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I really do think a lot about how big tech systematically destroyed all the reasonably-safe places intended specifically for kids online…. and now powerful interests are turning around and claiming that we have to destroy Internet privacy because being online is obviously dangerous for kids.

Perhaps the problem is that we turned the Internet into an ever-smaller number of walled gardens run by vicious big businesses, thereby forcing children into the same shit-ass disinformation online soup with everybody else, instead of letting them have their own separate, smaller spaces

I am not the only person by far to observe this, but I do think there’s some real truth to this. When I was a kid online, I think there was some safety in my being able to hang out in more decentralized and explicitly kid and teen focused spaces (which nobody was really making big money off of).

I genuinely think that in the future we’re going to look back at this current era of “the internet is obviously deeply broken for everyone, and in response, we’re going to dismantle internet privacy while pretending it’s for the good of children” with deep embarrassment. Rather like Prohibition.

The Internet IS a festering plague-hole right now compared to what it once was and could be again, but the thing is that it’s awful for everyone, not just for children - children are just the canaries in the coal mine.

I’ve believed this for a very long time…humans were not ready for the internet