Or that this has anything whatsoever to do with protecting children?

Any more? When did they ever? Including the people selling it?

But their virtue has been signaled, and pearls have been clutched, and in the end, that's all the politicians - and the voters - really care about.

There's an easy way to filter it. Add this to your hosts file:

127.0.0.1 youtube.com

Try dealing with fire marshals who require MSDS sheets for every single item in the store (with location noted) when you have 60,000 SKUs. There's an entire industry to handle it.

Or someone creates something in Photoshop by hand, then uses the automated tolls in PS to pretty it up. That kinds of automated tools have been around a long time, but I'll be the pearl clutchers behind this are incapable of explaining the difference.

As is the namecalling asshole whining about it.

And some people are so helpless they can't figure out Google, and are not capable of learning form anything other than humiliation.

But you're OK with people wasting everyone's time asking a question here that would literally be answered more quickly (and more completely) at any search engine?

I've watched television. That's conclusive proof.

Dude, look who you're replying to. Obviously, the answer is "no." Honestly, if I were a therapist, I wouldn't feel safe in the same room.

I know you are, but what am I?

Web pages full of delusional, or just take, nonsense have reinforced delusional beliefs for as long as there have been web pages. Including web pages that talk back to you, like forums. Why would these we pages be any different?

There is no belief so crazy that there isn't someone out there who will find amusement values or profit in reinforcing it.

California needs voters who recognize anything other than party affiliation on the ballot.

Good luck with that.

And understandably so, since (aside from collecting that much more data to sell to advertisers) they're the ones being threatened with dire consequences if they don't keep children restricted from the bad old interwebs, a task that is utterly impossible. But if they shift the legal responsibility onto someone else - anyone else, but Microsoft and Apple are good targets, and ultimately, to the government itself, then they are in the clear.

Social media giants pushing for this kind of crap was inevitable when the pearl clutchers and hysterical wannabe autocrats have enough influence to seriously threaten them.

I've run across a few who were pretty indecipherable. Or at least incoherent.