Hacker News Reader

Comment by avereveard | Hacker News Reader

When grandpa was young, if there was a wolf in the forest, they went and killed the wolf. They would not break the children legs to keep them home.

Killing the wolf saved both the children of busy parents that couldn't be bothered to break their legs, and the children that grew old enough to have their leg fixed but weren't yet adult.

Today instead of chasing predators away from children spaces, we just box the children so at one magic birthday they'd be out in the world untouched by evil. The world will be still evil however, and the not children for a day unprepared for it.

What if, here's a radical idea, we terminate corporation with toxic ads or that let predators use their system to target children.

View on HN

If you could offer the proponents of these laws a deal where all the bills die in committee and in exchange Pornhub gets shut down, I suspect they'd take it. But you can't. The First Amendment doesn't permit such targeting, and almost nobody who opposes age gating would concede the premise that porn is inherently bad.

But again, the problem isn't this or that content-exchange site; the problem is people doing illegal activities within, or facilitated by, such sites, or people within the site that are sourcing willingly illegal material or distributing material that is illegal to some recipients. And lawmakers are targeting the middlemen and the recipient instead of going to the root cause, and the cynic in me thinks, "Of course they'd do that, why would they go after themselves?" But it's a bit of a reduction, and not all wolves are rich and powerful (though those who are uncaught or get away scot-free mostly are).

I was driving in a rural area, and almost hit deer several times. I finally made it to my destination, and island, with no deer, but a healthy wolf population.

The state would breed wolves on the island then release them on the mainland to keep the deer in check.

Sorry to ruin your metaphor, but we really need more wolves.

The age pyramid and natality stats show the inapplicability of the example to our situation.

Alternatively, encourage hunting to control the population and harvest all that useful food.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com