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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

How would you prevent kids from just going on some other, new site? What's the distinction between the internet and social media?

Ignoring whether or not what you're describing is technically feasible (I don't think it is) - ultimately as long as children can use the internet the issues at hand will exist. Furthermore, why give social media entities more data in the form of government backed authentication?

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  "news site"

Because social media is a status and looks competition between peers which is where the depression comes from. If they're just reading news and commenting that's fine. The internet itself isn't the problem, it's specifically social media.

  "Furthermore, why give social media entities more data in the form of government backed authentication?"

Part of the law could be to require an outsourced solution, with a Chinese Wall between them. The solution is only able to relay to the company that the person is a real person and over the age of X. Or a government solution, where the government provides a unique token to each valid person which can be used once per registration, so no ID needs to be given to the companies. Whatever it is, I'm sure a solution can be thought of.

I don’t know how the US would do it, but other countries like Korea and China and Russia have an agency to force their internally operated websites to comply. Global sites either fly under the radar by being too small, or comply under threat of being banned when they are large enough.

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