A lot of parents sadly lack any kinds of skills to use those tools nor even know that they exist.

As far as laws with potential to repress freedom of expression go, wouldn’t public government programs or campaigns to train & educate parents be a less compromising way to meet such needs without raising issues of liberty, privacy, coercion?

While I agree, I don’t think the language “every operating system provider has to create” means it’s installed if you don’t want it. Parental control software exists for Linux, it’s available from the package manager, and we can opt out of installing it.

I doubt “every operating system” is meant literally. Embedded OSs for specialized hardware (eg, routers, satellites, rockets, missiles, drones, calculators, industrial lasers) aren’t typically meant for children to browse the web. If TempleOS supported networking, it might be in trouble. Viable legislation would probably be restricted to OSs designed to allow children to access content over the internet.

The main thrust of the suggestion is to prefer parental controls over age verification. Better ways to ensure availability of parental controls (like government services to provide the software free) fit that broad idea.

I can make its logic gates do anything I want, as long as it’s not sending CP or malware over the Internet.

That stipulation doesn’t need to be stated. It can be programmed to do anything, and that’s fine. Laws already exist for illegal activity. Anyone who’d fuss the absence of that stipulation lacks credibility.

Cool: agreed. Your objection was ambiguous.

If we had to choose, though, I’d consider the professor’s suggestion preferable to age verification. While I disagree with mandating it, it’d pretty much do nothing, because it’s already reality: most mainstream OSs include parental controls. The “criteria” would establish standards for parental controls, which isn’t altogether a bad idea. A better idea would be to promote a standard & replace mandates with public services to provide parental control technologies free & to educate parents.

In the late 90s, when US Congress attempted to regulate access of adult content to minors, those laws commissioned studies that drew similar conclusions even then. The studies & federal courts concluded that to meet the government’s compelling interest in “protecting minors from harmful content”, there were more narrowly tailored alternatives to criminalization & age verification that are less restrictive to fundamental rights & are at least as effective:

• client-side filters to block content from the receiving end
• government programs to train parents & provide them resources to “protect” their children from “harmful content”
• public education campaigns.

They pointed out while client-side filters may have false positives & negatives

• they can be monitored & corrected
• they’re a more complete solution that can restrict all internet protocols (not just web) from any geographic source (not only in legal jurisdiction) with content of any type (including dynamic such as live chat)
• they allow restriction of other kinds of content (eg, violence, hate speech)
• they can vary restrictions per child (eg, age-appropriateness)
• they let parents disable them
• they don’t obstruct access by adults.

Criminalizing access to adult content at the source obstructs everyone’s access & burdens them with loss of privacy & with security risk.

Despite their age, those studies’ findings remain relevant.

• COPA Commission

  In October 1998 Congress enacted the Child Online Protection Act and established the Commission on Online Child Protection to study methods to help reduce access by minors to certain sexually explicit material, defined in the statute as harmful to minors. Congress directed the Commission to evaluate the accessibility, cost, and effectiveness of protective technologies and methods, as well as their possible effects on privacy, First Amendment values and law enforcement. This report responds to the Congressional request.

• National Research Council

  In November 1998, the U.S. Congress mandated a study by the National Research Council (NRC) to address pornography on the Internet (Box P.1).

Education, supervision, & parental controls/filters seem a more compelling solution. However, bring that up in regard to legislation to age-restrict social media & the tune at lemmy dramatically changes: seems inconsistent.

Explain your objection. It’s a parenting problem, not everyone else’s.

police the platforms

No thanks. The beauty of social media is the unrestrained assholery. People just need to learn to cope & quit being fragile: skill issue. Education & civic campaigns to promote social good are better approaches respecting our inherent liberties to piss people off.

you don’t stop misogyny by just ignoring it you twats, and hot take, mainstream social media

Opinions aren’t stopped. They also don’t need to be. Trying to make individualism a put-down is pathetic.

We all have it in our power to ignore or use our voices to promote our messages with as much force as the messages we oppose. That provocative ragebait engages more effectively than constructive dialog reflects a human failing & a need to work on ourselves.

Social media doesn’t need to be good, and we don’t need to keep using it. The beauty of social media is we can be totally irredeemable “twats”, victim-blame up the wazoo, and put out the most infuriating shit conceived until we realize it’s all expression lacking substance & none it matters. It’s only when people start caring too much that we should be concerned for humanity. They need to get a life or something, stop putting so much of themselves on words, images, & sounds on a screen.

collectively shaming participants

That should suffice. Laws/censorship are unnecessary. Stupid opinions on the internet or in society aren’t new.

Do you have any analysis to substantiate your claims like the articles I linked?

The historical record of congressional party control shows that in the past 4 decades Democrats have rarely had enough control of both chambers to pass legislation without bipartisan support. Democrats (& independents caucusing with them) have had

• no veto-proof supermajority in both chambers since session 94 (1975–7)
• no filibuster-proof supermajority in both chambers since session 111 (2009–11) briefly
• no simple majority in both chambers since session 117 (2021–3).

Even with a majority, Democrats aren’t a monolith: they still have factions. Overcoming Senate filibuster requires 3/5 supermajority. Enacting legislation still requires presidential approval or veto override with 2/3 supermajority from both chambers. Veto overrides are rare & typically bipartisan, especially the last one, which was against Trump. Consequently, deliberation & compromise to broadly appeal to their own party & enough of the opposition is a practical necessity.

Moreover, Trump was impeached twice. They simply lacked the 2/3 supermajority in the Senate to convict due to insufficient bipartisan support.

The 1st impeachment split by party almost exactly:

• impeachment passed with a simple majority without Republicans
• conviction votes for 1st & 2nd charges didn’t even get a simple majority.

The 2nd impeachment on 2021/1/13 was only days after the 2021/1/6 incitement of insurrection. Despite some Republican support, not enough were willing to defy Trump.

• impeachment passed with some Republican support (all 222 Democrats + 10 Republicans)
• conviction failed with a simple majority approving conviction (all 50 Democrats + 7 Republicans).

Failure to convict on 2021/2/13 imperiled chances of a federal criminal case against Trump’s actions during presidency. At that point, congressional Democrats had exhausted the extent of their powers to prosecute or avail Trump to prosecution. The congressional investigation afterward while lengthy posed no real chance of holding Trump legally accountable for inciting insurrection: it could only make findings & refer criminal charges to prosecutors. Any further action would need to be taken by federal prosecutors in the presidential administration.

While the DOJ investigation started late in 2022 November & failed to enter trial hearings (either due to a corrupt judge or appeals over presidential immunity) by the time Trump was reelected, that failure was entirely the Biden administration’s and not of the Democratic party, who had promptly impeached Trump & failed to obtain conviction, because the numbers weren’t in their favor.

Putting “wrenches in the spokes” goes both ways. Do you know how long congressional Republicans had tried to restrict abortion? They simply couldn’t: they had to circumvent US congress through the Supreme Court & state legislatures. Democrats haven’t been “enabling, aiding, or abetting” Republican fascism or authoritarianism: roll calls indicate the contrary. It’s just Congress operating as unsatisfactory & inefficient as should be expected when half represent crazed-out fascists.

Again, any concrete suggestions for how the “damn Democrats” could “stand up to Trump”?

How do you suggest they do that? They’re the minority in both chambers of congress & already overwhelmingly oppose the president’s party on legislation. From roll call analysis

• polarization is at the highest in the last several decades

• Democrats have lately voted with higher party unity than Republicans

  In the House and the Senate, the average party conformity score was higher for Democrats than Republicans over the nearly 18,000 total votes taken. Democrats in the House voted with their party 90.4 percent of the time; Republicans in the House, 89.3 percent of the time. In the Senate, the gulf was wider: Democrats lined up 89.8 percent of the time while Republicans did so only 86.6 percent of the time.

  Over the past 20 years, Democrats have, in fact, been more likely to stick together on votes than have Republicans.

• non-cooperation between parties is the highest it’s been for at least 6 decades & increasing

  • the frequency of pairwise vote agreements cross-party is at a low & clearly declining
  • pairwise vote agreement networks are clearly splitting by party.

They’re supporting protests against the president’s actions.

So, you’re already telling everyone you don’t understand the spoiler effect, basically advocating the opposition to assure their own loss.

Vote splitting is the most common cause of spoiler effects in FPP. In these systems, the presence of many ideologically-similar candidates causes their vote total to be split between them, placing these candidates at a disadvantage. This is most visible in elections where a minor candidate draws votes away from a major candidate with similar politics, thereby causing a strong opponent of both to win.

A spoiler campaign in the United States is often one that cannot realistically win but can still determine the outcome by pulling support from a more competitive candidate.

Any other bright ideas?