Traditional values are a crutch for the intellectually unambitious and a cudgel for the ambitious.

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But… the market! Think of my investments!

Does it act as a dumb monitor? Can all smart TV features be permanently disabled?

Theoretically, it’s possible for the user to authenticate their age without either the site or service knowing the user’s identity. Quick and dirty example:

There’s a thing called a ring signature that allows one to prove that one of a large number of people digitally signed something. Let’s say a million people all have private keys whose corresponding public keys are registered to a database after they flashed their state ID at a post office or something to prove they are ≥18 years of age. So, John Smith uses his private key plus all 1 million public keys to sign a statement that he sends to a server saying he’s ≥18. The server then takes all 1 million public keys plus the signed message John provided and verifies that his signature is among the 1 million but cannot calculate which exact public key belongs to John. The verification process requires all 1 million public keys as input; you cannot, for example, try an omit each public key one-by-one to see which causes the verification process to fail.

Currently, there is ongoing research on how to make compact ring signatures since they can be very large the more public keys are involved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_signature

That said, even if you had scalable compact ring signature technology, I’d be more worried about advertiser deänonymization efforts once a user has logged in that check browser canvas size, IP address, user agent, font availability, etc. See https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

Also, ring signatures for age verification don’t actually verify age, just that someone proved their age at some point in the past to the owner of the public key database; just like an adult can log into YouTube on behalf of their children and let the children go to town, John could give anyone access to his private key regardless of age.

“Hey, Uncle, can I use your age tokens to do my research homework? The rich kids all get to use the entire Internet because their uncles let them ride their age credentials. Thanks!”

A grid is still most efficient

May I introduce you to Magnasanti: No road grid. A map of mostly skyscrapers, libraries, and subway stations. https://youtu.be/NTJQTc-TqpU

“Sims don’t need to travel long distances, because their workplace is just within walking distance. In fact they do not even need to leave their own block. Wherever they go it’s like going to the same place.”

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That exception probably would be twisted into permission to add an “AI summary” section to each article.

The advertising industry.

1/3 of US renters not paying their rent in a coördinated strike for one month would unwind a lot of landlord loans and collapse Wall Street which is where Trump stores his wealth.

No one loved her enough to fight to free her, so she wasn’t worth much to society anyways. — the local DA, probably

Instead of adding more buses and bus stops or light rail or any form of public transit to alleviate the problem

But then I’d have to replace time inside my personal climate-controlled carriage with sharing space alongside the unwashed masses.

Cargo cult happiness.

66 countries

Yes.

Texas flips blue is on my Bingo card.

Reminds me of a quote from Small Gods (1992) about an eagle that drops vulnerable tortoises to break their shell open:

But of course, what the eagle does not realize is that it is participating in a very crude form of natural selection. One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.

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“Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.” — Mort (1987) by Terry Pratchett

Yeah, I can see Aceh, Indonesia’s fully Sharia law province blocking Grok or anything culturally disruptive, especially if it’s just a matter of filtering out traffic from a handful of IP addresses.