Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional. No sliding occurs if nothing actively pushes things down the slide.
Accordingly, it is never too late to lobby against these things.
It's not an accident that this appeared within a month or two of the California one. I would bet good money that there's someone shopping this bill around.
If you do a frequency analysis of when these bills are being introduced, you'll notice an odd cluster internationally. Less charitably, they're coordinating / talking / being pushed by someone. More charitably, the "idea" is spreading.
It's a very odd idea to spread though. Age "verification" isn't something people are truly passionate about.
I suspect that, long-term, this is about surveillance. The powers that be would rather kill the golden genie that's general purpose compute than have teens and radical youth with compute.
What you have overlooked is that this type of bill is being introduced in states that have the strongest data protection and privacy laws, such as California and Colorado, and now Illinois.
This is happening after several other states have introduced age verification laws that actually require age verification which typically involves uploading your identity documents to each website that is required to verify your age.
Apply Occam's razor. Which do you think is more likely?
1. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are now introducing an age verification law that relies entirely on the age that the administrator enters when configuring a user account in order to give a push down a slippery slope toward their nefarious secret goal...even though it would be a complete waste of time since as the examples from numerous other states shows it is not hard to pass a law that starts with making people upload their ID documents to any social media they want to use.
2. These states that have a record of concern for privacy are doing age verification in the way that many privacy advocates said it should be done when they were objecting to those bills in those other states that required uploading ID documents, because those states do not want to go down the slippery slop that those other state approaches risk going down. Namely, through parental controls on the devices that children use that put the parents in control and leave the government out of it (other than requiring that such controls be included with the OS).
Real conspiracies exist. Openly. They're open secrets for those in the know.
You'd be surprised by how banal so much of this is. So many parties trying to get what they want. Doing a cost v benefit analysis and looking the other way.
Did you know that the way people like you respond in posts like this pushes everyone else away with a strength that is unmatched by anything known anything man.
Black holes have less strength to destroy goodwill than posts like yours.
The tone of your post makes people dislike you intensely, makes them ignore you, and go about their business. But they’ll remember you and the repulsion they feel to posts like yours (which all of you saying this message seem to use) whenever they even think someone is saying something like you’re saying here.
You guys are your own worst enemies because you can’t see how fucking abrasive your posts are
OK. I was just trying to be cheeky to lighten the mood.
I just want my peers and future generations to live in a society without perpetual, personalized surveillance and gated generalized compute. I think everyone deserves freedom. I appreciate your input!
How is this a counter-argument? I often read this, as if there's some international trusted organization of logical thinkers that has approved inclusion of slippery slope to a list of logical fallacies that must never be invoked in a conversation.
Every single time five years later it turns out that the slope actually was slippery.
Why do people imagine that I said words I didn’t say, get mad at those words, then reply as if I had said them? This happens all the time.
Humans are stupid and I sincerely believe that we, as a species, will fail because we are so prone to this kind of behavior. We really are a garbage race.
Everyone who rants about slippery slopes being a fallacy also loves the boiling frog analogy (which technically might be a bit closer to what they're going for).
> Everyone who rants about slippery slopes being a fallacy also loves the boiling frog analogy
I didn’t. So why do you say “everyone”? Stop imagining people saying things that they didn’t actually say.
Every step we take down this “slope” is intentional and happens because there is more force pushing things down the slope than there is force resisting that push. There is no slippage, just people who refuse to act in their own best interests letting people who are acting in their own best interests do whatever they want.
The problem with slippery slope is that every step can be defended as reasonable, but the overall result can't. Pointing out that something is means saying, I can't refute that single step and you know that, but I still am against it, because it is crucial to an harmful outcome that I really don't want. It argues against a policy by putting it into context.
Like gravity, there is some inexorably force drawing the state towards mass surveillance tools as it makes the job easier. Removing friction that fights against that force is real
> it is never too late to lobby against these things.
Putting aside the real possibility that the ability to lobby against certain things is already actively under attack, it isn't speech alone that is being addressed, it's political and cultural momentum.
Would you call it a fallacy that making incremental rather than sudden movement in a specific direction makes it politically easier to accomplish?
Calling everything a logical fallacy, is also a logical fallacy.
We have already seen the federal government use facial recognition data to create an app that tells ICE goons who's legal. We should not tolerate the government forcing more data tracking and privacy violations just because you are not "sliding" today.
> Slippery slopes are a logical fallacy. Every single decision moving you down the slope is intentional.
First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
> Android won't let me block hotspot at all (which they have turned on so their can use their school device after I turn the router off for the night). I can limit a game to only 5 minutes - but they have a dozen games like and that is an hour between them all (both not enough to really get into the game, and way too much time when they really do need a study break). I can block youtube, but if there is an educational video they need I have to unblock everything not just that one (or a limited selection). There are new play a game websites popping up daily, and when they to every kid in school is playing until we block it (or more likely the school blocks it as they are all playing in class on the school device) - but trying to block all but a whitelisted set of websites is no better since there are so many legitimate ones teachers really do need kids to see.
Personally, I think this is the wrong approach. Why block internet access at all? Why block gaming? Why try to helicopter parent to this extent? Block some harmful stuff if you can, but other than that focus on having the tasks be completed, now on how they do them.
The power of a constitution is in it being the highest law in the land, that legislation can't just override. It's only recently in the US that there is a blatantly corrupt kakistocracy who feels free to ignore it.
If you don't see any difference between people who won US presidential elections and those appointed for political favoritism, then I don't know what to tell you. Also, if you look at the current state of the UK vs US and don't see any difference then you need to get out more.
It's fine to stumble initially, like discovering fire, but design gets us lighters and ovens. Good design allows for some flexibility without leaving everything to chance like pure stumbling does.
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