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Comment by 13415 | Hacker News Reader

I don't consider that sensible at all. The law is supposed to protect children. It's hypocritical to exempt certain operating systems from the law, and, to be honest, I'm astonished this is legal/constitutional in California.

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Of course the underlying law is idiotic.

What I meant is that if we take the law as a given, then the exemption we are discussing here are very good and sensible. I wish they weren't needed, but given that they are, the language seems sensible.

This issue should be independent of whether or not you think the law is idiotic. The exemption is unwarranted and likely illegal no matter what you think about the law because it's unjust to exempt some operating systems and include others.

Have you ever visited the real world? You have to live with plenty of idiotic laws all the time. This does not mean you have to like them. Nor does it mean you can't welcome laws that remedy some of the downsides of the idiotic laws.

I really struggle to understand what you're trying to say. Is it that since the original law is dumb, we should accept no remedy short of getting rid of that original law? I think you'll find making progress in the real world very hard with that attitude.

Your reply appears bizarre to me, I can only kindly ask you to re-read what I've written above carefully. I have never suggested in any way that I consider the original law dumb, on the contrary I have stated explicitly that it shouldn't matter at all what someone believes about the question whether that law is stupid or not to determine that exempting certain operating systems from a law is ill-conceived and might very well turn out to be illegal/unconstitutional. I don't have anything to add to this because the point should be obvious, it concerns fundamental legal principles.

The law didn’t protect children before, and it continues to not protect children now, so there’s no change.

This law was never going to succeed at those aims.

Agree, I think the law will be challenged on that basis, and ultimately thrown out. Millions of taxpayer dollars wasted, when they could have been actually solving the problem by making platforms responsible for the content they distribute.

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