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by zug_zug·8mo ago·view on hn ↗
What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?

If the politicians keep voting for things their constituents don't (and in these cases actively push back against so hard that the politician are forced to withdraw the push) that seems like strong evidence that politicians are doing something with an external incentive...

Politicians having bad incentives (e.g. campaign donations) isn't conspiracy thinking, it's a documented reality. Hell, we even had a supreme court judge taking a present from somebody who's case he was ACTIVELY OVERSEEING.

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> What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?

UK: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202...

US: https://issueone.org/press/new-poll-finds-near-universal-pub...

Aus: https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51000-support-for-un...

So far as I know there's nothing confounding here - people from across the political spectrum just seem to think it's a good idea to introduce age checks and to restrict children from accessing adult content.

That's a powerpoint of somebody really trying to push an agenda and has nothing to do with age verification. The 88% support is for "social media platforms to protect minors from online harms, such as the promotion of eating disorders, suicide, substance abuse, and sexual exploitation."

I'm sure social media could say with 99% accuracy whether somebody is a minor already just based on advertising data and if a law prevented facebook from showing diet pill ads to a kid that has absolutely zero with some sort of government tracking bullshit.

The fact that you are citing 3 studies without even reading them apparently really makes me suspicious of your motivation here.

I'm disappointed that you call my motivations into question instead of engaging me in good faith. It's not possible to solve a problem without being honest about the pertinent facts, and I think you (and the person I responded to) are engaging in denialism.

My experiences are all in the UK but everything I've read and everyone I've spoken to (outside of tech circles) reinforces my belief that this is popular. If you disagree then fine but I don't think you can find any polling to support that.

If you can then be my guest - I genuinely would like to see it. I'm not happy with my conclusions.

Well either you didn't read what you cited, in which case you sort of owe us an apology and need to back off your claim.

Or you did read it in which case you'd realize it has nothing to do with people wanting government age verification, and then you also need to back off your claim and owe us an apology.