The last few times I tried to go bowling I was turned away because I was the wrong kind of customer. I didn't know when my kind was allowed (it wasn't on the outdoor signs). Layer I learned the right times but they were all weirdly inconvenient.
They'd even delete chats. You'd see, in comments, someone inviting the author to chat, but the link would (in the present) take you to a 404 page. Did the question get an answer? Did chat ever work? Was something useful shared? We'll never know.
I had Claude make a world cloud from its responses because I was curious to see how big "honest" would be. It barely showed up, so I asked it to just give me the counts and it responded telling me it was trained not to use the word "honest" much because it makes people distrust responses (in addition to showing me the counts).
In person ID requirements all rely on punishing merchants if a minor fools them with a fake ID which aligns the incentives pretty well. It's hard to imagine how that would work online. Do you go to jail/pay thousands of dollars if someone hands their phone to their kid while logged in to Facebook or Google? You would if you sold beer to a kid who was given their parent's wallet.
Without an enforcement mechanism that punishes site owners the whole system fails. And you can't reasonably expect site owners to be responsible for checking ID on every request. So, it's (practically) impossible.
> And I don't really understand the issue people have with social media and ID. You're already required to link your phone which is a massive invasion of privacy
Yep, and we* lost that argument and "think of the children" hysteria won.
* I would bet the same folks opposed to ID requirements now were opposed to phone number then
> How do adults declare themselves as adults without teenagers claiming to be adults also?
It's pretty much impossible, so we should stop trying. It's exhausting seeing politicians et al continue to push for age verification despite it being impossible to be even remotely effective. (I hedge because technically we could demand photo ID for every HTTP request, I guess, but I don't think that's ever going to happen.)
The best we can do is ask parents to raise their children themselves and teach children to be mindful online (as we expect them to be IRL).
> Most people are just very nice and love chatting a bit as well
In my experience, this depends on the context. Everywhere I've lived the only time strangers try to talk to me is to either a) ask for directions (1%) or b) beg for money (99%).
I see people in these comments suggesting we should just say no thanks I don't want to chat -- I'd have to repeat that a dozen times a day. It's exhausting and I don't gain anything from it. I figure these folks must live in totally different locations.
> I came from a small village where it is normal to greet people and maybe chat, even if you don't know them.
Yeah, I could see that. If my village/city wasn't plagued by petition beggars or money beggars or merchant beggars I'd probably be more interested in engaging.
If you believe parallel construction should be illegal (it sure seems like it is unconstitutional to me), then 100% of prosecutions that rely on it are unjust. I don't think anyone truly knows how common it is, though, and that's by design. Double-digits wouldn't shock me at all.
Unfortunately this is one of the few cases where both sides are close to the same -- they both chose to heavily tariff foreign EVs. Something to remember when Democrats talk about climate change.
> Are we just concluding "their concerns were never real"?
Their concerns are probably real but I don't think they're being totally transparent about their concerns. They don't want to be subject to regulation (until they have captured the regulator) -- same as every behemoth.