conditions.

Sure, but this verification rubbish comes from the government.

The chilling effect you’re supporting leads exactly to thriving of bots and propagandists while suppressing dissenting voices of regular people. Just look at any country where it is already fully or partially implemented.

I don't support any chilling effects.

> leads exactly to thriving of bots and propagandists while suppressing dissenting voices of regular people.

This is the current state, today with anonymity.

> Just look at any country where it is already fully or partially implemented.

Which ones?

> There's no point in free speech if the only free speech is from bots and propagandists. Social media platforms aren't free speech platforms either, you're subject to their terms and conditions.

You're absolving the social media companies of why they continue choosing to amplify bots and extremist content in one big "community", rather than working towards creating smaller communities that can have social trust and social regulation.

That is the core perverse incentive here that actually needs to be addressed, and by sidestepping that you're then going off into the weeds with some mistaken idea that we can approach the problem by purifying who can use such websites.

I think we should just ban social media companies. If you want to create a small community walk outside and create one with your neighbors.

> and by sidestepping that you're then going off into the weeds with some mistaken idea that we can approach the problem by purifying who can use such websites.

On the other hand we have what we have today, propagandists, bots, hatred, &c.

It's like you're complaining about potential problems, but ignoring the current problems happening today are those potential problems.

I am also not "going off into the weeds" because I'm just responding to the OP.

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The problem is that we'd all blocklist advertisers and then they'd all cry. It's like how most mobile distros don't allow you to control relative app volume - if it might hurt ad bucks it can't be allowed.

This isn’t even a hypothetical. On most phone there’s no toggle to completely block an app’s internet access (only its data usage).

The ad industry underwrites the consumer tech market. That's why you can buy a SmartTV for like 100 bucks (or whatever, I haven't bought a tv in like 10 years knock-on-wood).

My plan to buy a TV is to get one that can be kept offline, or one that can be made able to stay offline through flashing or dismantling into its very core elements.

Dismantling it would probably ensure it's ugly af, but maybe if you try to go for one of those TV-in-a-frame things it might not look hideous.

Not sure how common it is now, but based on repair manuals my TV's wifi is provided by a standard m.2 wifi module and can be trivially removed. That wouldn't stop them from changing the TV's OS to nag or otherwise disable itself afterwards but the hardware change is about as trivial as it could be.

Now why the disable wifi option isn't available on the TV when it appears in the user manual is another matter...

Every smart TV I own can be kept offline; I just don't put it online ever. The issue is the software bloat makes turning them on unnecessarily slower.

I don't trust that smart TVs won't use my neighbor's open Wifi or a mobile network to phone home.

Or you can either do what I do and buy an old TV. I have a nearly 20 year old plasma that looks great and isn't gonna listen in on me. If you absolutely need a higher resolution than 1080p or need an OLED display, you can buy them as "digital signage" (though, usually with a pretty high markup)

Good point. I originally thought this would just be content categories. Maybe that's all that's plausible.

All the people with money would lobby against content categories because then large mixed category sites like Reddit or Twitter would have to either separate their app, or have the ability to send additional content headers based on content tags per piece of content.

Legally, since pornography still doesn't have a true definition in the US, someone would have to define the categories as well, and then the hundred million free speech fights would begin.

Your vision is the correct one, in my opinion, "adult content" headers would be an easy lift for web technology. But the ad agencies and information agencies (often the same) are spending all of the money to make sure nothing like that happens.

I've seen numerous apps that do already provide content categories without separating apps. NSFW/SFW is the most common, but I've also seen ones that allow you to opt-out of gambling or alcohol ads.

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Heck no - I own a Samsung purely to continue to have access to Sound Assistant (to enable individual app volume control without rooting my device).

I just want everyone to be clear on why it isn't happening.

This is also the same reason why early versions of Android had incredibly fine-grained permission controls that was stripped out... can't have users blocking inter-app marketing key coordination after all.

Sorry, I was responding to this part of your comment:

> The problem is that we'd all blocklist advertisers and then they'd all cry.

Remember: Advertisers cry with money.

They’ve proven themselves to be bad actors with no moral compass. No different than street drug dealers, casinos, traffickers, or any other predatory industry. They should’ve regulated as such.

I don’t have any problem with old-timey “Dishsoap Brand Dishsoap sponsored this content. They want you to know that a dish isn’t clean unless it’s Dishsoap clean!” Type ads. Much beyond that should no longer be tolerated.

I think it's a great proposal if we add a slight alteration. Rather than requiring parents to maintain block/allow lists, the OS should allow the parent to lock in a birth-date, and that birth-date is used by the system to generate a user-age header, from there, websites can be legally required to respect the header and maintain whatever restrictions correspond to the applicable laws. This gives sites the ability to dynamically adapt to users, changing features and laws, as well as remove the burden from the parents of having to determine which sites are safe and not.

I'd really like to steer away from age entirely. This requires that we have universal rules about what content is appropriate for what age, which I don't think is necessary. For kids, why not let parents decide. And why not also use this infrastructure for adults. NSFW buttons are so common that it's clearly something that adults want too.

This sounds more like the most reasonable solution.

Part of me has wondered if there could be a PAC that focuses on pushing for issues that "both sides" can agree on to politicians from both sides. The big thing is it has to be problems both sides agree are problems, and both sides agree on the solutions. The only problem I see is that there's an insane amount of contrarianism from both sides. I have seen both sides of the political aisle flip flop on issues because one side chose one solution this time around.

So let me tell you a story.

There are plenty of states including the one I live in where you are required to verify your age to visit porn sites.

If you add up all of the sites that are not hosted in the US and combine them with all of the sites that you can get around the age verification just by using a VPN, would you be surprised if I told you that the total is 100% with most just ignoring the law?

The goal of these laws isn't to protect children, they just want to further surveillance and control of the population. While there are better ways to handle the "think of the children" concerns being invoked to justify these kinds of laws none of them would satisfy the legislators pushing them.

The biggest issue is, of course, (4) - how do you plan on enforcing that for sites that don't run out of your country of residence? Implicitly restrict access to only those sites in said country?

That issue exists with the current proposal as well or any proposal that leaves the enforcement on the website.

I think in addition to what OP said, the browser/device should let you set hard domain-level filters which are enforced by the browser/device.

This will not be ideal for applications / sites with mixed content, but gives the parent / guardian more control.

You don't enforce that, the owner (or the owner's parents, etc) of the device set that policy. MDMs can all already do this, there just needs to be a more user-friendly/consumer focused MDM to allow parents to control their kids devices. Just have it warn "Out of country sites may not follow your device policy, do you want to block them (Y/n)?"

It’s called “Parental Controls” you don’t need an MDM to do it.

Same way the US enforces any internet foreign policy. Make the credit card companies cut them off,make advertisers cut them off. US controls most of the ways they could make money.

Parental controls have been built into Apple devices forever. Is that not the case for Android and Windows?

Who said it’s about children?! It’s about mass surveillance and building the proper infrastructure using your tax money, both digitally and legally to expand it later with ease. They start usually in a “test bed” states (like Arizona) or countries (like Australia) and evaluate, before fully implementing it.

You've still got it a bit backwards. Websites should be the ones publishing content suitability headers. Those headers are then legally-significant assertions about the content on the site - the type of content, age/moderation policies, etc. Browsers then implement the device's configured policy based on what headers the site returns.

This requires locked down computing on the end device, but all of these proposals inherently do - otherwise a kid can always just install whatever software that sidesteps the restrictions, right? And leaving the responsibility on the device owners/makers only motivates secure boot, which is already pervasive on the most relevant devices - phones and tablets.

Your proposal puts liability directly onto websites themselves, regardless of the end user/device. This would push websites into demanding remote attestation, which is at the early days of being pushed (safetynet, wei, etc), and is the thing that is really primed to destroy general purpose computing. You know all those "verifying your device" followed by endless CAPTCHAs that are everywhere these days? Imagine that, on every site, and no way to get around it besides installing a genuine copy of either Windows 2028 or macOS 28 Pyongyang.

> Require browsers to respect the device's policy for site allow/blocklist

But then HN would still riot, because you would need to require all apps to be approved by a central authority (no unauthorized browsers) OR you need to lock down browser engines to those that respect the list somehow (maybe by killing JIT, limiting network connections).

I've learned long ago, as have politicians, there is zero solution that makes tech people happy... so move forward anyway, they'll always complain, you'll always complain, there is no tolerable solution but the status quo, which is also untenable.

> But then HN would still riot, because you would need to require all apps to be approved by a central authority (no unauthorized browsers) OR you need to lock down browser engines to those that respect the list somehow (maybe by killing JIT, limiting network connections).

I don't think you need to do that. You can pass a law without creating a technical mechanism that automatically enforces the law. The law doesn't even need to be perfect.

So what if you can still patch a browser yourself. Kids can steal cigarettes but laws against selling cigarettes to kids are still broadly effective.

So what if its technically possible for a vendor to ship a violating browser. Go after violaters with the legal system, not with the OS.

So what if there's a foreign vendor with a violating browser out of the reach of the law. You'd still have made the ecosystem vastly better even if there's gaps and loopholes.

Right, I assure you that no kid who wants to smoke weed or cigarette have any trouble finding it and isn’t saying “I was going to smoke weed/cigarettes but since it’s illegal, I guess I won’t”.

See also in the 1980s Nancy Reagan: “Don’t sniff glue to get high”, Kids: “You can sniff glue and get high!”

Funny that you understand what the problem would be, then you still insist that the authoritarian approach is the correct one. I’m sure people like you would gladly goose step into a 100% locked down surveillance hellscape, but the rest of us will keep working to ensure that this future never happens.

But how corrupt politicians will make money having such reasonable policies?

Serious question: why can't Meta, Google, and friends just decide not to serve Arizona? I get logistically it would be tough, but if they built that capability, they would have a very robust lever to pull anytime a government pulls this schtick.

I would imagine the backlash from the people would fix this pretty quickly.

This seems like one of those "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" situations. I'd fully support big tech saying, "Alright Arizona. Build your own technical infrastructure."

And letting the fools in government who don't understand how the world works figure it out the hard way.

What am I missing? (beyond perhaps being overly optimistic!)

I don't think Google considers such legislation to be their enemy. It would effectively kill F-Droid and other third-party app distribution methods, and would fully lock them in a place of high power over their platforms and pull the ladder up beneath them, and nobody would be able to blame Google for it. I mean, why would anybody submit their ID to a brand new unproven app store? Seems quite risky, better to just use Google Play

Not a good idea to enourage that sort of behavior though, because the same tools can embolden them and can be used to pull out of say California if it pushes for a strong pro consumer legislations.

Corporations don’t act on the moral principles regardless of what their PR/marketing department says. It is ultimately decided on how laws affect their bottomline.

They wouldn't pull out of California. It's 1/5 of the US economy and would leave a gaping opening for a competitor to gain a stronger foothold there. You're right it's about money not principles but that's exactly why the threat would be empty. They'd probably lobby congress to try and make it illegal for the states to enact the protection and do some performative annoyances instead.

They might try to make an example out of a smaller state, but since they aren't selling food or fuel or heart pills it isn't like the state is going to collapse without access to Meta properties.

what would those companies do with the infrastructure in AZ? serve clients in other states? I imagine the AZ legislature would have some levers they could pull to make those existing datacenters less effective or more costly to run.

Also because the companies are beholden to shareholders and their financial best interest. cutting off millions of clients to make a political statement is not in the companies best financial interest and would likely result in a shareholder lawsuit.

These companies can't just pull out of a state like Arizona very easily even if they wanted to. Many of the major tech players have a presence in Tempe or Scottsdale- not to mention the defense work that happens throughout the state. AZ is no California but it's silly to act like it's an economy tech is ready or able to easily write off.

Why would big tech care? Age gating is probably good for them, and they won’t want the market share loss.

A total pull out is what big tech threatens when government is impacting on their profit margins, not working in their favour.

Exactly, this will just lead to regulatory capture, where only the big platforms thrive and they are periodically “nudged” to push government supported viewpoints, like what happened to TikTok.

This is a bait-and-switch that will be used to roll in an internet ID for all people. I believe this is why M$ is trying to force people to log in to their local machines with a microsoft account.

I have been terminally online since the age of 7 and this would probably make me shut everything down and go outside. Maybe that'd be good for society, but I suspect most people will just shrug and go along with it.

"It can't be that bad if everyone else is also doing it."

I'm not sure how principled I would be if/when it comes to that. I hope I will be.

I'm much more convinced Microsoft wants to do stuff like sell cloud subscriptions at the click of a button in the desktop than Microsoft gives a crap about those subscriptions being tied to a consistent account ID. The latter certainly sounds evil, but not in a way that particularly helps Microsoft over their competitors.

Uncle Bob probably would probably need to do a decent amount of work to figure out how to purchase a OneDrive subscription from having no account, particularly if they think "I've already got an account - that's how I log in!". If the PC forces Bob to walk through creating a cloud Microsoft account before he even sees the desktop then the only step remaining is to click to OneDrive (or whatever) sales notification and enter a credit card so his "important personal files stay backed up" (or however they pitch the service in the notifications).

In that case, we should build a new internet designed specifically to prevent this kind of behaviour and the slopification of the current internet. Let HTTP rot and build something a little less spartan than gemini but still resistant to slop. If anyone has the resources, my current idea is a p2p protocol for sharing some kind of markup that can do minimal styling and a client that doesn't need some kind of scripting language to do things like use buttons

http isn't the internet. al gore created a series of tubes, and other folks built protocols to share information through those tubes. http is one protocol

You're right, I should have specified a new web. Gopher and usenet both still exist and aren't http

Curious, what is driving this "you need permission to use the internet" bills suddenly ?

Really miss the old internet.

As wealth inequality and corruption based economic policies push people further and further into a corner the state will have a greater need to identify any nascent organization of political movements that threaten the status quo earlier so these can be strangled in their cribs.

As I recently observed [1], there is a lot more of this sort of coordination than people realize. I personally know of about three groups trying to get some cross-state initiatives implemented at the state level, and I'm not even particularly looking for such things.

It is not a coincidence. It means there is some organization out there pushing these. In general, "organization" here applies very broadly; there are some cases where it pretty much is just more-or-less normal people who organize to get something done. I wouldn't expect this particular thing is that for a second, of course. I'm just saying in general the term applies broadly. Someone is organized and trying to push this.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46873297

The rise of anti-Establishment politics led the Establishment to strike back, and they play for keeps.

That said I still expect mandatory age verification/ID for the internet to fail legal challenges in the US as there is broad precedent for both anonymous speech rights and children’s speech rights under the first amendment.

The anti-Establishment people that were only anti-Establishment until they had power, then they are very much pro-Establishment.

The writing has been on the wall for years with a desire among states to identify individuals using the internet. Whether or not we will continue to win the fight against it is up in the air.

It's right wing censorship plain and simple. Unfashionable to state this.

While this particular bill is all R sponsors, current censorship efforts are bipartisan inside the US and even international in scope. The one ray of hope is that left and right can’t agree on what should be censored or how, or even what constitutes “censorship.”

IMO when both-sides-ing a debate, it would be helpful to provide more specific examples to support the claim. Especially when your first few words acknowledge the apparent one-sided nature.

If you need examples for left wing censorship in the US: the federal government (primarily through CISA) worked for years through NGOs to pressure companies on moderation policy, going so far as to suggest particular accounts or individuals needed scrutiny. California is currently suing several website operators for offering blueprints for 3D printed guns. A few blue states are experimenting with hate speech bills again (typically focused on islamophobia or antisemitism), although they will likely face a successful 1A challenge if they pass.

Both Ds and Rs have been attacking Section 230; Mark Kelly wants to strip those protections when sites “amplify content that caused harm.” KOSA is a looming bipartisan threat.

Left radicals are as virulently against free speech as those on the right, often calling for allies to “shut down” or even physically harm opponents.

Schools are a particularly difficult battleground for free speech, with actions against scholars from both left and right: https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire

If you are left wing, you probably don’t think some of these are censorship, others do, that’s why I said it was a good thing that left and right disagree with each other here. In many ways they cancel each other out, although they do a lot of damage to free speech along the way.

It’s also true that currently in the US the primary threat comes from the right, as a consequence of the right being in power. Internationally it is reversed.

Just look at the Senate votes for these bills/laws.

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You weren’t around when Tipper Gore was raising the alarm about Ice T’s “Cop Killer” (now “ICE Killer” since he has been playing a cop on TV for a quarter century) or NWA and “F%%% the Police”

Gore is at best a centrist

Yes. Right wing.

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This isn't about ideology. This is about money and control.

which 'wing' cheered loudly when every platform openly suppressed their political opponents during the last decade, and frothed in impotent rage when one of those platforms unexpectedly changed hands and ceased the censorship?

somehow, censorship is only bad when the wrong side does it. when the correct side does it, it's justified and necessary for your democracies to survive.

I sometimes wonder how serious these sorts of sentiments are. Like, when you claim something easily disproven and openly partisan, do you know that and do it anyway, or is your internal dialog one of righteous outrage?

for example, go ahead and easily disprove that Twitter, Google, and Facebook had banned the sitting president of the United States in January 2021, simultaneously and voluntarily.

So a couple platforms banning one guy from continuing to attempt an insurrection of the federal government counts as suppressing your political opponents?

Would you assert that politicians are by definition untouchable, no matter what they do? Literally. I know your man bragged about this, but was he joking or not?

right. in other words, it was justified and necessary for your democracy to survive.

next example: which 'wing' cheered at COVID misinformation, such as the lab leak theory, being voluntarily suppressed by every platform?

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I think it's questionable whether the censorship has ceased. It's just done less transparently and blamed on "the algorithm". There's an article about it now on the front page of HN.

Not disagreeing with the need of a reminder that there was censorship from the left though.

I don't know. Which wing, and what's an example of the suppression they did openly?

Since I'm in AZ, I had to look about the sponsor. Here's what Michael Way has on his campaign website :

"Michael is NOT a politician. He has spent his career in business, not government. We need bold, conservative outsiders to shake up business-as-usual."

https://michaelwayforaz.com/about/

The bill sure sounds contradictory to his campaign statement.

The days you move between categories can establish your birthdate, which is a lot of bits if you are doing this on an individual level (basically it's a great start at a supercookie).

One thing to keep in mind is that every session has crazy proposals in AZ. (Not clear how many of them get anywhere.)

It's good to take note of who exactly is pushing (and/or being bribed to push) the crazy. In the case of this monstrosity you can thank:

    Rep. Michael Way [R]
    Rep. Leo Biasiucci [R]
    Rep. Selina Bliss [R]
    Rep. Michael Carbone [R]
    Rep. Neal Carter [R]
    Rep. Lupe Diaz [R]
    Rep. Lisa Fink [R]
    Rep. Matt Gress [R]
    Rep. Chris Lopez [R]
    Rep. David Marshall [R]
    Rep. Quang Nguyen [R]
    Rep. James Taylor [R]

Could the unwritten motivation be to kill some of the internet and boost sales at local brick and mortar stores? trying to think like a state government critter... Privacy risks aside, people are averse to added friction.

They should just require people to answer a dynamic set of random history questions.

All of a sudden various governments and tech companies want to do age verification. Co-incidence?

Remember when children weren't even supposed to use the internet unsupervised? What happened? The internet hasn't gotten any less filthy.

Shareholders happened and decided there was money in it, and now the government is using their failures and the irresponsibility of parents for mass surveillance

What would be interesting to know is which age verification services are popular these days?

This whole pile of bullshit is just to end anonymity. Decentralizing things, including finances seems like the only real path forward to keep the world sane.

You don't need an ID of any sort to conceal carry a gun in AZ, but you need one for an app?

The 2nd amendment is the only constitutionally-guaranteed right these days. And that too only if you have the correct political views.

See Pretti

Different state; in the state Pretti was shot the state charges were acquitted when a guy with an AK lit up on cops during the BLM riots. []

[] https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/09/01/jaleel-stallings-sh...

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Everything I've said is factually accurate. Hilarious how some commenters are saying I am "lying" or assume I disagree with the verdict when it could not be further from the truth. I'm only pointing out that armed fire upon police might be legal in Minnesota, and there is recent case example of that.

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>This is a silly way to have a conversation, but as for your response: every single word you picked was as misleading as possible. "AK" implies an assault rifle but it was a pistol. "Lit up on cops" implies that he started the conflict by attacking cops, rather than it being one of self-defense against people indistinguishable from thugs. You invoke "BLM riots", but there is no evidence he was involved in that at all. Your words are clearly chosen in such a way as to prime people towards a certain belief about the event. With the most charitable interpretation of your words possible, they might factually describe the events, but I think it crosses the line to the point where you would have to be so charitable as to actively misinterpret what words mean in order for them to remain factually accurate. At any rate, that level of charity is absolutely unwarranted given how intentionally uncharitable the selection of those words was in the first place.

AK implies an AK family firearm. IIRC it was a draco or draco like "pistol." Anyone with familiarity with firearms will consider that "pistol" to be in the AK family; it does have as shortened barrel and no stock but otherwise looks like and has nearly same components as the most common form of AK (In US, AK doesn't imply it is select fire assault rifle, if you go to a gun show and someone is selling an AK it is assumed it is semi-auto unless they advertise it as an NFA AK).

"Lit up" means he opened fire. I linked the case so you could read the facts, I agree it was in self defense, not sure why you assumed otherwise. I would have linked to some other news source if I wanted bias against him.

I said "during" the BLM riots, not that he was a rioter.

I can assure you I probably have a nearly similar opinion on this as you do, it appears you just jumped to conclusions and drawn ones that didn't exist so you could go on your rage against me.

My point here is the people he shot at acted a lot like ICE did in Minneapolis -- rolling up in unmarked cars, masked, shooting people (like goode). It's not clear to me citizens of Minnesota would actually be found guilty if they were to find themselves in a case of self defense.

He was right to be acquitted, the cops were doing drive by shootings from unmarked vans (using non-lethal bullets but hard to tell when being shot at in the night).

There is no such thing as "non-lethal" bullets. A bean bag round can kill you. The riot control paraphernalia is less-lethal than traditional firearms.

He was acquitted in Minnesota under a very similar fact-pattern of what was happening in Minneapolis during the ICE fiasco: masked men in unmarked cars, often using unlawful force, essentially undifferentiated from thugs, going off and shooting people like goode.

That is what I'm trying to get people to understand.

> when a guy with an AK lit up on cops during the BLM riots.

It is certainly a bold choice to use this wildly misleading framing when you link to a news article that directly contradicts it. A more accurate framing would be "when a guy returned fire against a gang of thugs who were firing on random passerby from an unmarked van".

  Court documents and transcripts reveal a far different story than the one officers told investigators, as well as the tales police and prosecutors offered up to the media.

    Before the white, unmarked cargo van of the Minneapolis Police Department drove down Lake Street, an officer gave Sgt. Andrew Bittell his orders: “Drive down Lake Street. You see a group, call it out. OK great! Fuck ’em up, gas ’em, fuck ’em up.”

  At 17th Avenue and Lake Street, around 10 p.m., the SWAT team saw a group of people outside the Stop-N-Shop gas station. Bittell told the driver to head toward the station and said, “Let ’em have it boys!”

  They later learned they were shooting at the gas station owner, neighbors and relatives guarding the station from more looting, as well as bystanders, including a Vice News reporter who had his hands up and was yelling, “Press!”

  About an hour later, three blocks to the west, they opened the sliding door of the van and began firing plastic rounds at people in a parking lot.

  They hit Jaleel K. Stallings, 29, a St. Paul truck driver, who says he didn’t know they were cops because they were inside an unmarked white cargo van with the police lights off. [...] Stallings, an Army veteran, returned fire with his mini Draco pistol, for which he had a permit.

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> Everything I've said is factually accurate. Hilarious how some commenters are saying I am "lying" or assume I disagree with the verdict when it could not be further from the truth. I'm only pointing out that armed fire upon police might be legal in Minnesota, and there is recent case example of that.

This is a silly way to have a conversation, but as for your response: every single word you picked was as misleading as possible. "AK" implies an assault rifle but it was a pistol. "Lit up on cops" implies that he started the conflict by attacking cops, rather than it being one of self-defense against people indistinguishable from thugs. You invoke "BLM riots", but there is no evidence he was involved in that at all. Your words are clearly chosen in such a way as to prime people towards a certain belief about the event. With the most charitable interpretation of your words possible, they might factually describe the events, but I think it crosses the line to the point where you would have to be so charitable as to actively misinterpret what words mean in order for them to remain factually accurate. At any rate, that level of charity is absolutely unwarranted given how intentionally uncharitable the selection of those words was in the first place.

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Only if the bill is voted on, approved and signed into law, which I would bet top dollar will never happen.

Can children buy guns in AZ? Look, I don't have an opinion here one way or the other, this almost certainly won't pass, but please at least try to argue in good faith.

Adults can buy a gun with no ID, no problem in AZ, fully legal. If you prefer that comparison, to an adult being carded to buy an app. I do feel I was making a good faith comment here.

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>Adults can sell each other property with no ID and without the state getting involved, who knew.

Yes and it's legal. Should be for apps too. Headline says all apps.

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>Is it legal to sell a gun to a child in Arizona? Or do you responsible for age verification? You continue to argue in bad faith.

It is legal to sell a gun to an adult in AZ without carding them and without doing "age verification" as described in the article. In comparison, this bill appears to make it illegal to sell an app to an adult without doing "age verification" as they've described. My comparison here is in good faith.

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>How do they pass the federal background check?

Easy, meet in parking lot, pay cash, buy gun, no background check needed and fully legal.

> Adults can buy a gun with no ID, no problem in AZ

How do they pass the federal background check?

Adults can sell each other property with no ID and without the state getting involved, who knew.

If you mean at a store, a regulated vendor, you are incorrect.

Is it legal to sell a gun to a child in Arizona? Or are you responsible for age verification? You continue to argue in bad faith.

Who do they think they are? The UK?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_... for a full picture of US states age verification laws, states in the article include: Arkansas California Florida Georgia Louisiana Mississippi Nebraska New York Ohio Tennessee Texas Utah

California seems like the odd one out on that list. And maybe NY.

It's clear these "age verification" bills will just keep coming and it's a losing battle to try and oppose each individually.

Instead (or rather in addition to) activism we should go at it from the other end and request the introduction of a verifiably independent authority and zero knowledge protocol that will deliver a cryptographically secure boolean bit (isOver18) with no way to correlate from either end the ID or which website the bit is used for.

The alternative is IDs get collected by all these horrendous privacy fiends and sold / leaked / monetized across the board, which sounds like a dystopian nightmare.

Your 2nd paragraph is a foreign language to US representatives. A bunch of senators, like Graham and Turtle Man, brag about not using email.

Solutions based on zero-knowledge-proofs would solve the privacy aspect at the massive cost of killing general purpose computing as we know it today, by mandating the use of remote device attestation (as that is the only way to guarantee an otherwise fully anonymous token is not being sniffed and passed onto someone else). That would be in my opinion significantly more dystopian than every service having a copy of my ID, as it would lay the groundwork for corporations and governments to be able to dictate what you can and cannot do exactly with any internet-connected device.

It's not hard for instance to imagine that once every computing device available to the general public is locked down and cannot be jailbroken without also losing the ability to log into any online service, a law would be introduced requiring client-side scanning of all files to check for CSAM, evidence of political dissent or even just plain old movie piracy. The technology to implement this exists (see what Apple tried to do a few years ago) and the exact same legislation is currently being pushed in the 3D printing space, so these fears are not unfounded.

I would propose a variant of RFC 3514, where adult-related packets have a specified bit in the IP header. Simpler and you can filter it at the firewall.

This state fucking reeks.