> Perhaps not, but we also don't abolish schools or ban kids from going outside, do we?
No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.
> What does this mean, exactly? And what sort of source do you have?
It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
> The problem is the question of how we do that without utterly destroying privacy for everyone else too? If the answer is "we can't", then it might be we have to look at ways to deal with our children being exposed to those things - either, you know, don't let your kids on the parts of the Internet you don't agree with, or teach them the right morals and ethics so they learn to recognize and avoid those areas themselves.
"It's the parents fault". My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7. Social media companies are doing a a bad job of it, because they want engagement and clicks not reducing usage and blocking content.
Companies have tried implementing this on the client, for example Apple and CSAM scanning, and had to roll it back because of 'privacy' concerns.
And now this is what we have to deal with. No one wants to do anything about it because of 'privacy' and yet children are still being exposed to harm.
To be clear: I don't want these laws, I don't want my life scanned, I don't want to have to submit IDs, but as a society we have obviously dropped the ball on this and now we're screwed. There are implementations that retain privacy like buying single use codes from shops in person that can be used to prove you are 18+ for online services.
Or having tokens that you can get attested/signed from a government portal that you can give back to services to prove you are 18+. That can also be designed to retain 100% privacy. (Assuming the government doesn't have access to these services through a back channel, and assuming these one use tokens are not saved by the service provider you are wanting to use.)
Personally I think blocking all kids from social media is probably one solution that doesn't get adults complaining about privacy. Unfortunately social media companies make an absolute fortune from content aimed at children so they are obviously unhappy with this.
> No but we heavily regulate schools and the behaviour of people at them. Which is more akin to what we are doing with these laws rather than just saying it's the parents fault their child is groomed or exposed to adult content without their consent.
This is not how I see it. These laws are more like what I suggested. The equivalent of that regulation in the case of the Internet would be simply not allowing whatever behavior you disagree with from social media companies and the like.
> It means more children are victims of sexual abuse than before, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.
Can you link some source on this?
> My entire point here is that clearly parents are not equipped to police their own children's use of the Internet 24x7
Neither can they "police" their child's life 24/7. Nor do have to to prevent their kids from falling into various holes out there. Take, for example, drugs and alcohol. We've, more or less, arrived at a reasonable system for keeping these out of the hands of children (most of the time) - but we also accept that, due to this system not being 100% fool-proof (and indeed that such a system could not possibly exist), sometimes kids are going to get access to drugs and alcohol. And yet, most parents (at least, that I know) would agree that that doesn't mean your kid is going to turn out to be an addict or whatnot.
My point is, that with sane regulation - that doesn't inherently erode privacy for everyone all over the world, and gives even more control to (Western) governments and companies - and parents doing their jobs, we can minimize the harm done by social media. We can't eliminate it entirely, but that's the price we pay.
(I question how much actual harm is done by social media, but that's another discussion)