Okay? No. Normal? In the context of that person’s life, yes it’s normal, else they wouldn’t do it.

Being hurt by perceived rejection is normal and valid. Making another person “wrong” for holding a boundary for whatever reason is not valid, though it might be understandable which is NOT the same as excusable.

People need to learn more non-violent communication, and general understanding of boundaries.

Some people really can’t detect sarcasm without the /s, huh.

Careful. This sounds a lot like encouraging people to take personal responsibility of their consumption habits. That’s literally fascism. We need government regulation to stop us from doing things, that’s freedom.

Someone might throw the Mr. Gotcha meme at you.

It’s people not being educated anymore to tolerate divergence of opinions and, a lot more worryingly imho, not being able, because of that lack of proper education, to listen to nuanced thoughts and ideas and to be able to understand that we can disagree without having to hate on one another.

What’s most worrying to me is that people don’t even know why they AGREE with the opinions they agree with. For example, most people would agree that bigotry is bad (which it is), but they don’t know how to argue about it.

They’ve got the moral instinct, sure, but zero intellectual grounding. And that’s a problem. Because when people don’t understand why something is wrong, they’re just one propaganda push away from accepting a new definition of “bigotry” that serves whoever’s in power.

We’re seeing it happen in real time. People repeat opinions like they’re reciting scripture - no thought, no critique, just blind agreement. And now, even asking people to think critically about why bigotry is wrong is seen as suspect. It’s an immediate failure of purity testing. You’re not supposed to arrive to the conclusion that bigotry is bad by thinking for yourself, you are just supposed to keep repeating the correct slogans. That’s not just lazy, it’s anti-intellectualism, the exact kind of mental rot that populism and fascism thrive on. That’s exactly the kind of bullshit that got USA in the state it is right now.

I have literally been called a fascist for telling people to think for themselves.

I actually did scroll past that.

You are the problem, and so are the people who upvoted you without at looking for themselves at all.

My point is that we can’t rely on parental oversight only because some plain won’t… and in your case, even actively trying may fail (it’s not your fault). And there’s always going to be loopholes in every system. Clever kids will get by most verifications, and if they don’t, that’s likely to mean the verification gets too invasive to be worth it. The best, though not perfect system is to have parental oversight + impartial verification + platform responsibility. This will reduce but not eradicate the problem.

Great idea, let’s get parents to raise their kids.

Now, how do we suddenly make them actually do that? Last I checked this idea has been around about as long as people have been around but it’s still not happening.

Parenting matters, but it’s not the only layer of protection. We don’t rely solely on parents to keep kids from walking into bars or buying cigarettes, we have laws and systems to back them up. Why should the internet be different?

Despite our current parliament sucking ass, I still have some general trust in my country’s government (and culture). So with that in mind:

Our government bodies already have my basic data. Healthcare, census etc. and we use our online banking services to verify identity when accessing the data. It’s simple, and extremely widely used. I really don’t see why it would be so hard to make a relatively simple service that just gives sites that need to know a yes or no answer on if I’m over 18. They don’t need to know my birth date or any other information.

Not let a government or age verification authority know whenever a user is accessing 18+ content

This should be possible but of course the question is if one trusts the government to actually uphold this. Again, with my background, it’s a bit easier for me to speak.

Make it difficult or impossible for a child to fake a proof of adulthood, eg. By downloading an already verified anonymous signing key shared by an adult, etc.

You’ll never patch all the holes. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. In a perfect world, parents would actually parent their kids and monitor their internet use. Access to adult content doesn’t even come close to being the biggest problem in many cases where some kids parents are fucking up their duties. Drugs, gangs, petty (and not so petty) crime comes to mind. Collective responsibility would be great but since we don’t live in a perfect world where everyone can just agree to a good idea like “take responsibility of your kids”, I’ll settle for trusting a democratic government to have some capacity to pick up those that fall.

I happen to agree with age verification laws. This is a tangent but I would also go a step further in saying that MAINSTREAM internet should not be possible to use without verifying that the user is a real individual person. This would be another yes/no question via a service. Outwardly they don’t have to reveal their identity but even JizzMcCumsocks needs to have a backend verification as a real person. Basically, if any government member uses some service with their own name and has a verification about that, that service must also have a way of verifying that any user is a real person. We have given Xitter way too much power and at the same time, allowed anonymity. Meta services too of course but I think Xitter is one of the worst due to easy and straight forward use. Humanity has shown that we are not equipped to handle the kind of (mis)information flow there is in these spaces. Spaces such as Lemmy can and should operate in full anonymity, as there are natural barriers to entry here, plus it’s less appealing when it’s not even really intended for the kind of use mainstream social media sites are. Here we have a collective and individual responsibility to account for the anonymity and the challenges it brings.

Finland. Genuinely can’t say. I suppose that’s a good thing for everyone involved.

I have very different values than my parents. I know there was a time when things were very rough for them… which unfortunately was also the same time that was very rough for me. Overall I definitely went through more hardship than they did, for much longer. Very alone. But objectively I’m doing pretty fucking good now, despite being technically poor. My parents were middle class, but they did value money more. I value other things and I get to enjoy them. But my parents were pretty happy, though their health failed them too early I think. Trying to avoid the same fate but honestly not looking good on that front. We’ll see.

Would I swap places with my parents? No.

I feel like this was a very Finnish answer…

Interesting question, good job OP!

What? Someone actually gives reasonably actionable suggestions here?