Re: Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

https://www.counterpunch.org/2026/07/02/adding-to-failure-amending-australias-under-16-social-media-ban/

Not sure why the author talks about its failure when it was entirely
wrongheaded to begin with.

When I got my first tech job after coming out of Evergreen, I had a
co-worker (Diyuen's boyfriend, Ron) who was a Libertarian.  That was the
first time I ever met a Libertarian.  Needless to say, there were a lot of
things I disagreed with, but one thing I always remembered was his saying
"vice taxes never work".  (He was probably talking about cigarettes, but
we have a lot of vice taxes in the United States, and, so, he could've
been talking about a host of things.)  I'm now wondering if he might have
been right and that this regulation of social media via age verification
is misguided in a similar vein to vice taxes.