Perhaps if some thought and care had been put into this ridiculous land grab by our government this kind of outcome could have been avoided.

I’m not giving Reddit a single bit of benefit of the doubt here, but by pushing back against this they may be helping us instead of pissing on us for a change.

Instead of using political capital to shove age verification down our throats, imagine if they used that same capital to restrict gambling advertising? Or implement strong data protection and privacy legislation? Or strong laws against IP theft by AI companies? The government could have pursued all sorts of positive policies to materially improve life for us, what we got instead was the conjunction of the masturbatory fantasies of the intelligence community (who have never enjoyed us having any privacy) and knee jerk reactionary conservatives who know best how to raise kids because of “muh feels”.

This half baked, vague, wishy washy law has made my kids materially less safe online, all so the government can soft sell the idea that you should have to provide ID for every interaction online.