In America other countries have at least done something.

I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with. That's generally what I said. If you use a non-compliant OS, your experience will be "age-gated".

Though I don't think they will completely block access entirely. Collecting data on kids is extremely valuable to these companies, because kids grow up to be consumers. They will happily continue to let you in, but you won't be able to go to the 18+ areas.

The problem the predators would have if they are relegated to the "kid friendly" sectors is that those sectors are much better policed by users and the corporations.

It's not really the public content that is the problem, the problems really come when a predator can lure a child into a private chat. That's when the predator can start their process of grooming that eventually leads to blackmailing the child (grooming is a process and it's damn evil and damn sinister). By relegating the users to "kid friendly" areas, the opportunity to pull kids into private spaces is greatly diminished.

Now, will the predators stop being predators? No. But if the platforms have strong child protection policies that make it more difficult for the predators, then they will move on to a website that has weaker policies. Which is just about the best an organization or platform can do, make the predators uncomfortable enough that they go hunt someone else's kids.

If their goal is to find an excuse to declare you a terrorist then there are much easier ways to do that that are already available to them. This really isn't an efficient way to do that.

And, as best as I'm aware, no age verification laws anywhere threaten any consequences for the user. The consequences are only for the OS makers.

(Granted, the California law, at least, could be read to say that it's the entity installing the OS to confirm ages, not necessarily the OS maker. So for most Linux distros that would shift the user age verification responsibility completely to the user installing the OS, but I'm not sure how that would work out in courts or whether websites and applications would recognize that. It will probably never actually be an issue that is adjudicated.)

It's a website that doesn't require a user to report their age.

You don't understand how this protects kids because you haven't been taught to think like a monster. That's okay. But I have had lots of training in child protection.

The way "grooming" online often works is to get the kid to a place where the predator can start blackmailing the kid, but that's a process. That often starts on chat apps. Those can be in video games or social media platforms, etc. The predators identify kids in the apps and then will start chatting with them. It will start off innocuous, talking about the game or whatever, but eventually it turns into the predator trapping the kid into a secret (it's always about secrets). The predator will ask the kid "Hey, want to see some porn?" or something like that. And of course a 13 or 14 year old kid is going to be interested in that. Then "don't tell your parents" always follows. Once they have agreed to the secret, the trap is set. The predator brings the kid darker and darker porn and makes the kid feel more and more guilty and uncomfortable. Eventually it turns into, "Send me photos of your self or I'll publish these chats" (or worse, like in person meetings).

This is why "This is the parent's responsibility" is cruel bull shit. Parents can't be everywhere all the time and these predators make sure they stay out of parents views. The parents are victims too.

Everyone that says "This isn't about protecting the kids" is half right. It's not really about protecting the kids, it's really about protecting Meta and other developers from liability. Users love private messengers, and internet companies love them too. But it's a problem for Internet companies because they are the dark corners that make the internet companies liable. And they do have a responsibility to protect users on their websites, and they can't just claim "we didn't know", because they damn well know.

So, their solution is to require the OS to record the user's age, even if that's just "18+". The websites can call the age from the OS, get the "verified age" (they really don't care what "verified" means, that's the OS maker's problem) and then open their doors to the customer. (If the kid is using their parent's account or what ever, the internet companies don't care. They did their due diligence.) But if the OS returns "<18" then the websites can lock down the user's account. They can automatically turn on parental controls, require a parent's consent, etc. Most importantly for child protection, they can turn off or very strictly limit private messaging (all of the online problems start with private messaging). They can basically do a lot of the things they are doing now, just off loading the liability onto the OS maker. Which, personally, I think is better for the parents too. It's much easier for parents to monitor the OS then it is for them to monitor hundreds of websites and games.

And Lemmy, Mastodon, and fediverse users (and especially hosts) should want this too. Hosts on the fediverse do not understand how much liability they are taking upon themselves (if they did, they wouldn't be hosting).