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Comment by Razengan | Hacker News Reader

Yet again more moves which take away the liberty of all citizens and users instead of restricting predatory companies and products..

How much access to money parents want to give their kids is up to the parents.

What people do with their own money, including kids, is up to the people.

WHY are countries not enacting laws that punish companies for once? Say something like:

• "After 3-5 purchases of the same item with random contents the buyer should get the content they specifically want."

• "No item with random contents should cost more than N $\€"

• "Buyers should have N-M hours to get a refund for an item with random contents"

That way you could keep the "fun" and spirit of gambling without its destructive spiral and stuff

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How does an age recommendation take away liberties?

I have kids and as a parent I use these ratings as a very loose guide combined with my own experience and understanding of the game in question. Other parents ignore them completely.

I agree more could be done to directly affect the companies, and there have been a lot of legal cases surrounding loot boxes aimed at children.

But this is a good complement to that. It makes it easier for parents to get aware of the issue.

> How does an age recommendation take away liberties?

For instance, by being used in further legislation to mandate age verification on all operating systems. Lo and behold, that is already happening - see California.

One can not view a single law and assume it is isolated, when in reality this is a move by lobbyists to further restrict people and sniff after them (see MidnightBSD giving in and adding a daemon that sniffs for user data; I am 100% certain systemd on Linux will follow suit, via a new systemd-sniffy daemon). Some companies pay good money for such legislation. So the answer to your question is very simple, actually. You just should not view it as an isolated way while ignoring everything else - lobbyists are sneaky. It reminds me of Google claiming it has no problem with ad-blockers, then they went on to destroy ublock origin (https://ublockorigin.com/).

I'm skeptical because this is not a new system part of those lobbyist agendas. This is a recommendation system which has been in effect for over 20 years. And this is a tweak to how they update recommendations.

> How does an age recommendation take away liberties?

They've already enacted mandatory age-verification-via-ID to use apps/features.

It seems they're gonna put as many "gates/fences" at every N age years to make sure they can surveil as many people in distinct age brackets as possible.

Up next: Be of at least N years to watch cartoons with animated violence?

That didn't really answer the question.

Adjusting an age-ratings system doesn't take liberty away from anyone. Parents can still allow their kids to play whatever games the parent deems is ok.

I agree with some of your other points, though: we should have legally mandated return periods for this sort of thing. Not sure how you'd enshrine price limits into law, though; that seems impractical.

> Not sure how you'd enshrine price limits into law, though; that seems impractical.

Thinking in childrens' terms:

• Any microtransaction <$1 is fine, up to 10 per week or 20 per month or whatever

• Anything between $1-$10 should be more limited

• Anything $10 or above should be limited to 1 per week

• No microtransaction should cost more than 50% of the game's own full price, if the game isn't free

That is just equalizing forms of gambling tho

"Traditional" gambling is already not allowed below 18yo

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