They're appealing to their "fear" base. A certain segment of the voting population lives in fear (no thanks to the politicians who stoke this fear) of ... well everything.

Base? This was a senate private member's bill. Senators in Canada are appointed, not elected, and they serve for life. The senator who introduced the bill, Julie Miville-Duchêne, is a member of the independent senators group, a non-partisan group of 39 senators.

It was voted against by the government. It's only getting traction with support from opposition parties. It might pass the house of commons without government support due to a minority parliament. All this despite the fact that the opposition spans the gamut from far left to far right.

Not wanting your children to be influenced by pornography at a formative age is a very reasonable fear in this era.

I assumed this is what parental controls are invented for, but all too many parents don't seem to even have the knowledge to activate those in the first place.

Maybe they should learn how they work instead of supporting a thin veil of totalitarianism.

Which parental controls, and how would those even work?

Back in the IE6 days I remember there was some setting to tweak allowed content ratings for websites, which I believe was based on HTTP headers, but does anyone implement that anymore (did they ever)? I just checked reddit, and they don't seem to send any headers, and use the same domains for porn as they do for child-focused content.

The obvious thing to advocate for would be to require commercial porn sites to send some kind of standardized headers that would allow parental controls to work in the first place, and/or to require any domains with content targeted to children to not also host adult-only content (e.g. reddit should put either their child-focused subs or their porn on a separate subdomain).

Then require commercial browser vendors to implement content blocking settings based on those headers.

Alternatively, it would be possible for governments to provide an oauth style service that provides tokens that assert the user is an adult without revealing any other info about the user, and then require porn sites to check for that token.

or you know, talk to your kids

TikTok and instagram are full of things that are porn or are almost porn. Same with Reddit.

It is unrealistic to lock your kids out of all social media.

I believe its even more unrealistic to make the internet sfw / children.

While i do sympathize with the impossible difficulty of being a parent in the current decade, there is realistically no way i am going to just accept the death of the adult internet. Thats likely a common sentiment and realistically the people making these laws are too stupid to enforce them against motivated opponents with technical expertise.

I dont see a way out of this other then create a whitelisted subset for children with enforcement being the responsibility of the parents. Because going death of anonymity for access control is a no go either.

Looking on the bright side, to me this looks like just a lack of safe for children platforms that are still tolerable to use.

> It is unrealistic to lock your kids out of all social media.

Excuse me, what?

Is it also unrealistic to prevent your kids from doing hard drugs? Sure maybe you can’t control them past a certain age, but you certainly can AND SHOULD within a certain age time frame.

Social media has been shown to be so hazardous to developing youth’s mental health I think not only is it realistic, but you have a duty and an obligation do prevent your kids from using social media in an unrestricted manner.

> unrestricted manner.

They didn't say unrestricted, they said locked out. As in, not accessible at all.

And you know what is also very hazardous to a developing person's mental health? Being left out of most social gatherings and interactions with their peers.

You can block your kids from accessing social media, but to succeed you also need to force their peers to communicate and interact with them in a unique and more frictive way. And you have no right to force someone else's kids to do that. So the reality is that without a lot of like-minded families that do the same, your kids are going to be left out of a lot of things.

So is it unrealistic to control your children's access to social media? No, not at all. But locking them out from it entirely as you stated, is a good way to negatively impact their social development.

I disagree. I grew up without a cell phone while all my friends had them. Beyond that, my friends had online gaming where I barely even had access to the internet, and what access I had was limited.

I find the argument that kids are going to unanimously ostracize another kid without an Instagram account very hard to believe. Kids _will_ be assholes for any reason under the sun, so it's not a question of will my kid have a hard time socially from time-to-time—that's just life.

Hobbies, social outlets, groups in the community—these are all ways to ensure your kids aren't socially stunted without giving them the emotional / mental equivalent of heroin.

> I disagree. I grew up without a cell phone while all my friends had them. Beyond that, my friends had online gaming where I barely even had access to the internet, and what access I had was limited.

The world's changed since you and I were at the ages being discussed here. We grew up in a different world, frankly.

> I find the argument that kids are going to unanimously ostracize another kid without an Instagram account very hard to believe. Kids _will_ be assholes for any reason under the sun, so it's not a question of will my kid have a hard time socially from time-to-time—that's just life.

They won't be ostracized. They will just be forgotten. If you are messaging a group of 10 people, and for 9/10 you can just use one platform, but for the last person, you need to use something else, then eventually they will start being forgotten unless someone is very proactive about including them. Miss one get together here, one joke there, and quite quickly you find yourself on the outside of the group. It's real, and I have seen it happen. It's not that kids are being assholes, it's that they are just behaving as young humans do.

> Hobbies, social outlets, groups in the community—these are all ways to ensure your kids aren't socially stunted without giving them the emotional / mental equivalent of heroin.

Those are all good and well, but they are no substitute for your kids finding their own friends as they grow up. Having the autonomy to organize your own social networks yourself is very important for kids.

Loneliness and a lifetime of sadness has been shown to have greater risks. Is cutting out social connections the answer? Because that's what ends up happening.

Please present evidence that denying teens access to social media causes them to have literally no meaningful social connections. I do expect social interactions to suffer for a teen in that situation. But I find it hard to believe that it causes complete isolation and (gimme a break) a "lifetime of sadness".

The parent didn't say "literally no meaningful social connections". You're asking for proof of a point that wasn't made.

Sadness, loneliness, isolation, these are not things that you can measure with such binary precision. They're emotions, and they vary, person-to-person, and moment-to-moment. Is it not plausible that for some people, 'social interactions suffering', even if not completely removed from social connections, is enough to make them feel a profound level of sadness or loneliness or isolation?

> Is it also unrealistic to prevent your kids from doing hard drugs?

Yes. If they want it, it's not hard to find.

That's not the point. The point is that it's your obligation to do your best to protect them from it. "Ease of access" is hardly a reason to not try.

It is perfectly reasonable to lock your kids out of social media until they're mature enough to handle to it. It's actually probably in their benefit to block them from the non-nsfw parts of social media as well since social media has an extremely negative effect on mental health.

Parents are allowed to autocrat - it may feel icky but to parent well you need to occasionally put on your villain hat.

>Parents are allowed to autocrat - it may feel icky but to parent well you need to occasionally put on your villain hat

It's not about icky. If you autocrat too much as a parent your kids will simple resent you and once they're 18/left home they'll do whatever they want now that you're no longer around to control them, because they never learned any self control. Like US college kids going all out with drugs and alcohol.

What a weird argument in the context of this bill. "If I'm too strict my child will resent me therefore I will vote so that my opinion can be enforced on everyone by the government and I can be my child's buddy".

Must be interesting with other "sinful" activities, "I'd totally let you do cocain but shoot the government won't let me!".

There is a place between a micro-managing helicopter parent and laissez-faire - your parenting should be in that place. And while it'd be awesome to be your kids' best friend forever it's more important that they learn boundaries, self-control and how to human. You can impart self-control without opening every door and, given how psychologically exploitative a lot of the internet and advertising is, it's hardly a fair fight to just let them sink or swim.

Guidance is a responsibility of parenthood.

My parents were pretty strict with me as a kid, and I missed out on a lot of things that my peers got to do. I did resent them, somewhat, at the time, but by my mid-20s I was able to recognize that they were just doing their best and, like literally all parents, were making things up as they went along.

When I went to college I was fine. I developed a new social circle quickly, and didn't end up becoming a drunk or a druggie. Sure, I did many of the things my parents never would allow me to do, but it was fine.

I totally get that some people end up in a worse place than I did, but that's not an excuse for blanket governmental bans on things. But I would absolutely 100% support any parent that decides to deny their children any and all access to social media. That shit is cancer, and IMO is worse for developing brains than nicotine or alcohol.

I hesitate to present such a hard line on social media, when I'm kinda "whatever" on teens seeing some porn. The problem is that I see what social media does to adults with fully-developed brains, and I start to feel like social media is akin to heroin: no amount of it is safe, for anyone.

A more relaxed view might be to give teens access to social media, but only in a supervised setting. Parents should be monitoring what goes on with their social media accounts, and have frank (but calm and non-judgemental) discussions with the kid whenever anything concerning comes up. Also parents need to find a way to impress upon their kids that social media is not real life, and that people present whatever slice of their lives (often an unrealistic rosy picture) they decide to paint. And then there's all the misinformation and echo chambers, and... ugh, yeah, no, just don't let kids on social media.

Is it unrealistic? Like, social media wasn't invented when I was a kid and I found some way to spend my time.

I don't have kids but am planning on it, and I don't see myself locking kids out of social media. I also don't super care if they see naked people on the Internet. If it becomes a problem somehow I'll deal with the problem myself.

I'm more worried about kids shows on TV with messages like "follow all the rules or you'll be bricked inside a tunnel". I grew up with those, and in retrospect, they are super creepy.

To me, the problem is that while you might block your children from using social media, are all of your children's friends going to be in the same situation. If your kid has a circle of friends that interacts a lot on social media, and your kid doesn't participate in that, eventually they will be left out of that group.

Yeah, exactly. That's why I think a categorical ban is not necessarily "good parenting". I think you have to peek in and see what they're watching on TikTok, and provide relevant information. If they think a video where someone burns down a store as "a prank" is funny, remind them of the consequences; hurting other people, prison, whatever. (OK, TikTok is a little less extreme than that, but you get the point.)

Certainly, I understand why people want to delegate work to the government here; parenting is hard work. But it's necessary work, you don't want the government's children to go out into the world and do their own thing. You want your kids to. And so your touch is going to be required in their formative years. There is no getting around that.

> That's why I think a categorical ban is not necessarily "good parenting".

I agree -- both because it's unlikely to be effectual, and because it's not really addressing the root problem of parent involvement.

> I think you have to peek in and see what they're watching on TikTok, and provide relevant information.

Exactly. You can't just expect to go into your firewall settings, ban some URLs and expect that to solve the problem. Or at the same time, to just completely ban them from accessing social media at all (though arguments could be made for monitored/timed access at certain age 'gates') -- I've written multiple other comments about why that can backfire too.

I sometimes forget that we consider simple nudity to be "porn". We shouldn't.

It's absolutely ridiculous that we consider nudity to be nsfw - but TikTok and Instagram have a fair amount of content on them that are intentionally as close to nsfw as you can get without getting banned. I agree with your literal point - but there's actual porn on social media.

I've seen actual porn on Twitter. I don't have an instagram account many porn models put links to their IG profiles.

All of this and worse is on tiktok.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tiktokthots/

>It is unrealistic to lock your kids out of all social media.

Really? so the state blocks porn, but then that social media will have people that use bad language so the state needs to also protect your kids from bad language, maybe people say on those social media that Santa or Jesus does not exist so state should protect them again and ban this stuff too.

Do not allow your child on social media that is for adults. I am sure PlayStation offer social feature for children with strong moderation, so find similar social media that is targeted for children.

Consider parenting your children instead of demanding the government do it for you.

Yeah, I mean why does the government get to tell me how I raise my kids? I wanna put them to work, drive heavy machinery, and marry them off to 90 year old "founders" all I like so stay outta my business.

Oh I'm sorry you're totally right, we need to ban working, driving heavy machinery, and marriage to protect your children. Because that's what this is all actually about right? Sock puppet guy has made that quite clear, his goal is to ban all porn.

The difference is that in the cases you mention, the government is protecting kids from bad actions that parents might take.

Requiring age verification won't stop a parent from giving a kid access to porn. And, frankly, if a parent wants to show a teen porn as a way to educate them about what can be bad about it and what the dangers are, that's a private matter between the parent and the teen.

There are a plethora of tools a concerned parent can deploy currently to limit web exposure - the main difficulty in doing so is more of a social pressure than a technical one and the salves provided by this bill are trivial to circumvent for a determined teen.

That's fair. And as another commenter pointed out, this is probably your responsibility as a parent. Of course, we also let the government tell us we can't let our kids work, so clearly there's a line we draw.

So I ask, why is it the government's responsibility in this specific case?

Wanting the state to play the role of mother and father is a very reasonable fear in this era.

Just don't allow your children to access these porn websites then. It really is that easy. ;)

Is there a documented syndrome that children or adults contract from pornography? Do you have any evidence of harm other than your feelings?

>Not wanting your children to be influenced by pornography at a formative age is a very reasonable fear in this era.

I agree, so as a developer do you think it is easier to block porn at OS level and your router or you think that is safer that some regulation that only some websites will follow is more effective ?

I read about some proposal for adult website to scan your face before granting access and other idiotic schemes, where the super obvious KISS solution is have Android, iOS, Windows, Ubuntu etc have an idiot proof way for a parent to setup a child account, this child account will set some cookie or whatever flag you want so websites can refuse to serve content to them. Also the big tech could use their combined energy to have a blacklist of bad websites that do not respect the rules like maybe advertisers.

TLDR as a parent do not wait for the goverment to protect your child from porn, open Google and figure it out,

It would be so much easier for people to ignore you if you just stated your values up front you know? Maybe next time you could even use your real account instead of multiple sock puppets.

There are probably reasonable ways for the government to do this. Some kind of government run validation website where a user can generate a code to validate their age to each individual website is probably ok (in the UK we have a similar system for providing driving licence information to rental companies for example).

Mandating that people do face scans or, even worse, send their IDs to potentially scummy websites is batshit crazy though.

If what a government really want to do is ban access to pornographic content then they should be able to make that case to the electorate.

>There are probably reasonable ways for the government to do this. Some kind of government run validation website where a user can generate a code to validate their age to each individual website is probably ok (in the UK we have a similar system for providing driving licence information to rental companies for example).

Why not just the parent sets the child device to "kid mode" and that is it. otherwise how do you make different national systems work World wide ?

Your idea is valid but seems much more harder to implement. With my proposal where the parent and the OS vendor collaborate on this seems much more flexible and would work even better, like religious extremists could configure their child and their own devices to block much more then porn.

I'm mostly with you. In fact I've often wished that browsers did more things like that, for example cookie warnings. The cookie warning thing is a ridiculous misunderstanding of how things should work. The server doesn't store things on your PC, it just offers them to your browser, it's up to the browser to return them or not, it doesn't even require new protocols.

But of course kids are resourceful and will find a way of accessing content they want to access, for example maybe using a games console or something a parent might not immediately think of as having a browser.

Whether it actually makes sense to protect kids from themselves to that extent I think is a valid question which I'm not sure I have the answer. I know passing around CDs full of such content was common when I was young (in the early days of the internet).

What about consenting women who've not been coerced or pressured in any way? You want to take people's free will away, seems to be another perspective to your belief.

I agree with defensive in depth but that is contradicting priovacy if I need to show my face or ID card to a porn website, or how otehrs claim that reddit and TikTok is almost porn I should show my ID to all social media.

As I said a parent should not allow the child to access social media that is targeting adults. The OS can put a flag and the websites can reject those connections, no need for destroying privacy.

Not all porn is women exploration, there are this days this OnlyFans women that are exploiting men but who should decide what is and what is not exploitation. There is also CGI or AI porn, there are nude and artworks that religious extremists complain about. You can't stop porn so better don't wait for that day and setup your child devices if they need one properly.

Is it, though? I found and enjoyed a good amount of porn on BBSes and the early internet when I was a teen, and I turned out fine.

Porn absolutely has serious problems associated with it (both on the production and consumption sides), but teens getting exposed to porn is just not a big deal. It can turn into a big deal, but that's what, y'know... parenting... is for.

What side would you describe as the "fearless" side? They both seem fearful to me just in regards to different things.

There are no sides - there are nuanced and diverse issues and varying approaches which optimize for different values and to use words like 'us','them','side' is detrimental to the political process and enables those who yield narrative control over media uncharacteristic influence in a democracy.

Not about sides. Some people are just afraid of things. Afraid everyone is out to steal their kids. Afraid of war. Afraid of immigrants. Afraid of not enough immigrants. This just appeals to those people.

centrists are probably generally less fearful as retreating to one extreme of a polarized dynamic is a common fear response. But I think the point is more, everyone is partially motivated by fear, sometimes governments use that fear as a lever.

Yeah and let's also take a moment to consider that the current government here in Canada is not conservative.

I say this in the most non-partisan way possible, just as a freedom loving Canadian: "Fuck Trudeau"

Given how conclusively the article explains that this bill is supported by effectively everybody _but_ Trudeau, I'd like to take a moment to thank you for unburdening the rest of us so effectively with any ongoing need to give precious time or thought to anyone wielding that particular two word phrase, or, for those of us who have already wasted our time in dialogue with folks like you, reaffirming the conclusions we'd already drawn. Appreciated.

The current Goverment voted against this and is not the ones trying to pass it.

From the article, "In fact, government ministers voted against it. Instead, the bill is backed by the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP with a smattering of votes from backbench Liberal MPs."

Your anger seems to be misplaced in this instance.

You're right https://openparliament.ca/votes/44-1/609/

Thanks Obama.

I don't know if it's funny or sad that some people blame Trudeau for everything, including the Palestine-Israel war.

> "The bill, which is the brainchild of Senator Julie Miville-Duchêne, is not a government bill. In fact, government ministers voted against it. Instead, the bill is backed by the Conservatives, Bloc and NDP with a smattering of votes from backbench Liberal MPs."

Remember, the opposition and the Senate can get bills through in a minority parliament.

So basically fuck everyone…except Trudeau? This is why I can’t take the fuck Trudeau crowd seriously. He’s their go-to bogeyman for everything.

That's a good point but it's worth noting that the NDP is backing it, as well as some Liberal MPs. For non-Canadians, NDP is our "far left" party. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, just that our Liberal party tends to be your "mainstream" moderates and we have a 3rd party for the less moderate left-leaning voters. That's what the NDP is. So if they're backing this then that can only mean that there is bi-partisan support for this.

I mean, imagine how much worse it would be if Poilievre was the PM ;)

Atleast Poilievre would be on a shorter leash than Trudeau

Unfortunately if Poilievre actually did get into the PM office it'd be on the back of a CPC majority - so he'd have a lot more freedom to act than Trudeau's current minority government.

We'll see. Could also be a Harper-like minority, getting support from the bloc. Trudeau also has a very supportive NDP right now, so Trudeau does have a lot of freedom currently.

I'll never say never but the current state of the CPC is so departed from mainstream Canadian politics that it's far more likely that BQ would side with LPC... and the NDP and Greens would basically have to have a melt-down to side with the CPC.

I think it's almost vanishingly unlikely that the CPC form government unless they actually achieve a majority share of seats.

That's what I thought initially too, but reading the article, it seems like it's just requiring age verification for accessing adult material. If we are concerned about censorship - I have to say that ship has long ago sailed. I don't have a problem with blocking porn or steps preventing kids from accessing porn

>I don't have a problem with blocking porn or steps preventing kids from accessing porn

It's just the first step; once they have the infrastructure for real-ID verification in place, they'll roll it out to more and more of the internet until adults have no more anonymity online.

That seems like a slippery slope.

We also require age verification for online gambling, and that hasn't had bad consequences either.