Australians to face age checks from search engines

Is the theory supposed to be that the moderation would cost them users, or that the cost of paying for the moderation would cut too much into their profits?

Because the first one doesn't make a lot of sense, the perpetrators of these crimes are a trivial minority of their user base that inherently cost more in trouble than they're worth in revenue.

And the problem with the second one is that the cost of doing it properly would not only cut into the bottom line but put them deep into the red on a permanent basis, and then it's not so much a matter of unwillingness but inability.

> I’m not saying tiny forums are some sort of panacea, merely that huge operations should not be able to get away with (for example) blatant fraudulent advertising on their platforms, on the basis that “we can’t possibly look at all of it”.

Should the small forums be able to get away with it though? Because they're the ones even more likely to be operating with a third party ad network they neither have visibility into nor have the leverage to influence.

> Further, that I would not lament such a passing.

If Facebook was vaporized and replaced with some kind of large non-profit or decentralized system or just a less invasive corporation, would I cheer? Probably.

But if every social network was eliminated and replaced with nothing... not so much.

The ruling class in the west are generally extremely anti-religious. They have a good reason to be - the biggest religion in the west is anti-wealth (the "eye of the needle" things etc.) and generally opposed to the values of the powerful.

The US is a sort of exception, but they say things to placate the religious (having already been pretty successful in manipulating and corrupting the religion) but very rarely actually do anything. I very much doubt the president (or anyone else) in the current US government is going to endorse "give all you have to the poor".

This one. Not just in terms of needing to take on staff, but it would also cut into their bottom line in terms of not being able to take money from bad-faith operators.

> And the problem with the second one is that the cost of doing it properly would not only cut into the bottom line but put them deep into the red on a permanent basis, and then it's not so much a matter of unwillingness but inability.

Inability to do something properly and make a commercial success of it, is a 'you' problem.

Take meta and their ads - they've built a system in which it's possible to register and upload ads and show them to users, more or less instantly with more or less zero human oversight. There are various filters to try and catch stuff, but they're imperfect, so they supply fraudulent ads to their users all the time - fake celebrity endorsements, various things that fall foul of advertising standards. Some just outright scams. (Local family store you never heard of is closing down! So sad! Buy our dropshipped crap from aliexpress at 8x the price!)

To properly, fully fix this they would need to verify advertisers and review ads before they go live. This is going to slow down delivery, require a moderate sized army of reviewers and it's going to lose them revenue from the scammers. So many disincentives. So they say "This is impossible", but what they mean is "It is impossible to comply with the law and continue to rake in the huge profits we're used to". They may even mean "It is impossible to comply with the law and continue to run facebook".

OK, that's a classic 'you' problem. (Or it should be). It's not really any different to "My chemical plant can't afford to continue to operate unless I'm allowed to dump toxic byproducts in the river". OK, you can't afford to operate, and if you keep doing it anyway, we're going to sanction you. So ... Bye then?

> Should the small forums be able to get away with it though?

This is not really part of my argument. I don't think they should, no. But again - if they can't control what's being delivered through their site and there's evidence it contravenes the law, that's a them problem and they should stop using those third party networks until the networks can show they comply properly.

> if every social network was eliminated and replaced with nothing... not so much.

Maybe it's time to find a new funding model. It's bad enough having a funding model based on advertising. I's worse having one based on throwing ad messages at people cheap and fast without even checking they meets basic legal standards. But here we are.

I realise this whole thing is a bit off-topic as the discussion is about age-verification and content moderation, and I've strayed heavily into ad models....

Which that one kid will tell everyone if they don't.