I'd say the appropriate entity to police children's behavior is the community.

The state is too powerful and over-reaching (and doesn't have skin in the game), the family unit is too restricted (and not enough people to include a representative variety of opinion).

That would be akin to a parent's ability to see who their kid is hanging out with in real life, without the extent of listening to every word they say.

It has been taught to do so, assisted by the government (overzealous social services, etc), academic "experts" of all kinds, and hysterical media.

This is a very nice piece of writing from the Austin Chronicle that tells the story of a much freer US and community:

http://michaelventura.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/This-Is...

So the parents doing it is not the same as the community doing it.

And the appropriate entity to ensure that parents have the ability to police their children's behaviour is the government. As with all other toys, the government can impose usage restrictions and safety levels. Mandating the availability of parental control or oversight on Internet services accessible by children is perfectly within scope.

Parents already have the ability to police their children's behavior. Just because people make decisions about their children that you disagree with doesn't mean there needs to be a law.

Unless the parent is policing the child's behavior, all Internet services are accessible to them. Legally mandatory age-based restrictions/requirements would only be effective if you could strip the internet of all anonymity.

I agree with you thar regulation is not an answer here, however there are places where the government has to step in, things like building regulations etc. and in my opinion single payer healthcare. It should however absolutely not step into a parental role.

I believe this assumes that the generation of the parent understands the psychological warfare being waged on them and their children. Not everyone can recognize an attacker until it is too late.

Whether the attacker is a family member that is also a sexual predator, or a team of psychoanalysts at Facebook, the damage is done all too often before anyone recognizes it.

We have countless examples of people acting in a mob mentality manner because of social media. Moral panic in many ways is a type of mob mentality. I'm not exactly sure how an example (your wikipedia link) of people acting in senseless ways because of what everyone else is doing is supposed to negate people acting in senseless ways because of what everyone else is doing.

There is direct evidence of social media influencing bad patterns of behavior, even if you wouldn't consider this an obvious point, there is hard evidence for it. Everything from which hunts, to bullying people, to SWAT'ing, to getting people to shoot up a pizza place.

>but the state tends to do it even worse.

I'm not sure what evidence there is for the state not being able to adequately control socially-negative behaviors (well, besides drug use, but there is an extreme biological motivation for drug use). We often look to the state in times of social crisis or socially tense situations and it's done a pretty damn good job. Saying the "state does it worse" seems like bald-assertion that ignores the countless examples of where the state sufficiently guides social practices. You could very well argue that you don't like the state doing this, but the state is definitely able to consistently influence social behaviors. Everything from the FCC regulating content to the government influencing common sexual practices.

OP seems to be basing his opinions and perspectives in actual experience and with evidence, without resorting to typical "the government can't do that (even though it already does)" talking points. So good on him.

If it wasn't obvious I definitely think we should be regulating on-line content. The modern internet has shown that it's a tool, and it can be used to empower the darker sides of human behaviors. There is absolutely nothing wrong with curtailing that.

Isn't this just an example of private interests interfering with what the state can do sufficiently in the first place? It's definitely a common problem with the American government, but not necessarily a knock against the state's (as entity) ability to regulate social behaviors in a consistent manner.

Also with the splitting of families, we know that this was intended and explicitly designed as a process by the current administration as a way to socially influence immigrates; it was designed to reduce the amount of people who thought the risk of legal/illegal immigration would be worth it.

These are certainly inhumane practices, no argument there, and I definitely don't agree with them.

And do you really want Silicon Valley making that choice for you?

As for limited free speech vs (nearly) unlimited free speech, this is an old debate and as yet it's not answered, and may not even have an answer. The U.S. 1st amendment is unique in liberal democracies, most countries do in fact have limits on speech. Germany has no problem defining and enforcing the restriction of propaganda of unconstitutional organizations, it is not vague - it is context specific.

Meanwhile the U.S. Constitution didn't protect Japanese Americans from being labeled, and incarcerated en masse, without due process.

It would have been great if when the Department of Homeland Security was created it was called the Department of Defense and the Department of Defense reclaimed its true name, Department of War. I wonder if this idea and practice of renaming something to try and change the nature of a thing started around then, or if it has a much older history.

[1]https://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/h_multi_sections_a...

False.

> This used to mean an official vote by the Senate

No, it didn't. A time of war doesn't require a declaration of war, and while a declaration of war does involve a vote in the Senate, it's not just the Senate, but the Congress (by normal legislative process, e.g., both houses plus the President, or with a subsequent supermajority in the event of a veto, though it's hard to imagine Congress declaring war over a veto.)

> but since WWII the US decided that we no long would have wars with other countries.

No, we didn't. Hence, well, lots of post-WWII war-related legislation, including the War Powers Act.

> Instead the Congress passes resolutions authorizing the use of military force.

Which are exercises if the power to declare war, which requires no special magic words, just like sky other legislative power.

The degree to which businesses and their platforms are subject to "free speech" vs "fighting words" is thus far entirely up to the officers/board of those companies, society has zero say legally, short of re-regulating some of these businesses as public utilities.

Ths is going to be open and on-going question as anonymity permits people the power to say and do things they wouldn't do in person because if they did, they know it would damage their reputations. And online personas have trivially disposable and resettable reputation.