I agree, but also what's the alternative. A complete free-for-all doesn't work because malicious actors be malicious and a majority of users aren't competent to protect themselves against such threats. So we need something, if not google, then it would be something else. We can't trust private corporations because of potential for conflicts of interests (between users and profit motives) and we don't seem to want to trust government bodies to do this because then it would be censorship (conflict between users and political motives). What else is there?
> A complete free-for-all doesn't work because malicious actors be malicious and a majority of users aren't competent to protect themselves against such threats.
It does work. You claim it doesn't because you think the resultant state of affairs is intolerable, but to subsequently claim it "doesn't work" because you don't like the outcome is simply wrong. You might as well claim that allowing people to buy pointy kitchen knives "doesn't work" because sometimes people stab each other and you think murders are simply intolerable. But the reality is that allowing people to have pointy knives even though some people get hurt does work, even though it doesn't produce an outcome the hypothetical you are happy with.
The problem with "think of the children" style arguments is they are always unbounded, and there is always something more controlling than what we're doing presently that could obstensibly make children even safer. Why not have browsers ship a whitelist of trusted websites, and forbid all others? That would be even safer, and if you oppose this then you're not thinking of the children. In fact I find the present state of affairs with bad websites being blacklisted simply intolerable, new malicious websites are permitted by default and that just doesn't work!
Well of course when I said "it doesn't work" I meant that I found the outcome intolerable. That outcome being a majority of users being vulnerable to malicious attacks with a whole host of real world bad consequences for them.
I think that regular people having unrestricted access to enriched plutonium also to have intolerable outcomes. Even if some people would be able to handle the substance safely (both to themselves and others), the ones that don't or can't will cause intolerable outcomes. And yes, this is a 'think of the children' style argument. I don't want the children (or adults) to get radiation sickness. My hot take here is that it would be bad.
