From my experience as a kid

"Pleasant for kids to use is the polar opposite of kids finding it a pleasure to use"

Not sure why you think this has anything to do with children other than in name.

It’s ID verification.

This must kill that platform.

This has been going on since well before COVID:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate

If we did build it and it became popular, it would quickly be taken over by the same forces that are destroying the current internet. To get good social media sites (and a better internet as well), you would first have to change the economics of the entire system driving these forces. But as is said "It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".

Any kind of social media ban would mean more people consuming "traditional" media, which is much worse.

I would rather have my kid watch nothing but AI slop then get even 30 seconds of FAUX news. Lost my father to actual brain rot, FUCK YOU NEWSCORP!

And I am going to restate how it’s an absolutely terrible idea, and will always fail with its perverse incentives. This does not solve any problems and creates many more.

Your idea will create a massive black market for “adult validation tokens”, handing billions of dollars to criminal groups reselling these things.

And then where such a system goes in 5-10y. Sure it’s sorta anonymous today, but then new government decides - “let’s make it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit card.” Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand realtime access to the global logs.

Every censorship system you build, even if it seems “good”, will eventually censor you and the things you care about. Don't design or build oppression technology.

The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.

No disrespect but paying to verify age feels absurd, let alone putting a private company in charge of what should be an essential function of the government.

How about when you turn 18 or whatever the government gives you a signed JWT that contains your DOB? Anyone who needs to verify your age can check that and simply validate the signature via a public key published by the government.

Simply grab a new JWT when you need it, to ensure privacy.

And sure, sprinkle in some laws that make it illegal to store or share JWTs for clearly fraudulent intents.

> the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or cigarettes

This feels like it comes from an affluent perspective, where I grew up it was trivial to acquire these things and much worse, there will always be someone’s older brother etc who will do this for $20 because he’s got nothing to lose.

> The store must only demand ID if the buyer appears to be a minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases). The store must never store the ID in any form whatsoever.

Your plan requires nuanced implementation details which the general public is ill equipped to understand let alone independently verify. In particular, it is already normalized (in America at least) that liquor and weed stores will ID even the elderly, and scan the barcode on the ID into their computer. Let's say you want to ban the computer part outright; the public won't understand why, because it's already normal to them. So maybe you permit scanning IDs but regulate the way businesses can store/use that data; the public can't see into the computer, they have no idea if the law is being followed or not. This leads to lax attitudes towards compliance and enforcement both, and furthermore, likely results in public cynicism aka low expectations, which will give way to complacency. This is why I don't think your plan will work well, it's doomed to degenerate into surveillance.

You can do the same thing with online payments combined with a ZKP token system.

The issue is and will always remain reselling the age verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless. Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will be very motivated to do so. Criminals will be eager to aid them for some change too.

Either you forget age verification, or you can forget about privacy. Because identity theft is the only hoop big enough for most kids not to make the jump - and even that may not hold, typically identity theft is carried out for financial returns, the age verification requirement will change the calculus on that and will likely expand that particular black market to both kids and people valuing their privacy.

In my opinion it should be the parent's job to police their kid's access to an internet terminal. It's not even that hard. Mitigating the mistakes of parents at the expense of everyone's privacy is a poor trade.

> Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.

That sounds fantastic, were just one step away from making social media entirely controlled by one single party

Perfect to push anyone you don't like into irrelevancy, politicians will love this

Journalists too, finally they can be rid of these pesky YouTubers that show how politically captured they're! Just need to get someone with admin permission in that company and you're golden

Once you're selling them, put a bounty where kids can turn in the cards for money. Then you'll both set a price floor and know which stores are selling them and you can find out who's doing it. Nothing says that a token has to last for a constant amount of time. If kids turn in more than a certain percentage, then that location would have theirs expire early.

What I like here is that you've turned a digital problem into a physical one where we already have solutions and intuition for how to enforce rules.

A private monopoly sounds like a great idea. A profit incentive for access to social media definitely won't result in the price of these tokens skyrocketing to extract as much money as possible.

Japan has a similar system for payments. If you prefer to buy things online with cash they give you a barcode you take to any convenience store. The store scans it and you pay with cash.

No need for separate company. Banks know your age. I'd imagine CC companies know or at very least can get age data from the banks they trade.

So it would be

1. Site let's you pick your "age provider"

2. You log to you bank/govt site

3. They only get age as response.

Even easier with CC, shops could just send payment request with minimal age, if it doesn't pass, no sell

I had a very similar idea with a few differences:

1. You can go to the mayor's house to get the token. No need to associate tobacco/alcohol to it.

2. It's free.

3. It's culturally enforced to exchange tokens with other people. This way users themselves help make sure it's truly impossible to trace their activity.

4. It's illegal to publish your or someone else's token. It's like a paper ID, with a QR code.

5. Can be reused. Expires after 5 years .

This way if you want 5 pornhub accounts you don't have to buy 5 stamps. You are also extra sure that the tokens cannot be linked to you because you can exchange it with anyone.

What happens with point 7 when you verify your age to Google Plus and then you go to Reddit and “sign in with Google?”. If your verification doesn’t transfer, that would be silly because you aren’t a different age.

Trying to start a new social network in your world either has “every new signup must go to a store and spend money” or every new social network becomes tied to “sign in with Google”.

Your plan locks us into the current social networking forever?

Perhaps we should drop age verification and just ban sites that use AI to scam attention for everyone? I would be happy enough if X and FB were banned outright.

Sounds good. Except the reverify thing. The whole reverification is becoming a bit of a disease lately.

I've already had my bank AND my mobile provider demanding an updated scan of my ID. Which is completely BS, after all I'm still the same person. I didn't suddenly become someone else. It's ridiculous they demand it.

But these cards sound like a better solution than using government ID yes.

Not only this but every age verification system will create an immense motive for the kids to obtain an "adult pass". Money, uncles, "family engineering" on parents or obscure paths will be used by the kid to become a hero to their peers. In a few months/years the system will degenerate and become abandoned.

>6. Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3 months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then it expires and a new one must be purchased.

> 7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.

I propose instead:

A single code valid for 10 packets sent to a single IP address, or 30 seconds, whichever expires first.

So a kid just has to get their hands on a token then access is open to restricted websites for a year (or whatever time period) while adults are inconvenienced? The black markets for these things would pop up instantly and you'd deal with secondary effects of that (scams, fraud, etc.)

I think the whole idea of age verification on the internet is dystopian and should be tossed in the garbage.

I'm half convinced it's satire but I'll answer sincerely anyway.

As an adult I just couldn't be bothered buying this again year over year, let alone even once. I'm dropping the site instead of going to the store to buy this. Guess I'd just go fully offline.

Why do you need a private monopoly or physical tokens?

This is trivially solved with national IDs and strict liability.

I don't believe the goal of 'age verification' has anything to do with children. Politicians have been very explicit objecting to anonymous people online complaining about them including calling them 'fat'.

Nah, EIDAS2 got you covered - you use your european identity wallet.

While this can work I just don’t want any bans on speech for any age. These social media bans are going to next lead to porn restrictions and ultimately they will mainstream Christian theocratic values in public policy through an ever shifting morality goal post. That’s how it always goes. Enabling it through such solutions feels like a risk.

I’m in my 40’s and I’d rather just use a VPN, I can’t imagine that young people will feel any differently. Governments should feel free to take performative measures, and we’re free to circumvent them.

Leave people to their fantasies of digital control and let them learn lessons the hard way. This is not a technical issue anyway.

I was going to be mean, but here we are in 2026, so let me be nice.

Your idea is garbage.

Regardless of any laws pushing for age verification, this is pretty smart.

So who do you give the private monopoly to? The next lottery winner?

Or we have devices attest user age. On setup, the device has the option to store a root ("guardian"?) email address. Whenever "adult mode" is activated or the root email is changed, a notification must first be sent to the prior root email. That notification may optionally contain a code that must be used to proceed with the relevant action, though the user should be warned of the potential device-crippling consequences.

This setting is stored in a secure enclave and survives factory resets.

I will note that these two systems are not mutually exclusive. There are plenty of ways to "think of the children" that don't trample on everybody's freedom.

A very important part of the system is a nationwide program of sending homeless people to concentration camps so that teenagers wouldn't bribe them to buy TittyTokens.

Like seriously, do you really think that if currently minors can buy tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune to the same problem because you really really wish they would?

You can't patch this without creating some form of a central database of who exactly buys how many TittyTokens.

You underestimate the average American teenager’s shell-buying game (honed for decades by our asinine alcohol laws.) I’m sure kids elsewhere would pick it up pretty fast too.

Plus, this would spawn massive online black markets for the codes, fueled by crypto/gift cards/other shady means of money transmission.

Step 9 i buy my kids this card because this law is dumb

This is a typical technical solution to a sociopolitical problem. The powers-that-be are not comfortable with the free-for-all that exists on the internet. All these laws are meant to fix that squeaky wheel, one ball-bearing at a time.

"Children" gets the Right to march behind you unquestioningly. "Misinformation/Nazis" does the same for the Left. This is now a perfect recipe for a shit sandwich.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of good.

Who cares if many can get around it, if the majority can't or won't, then it kills the network effects.

Step 1 should be to kill the ad based monetization model.

>I wanna see laws targeting addictive design systems and harmful content.

then you're going to see president Hegseth using those laws to ban video games and pornography.

The main difference in my view is the personalized algorithm that determines what to feed you next.

HackerNews has an algorithm but it's not personalized—i.e. everyone sees the same thing.

From a definition standpoint, hn is a social media site. From a legislation standpoint, it's not nearly popular (infamous?) enough to legislate (the mentioned sites have had enough negative coverage to manufacturer consent for this invasion of privacy: cyber bullying, destructive challenges, etc.)

When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will need real world verification here.

> what is the difference between "social media" and a website very much like this one?

Pretty much everything? Not the same intent, not the same usage, not the same business model, not the same users, &c.

Social media has the power to ruin a child’s life by letting them publish self incriminating information. A normal website is a primarily read only interaction. Prohibit child generated content and let kids view websites.

Because there is real observable harm to kids from those websites that there isn’t from HN?

It’s like asking why you prevent kids from buying alcohol but don’t stop them from buying fruit juice.

There is a lot of writing on what makes “social media” particularly more harmful, and its addictive nature etc, but again, we don’t need to necessarily get into the cause and knowing it’s harmful should be sufficient.

HN is social media, and if you look at the implementation of the Australian law it's more political than anything else. They banned X but did not list BlueSky, which has an ongoing pedophilia problem. This has nothing to do with protecting kids from social media it's just political maneuvering, like banning children from reading the epoch times but not the NYT

Proper moderation, and - how to say it without sounding elitist? - more mature users.

the services that comply with speech suppression and privacy violation orders will be deemed acceptable, and those who don't won't.

This website is social media.

None. HN is a social media since it's an online forum. In fact HN runs afoul of many EU regulations already, GDPR, cookie law, ...

To find out what the difference is under this specific draft legislation we'd have to look at its text. I have no idea how to find copies of draft French legislation and I don't read French.

To give an idea of how such laws might approach it, the recent New York Law requiring social media sites to display mental health warnings was written to cover sites with addictive feeds. Here's how it defined those:

> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website, online service, online application, or mobile application, either concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:

> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media generated or shared by other users;

> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical information concerning the user's device;

> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media, media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;

> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;

> (e) the media are direct and private communications;

> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in response to a specific search inquiry by the user;

(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author, creator, poster, or source; or

> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations promulgated pursuant to this article.

> The decisions have been made and your voice pretty much doesn't matter

Source for these bans being unpopular?

It sounds like you don't like social media. With that in mind, why is it good to add a layer of user surveillance on the Internet? Where's the connection between "social media is harmful" and "it is good to add surveillance"?

If you think social media is harmful, wouldn't it be good to regulate social media? What does regulating French (or Australian, or wherever) citizens have to do with it?

Definitely well past time to ban social media.

Yes, perhaps the most reasonable approach is to tie these restrictions to the specific device (and, where applicable, account).

The ban doesn’t need to catch every single case, it just needs to add enough friction to stop the most frequent and destroy network effects.

The only way they could successfully implement it is with constant live video surveillance, otherwise parents who oppose the ban can easily get around it. Which is going to be at least a double digit percentage of the population. And the police don't even have the resources to investigate theft and robbery, let alone go after millions of parents for helping their children create social media accounts.

Put the onus on the social media companies, then have a 3rd party investigate how much content is bypassing their own protections and then fine them. Give a kickback to those investigators to incentivize them to find more violations. Rinse and repeat.

Here's my proposal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282

It protects privacy while being as robust as any other existing age restriction method.

The second video shows the head of the CNIL (~ the "regulator") mostly repeating platitudes about various topics, but nothing about age restriction for social networks. Did i miss anything?

Yup the aim is to de-anonymise the Internet for increased policing/spying abilities

> How long before your phones browser is digitally signing all your social media posts with your ID...

Under 10 years I'd say at this rate

>A ban on social media for children is a different way of saying ID Verification for the entire population.

ID verification was not required for adults in Australia. Age was inferred based on activity. In fact, blanket verification was disallowed by the legislation.

I'm Australian and neither any Meta platform nor Reddit have asked to verify my ID, as I presume both just inferred that I was over 16 and that was adequate.

> If you were a cynical person you could imagine this is actually politicians wanting to bring in an ID law

Sounds like a good theory, apart from the minor flaw that France already has ID cards: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_card_(France)

Absolute nonsense. American social media is used because it's designed to addict children and adults. Same reason people gamble, and buy advertised products.

> The goal is obviously to have tech illiterate people knowing just enough to use computers for the job but not worrying about the digital autoristarism currently being deployed.

If anything, without social media access, kids are more likely to play/hack around.

Its a weird analogy. Plenty of people have years of racing experience before they get their drivers license.

Agree. Same for adults.

Famously, there's no point banning kids from buying alcohol because sometimes adults buy it for them.

That's not how they think. They will ban everything and only allow that which is explicitly permitted.

I don't think you've thought through the sentiment "But that’s the job of the parents, not the state" very well. Parents frequently want limited Internet access for their older preteen/early teen children, don't trust the private sector to implement this limited Internet access, and don't have the time to enforce this limited access themselves as they have to go to work and their children have to go to school anyway (and their parents want this limited access for them in school as well).

There are also easier options of no personal Internet access, and unrestricted access, but I suppose these are not very good for this stage of development.

As citizens we like to delegate aspects of our lives to the government; for example, I'm responsible for commuting to work on time, but we have delegated the maintenance of roads or public transport to the government, and this is something that could also be done by the private sector (private roads, private transportation), and ends up as a constant negotiation between citizen and government. Some polities like Germany and I think Sweden have subsidized education for children in exchange for mandatory public schooling by an institution either owned by the state or extremely highly regulated by the state.

>But that’s the job of the parents, not the state.

Agree with you. But you'd be surprised at the number of people who think that the state ought to do things for them, including raising their kids.

> Besides, like many point out, this is just a way to deanonymize the web for everyone

Those people haven't bothered looking into the details. Some jurisdictions require age checks in a way that deanonymize people, and some require they be done in a way that do not deanonymize people.

The EU is strongly pushing for the later in the systems EU countries are adopting or considering.

>But that’s the job of the parents, not the state.

How? I can't hover over the shoulders of my kids 24/7 - there's no world in which that's practical.

Maybe tech companies should start offering parents tools to make it easier? The same tools that people here might already use to keep that bullshit away from their kids.

I love the way everything is forced online but you have to use state ID to chat with your friends now.

What do you expect this law will to achieve?

I'm not convinced social media is to blame. Plenty of extremist movements have arisen throughout history without social media. Politics has been bad for a long long time before social media existed.

Consolidation of all kinds of media (social, print, TV, radio, etc.) is a big ingredient in this. Another ingredient is the enshitification of the net, along with the value of unfettered collection of user data.

The problem isn't that people are consuming (social) media, it's that everything is owned by so few people. We shouldn't be punished for this by having to submit to even more surveillance.

What's wrong with right wing populist movements? They come and go just like left wing populist movements. The pendulum swinging across both the political spectrums over election cycles is a thing of beauty.

Social media is just decentralised information flow. Populist movements are rising because people are finally seeing how absolutely exploited they are by the elites, because the elites no longer have complete centralised control over the flow of information.

So one variety of extremism is bad but another isn't?

So you want to silence your political opponents? Sounds draconian.

[dead]

Here's the thing though: they're not killing entertainment — at least not in general. They're killing communication.

I used to look things up on the internet, now it's looking me up.

Yeah the internet is stupid at this point. I do get a lot of value from YouTube however.