Re: IAB Statement on Age-Based Restrictions and Online Safety

On 25 Aug 2026, at 13:13, Stephen Farrell <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 25/08/2026 10:53, Vittorio Bertola wrote:

>> If I may, I do not think that any online discussion or community
>> service could ever survive with zero moderation, and this was the
>> case already in the entirely volunteer age of Usenet and BBSs. It is
>> just part of running this kind of services.
> 
> I agree that moderation is still required for smaller services
> and didn't intend to imply it wasn't. What I would assert though
> (without much evidence of course;-) is that moderation is a
> tractable problem for smaller services, but is effectively
> intractable for mega-services, no matter how much they spend,
> and regardless of whether or not they really want to do a good
> job. (Is there any research on limits to effective moderation
> based on population size?)

Right - I would say that -- in engineering - there are many things which do not scale well - or become disproportionally expensive if you try to scale them beyond some specific point. 

From a simple thing like a steel wire its self weight limit on its Length v.s. decent safety  to large digital (public) spaces that is safe.

And one usually needs some technological jump change (e.g. Dynema to the first) - to pass such a limit.

However - until such newly fangled technology  is proven - we find it perfectly normal in other areas of engineering to refrain from it; to not then `do it anyway' (or even outright forbid it). Rather than externalising the cost/pollution onto others or society.

So I am quite fine with the internet ENGineering task force to simply punt and state that this is not technically feasible / lay out the (non functional) parameters for what is required.

With kind regards,

Dw