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A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

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Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#91
post #44
post #39

This is movement is going to be widely regarded as on of the largest prohibitions in our era. * Whatever verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13 will also being to freak users out about 'whoes listening'. It's insane to think a First Name, Last Name, and Address might be tied to _every reddit account_. * That data will be used for government surveillance. Maybe I should start creating a h…

A system to verify age is not needed. Simply making it illegal and holding parents accountable is enough. It's one of those things where perfection is the enemy of good. Some kids will do it anyways but parents can install hard to remove monitoring software on devices and the penalty can be similar to a somewhat serious traffic citation.

1. Start asking the software engineers in your company about their experience with parental control software as a teenager. Me, and all my friends, had clever bypasses on several systems. In addition, this type of story seems to be very common.

2. The amount of teenage smoking/drinking/drug use is pretty considerable. This is even true if you select for involved parents. Shouldn't parents focus be on preventing these? If parents can't stop this, why would they be able to stop social media?

3. Without age verification, how would you know someone on social media is underage?

4. Wouldn't this disproportionality punish lower income families, and richer families could more easily pay the fine?

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#92

Interesting to compare this thread with the banning gas one in New York. In general once you accept the government making decisions for you “for your best interest”, don’t be shocked once they start doing things you disagree with. This is why I generally do not support any bans dictated by the government. In this case it’s difficult to find a reasonable solution that’s not draconian. You could tell parents to use scr…

It's also interesting to compare which countries have banned gas in new buildings (the Nordics, the Netherlands) and which countries have draconian surveillance (China, Russia).

Edward Snowden basically threw his life away to prove we're completely surveilled here in the US, and the "Western World" in general.

What's different here that you're free to criticize the Government without fear of (open) repression.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#93
What we need are laws requiring Social Media to support children. To give them a safe space that their parents can monitor. It should be a simple affirmative thing, like a birth-date, with no other authentication required.

That way a parent can set up the account for the child, and then monitor their activities through the site. Once they age out, their parents roles are reduced appropriately.

The same should also be true in reverse, so that adults can monitor the social media of their elderly parents, to keep them from getting scammed. This can be negotiated and agreed to by the parents.

Either way, a person under care of another should see zero ads.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also interesting to compare which countries have banned gas in new buildings (the Nordics, the Netherlands) and which countries have draconian surveillance (China, Russia).

Edward Snowden basically threw his life away to prove we're completely surveilled here in the US, and the "Western World" in general. What's different here that you're free to criticize the Government without fear of (open) repression.

> What's different here that you're free to criticize the Government without fear of (open) repression.

For now

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#95
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah just give a scan of your ID to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, etc There is absolutely no chance that it will ever get leaked, misused or stored unencrypted

Giving Facebook my picture, in conjunction with ID, is a sure way for the entire platform to do facial recognition on all existing pictures. They already do it, but such a time save to 100% verify who is who. And even if you esque facebook, never have an account, you're one step away from the same happening after a buyout, data share agreement, etc. Banks often get around data sharing laws, by jointly buying companie…

I don't mind de-anonymizing as much as my ID getting leaked and having my identity stolen because some social media service doesn't follow proper security practices

Facebook has already been found to be storing passwords in plaintext [0]

How can you trust them, or any other social media for that matter? Even if they do everything right, you are increasing the chance of giving your id to s service is that will get hacked by just giving it to more services

* [0] https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-passwords-plaintext-cha...

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#96
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So plan B would be to make the parents liable? Just have Facebook refer suspected cases for police to confirm.

Unfortunately plan B is to ban anonymous access to websites.

People will just stop using us based sites.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#97
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions like Yivi[1] (previously IRMA) that allow you to have a wallet of attributes signed by federal or local government (eg. "user is over 13" or "user lives in Wisconsin"). That way you never have to share your identity, just certain attributes that are specific to the use-case. [1] https://www.yivi.app/en

Even with that it would be trivial to uniquely identify specific individuals. If anything that would be worse than the current situation as you would know certain attributes are definitely not spoofed.

With zero knowledge proofs, no it won’t be trivial. Because it will be binary as opposed to identifier based.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with that it would be trivial to uniquely identify specific individuals. If anything that would be worse than the current situation as you would know certain attributes are definitely not spoofed.

With zero knowledge proofs, no it won’t be trivial. Because it will be binary as opposed to identifier based.

No, because it would be widely known what information is collected and what information is given in a verified fashion.

How exactly would you prevent leaking?

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#99
post #2

Right, and how will they determine what a social media site is? People in power don't get it because they're mostly from the generation when the Internet hadn't yet taken over every aspect of civilization. Trying to impose a ban is such a lazy and naive solution. Kids will find alternatives. There are thousands of options for kids to go online and interact with one another. My guess would be that video games would be…

If you read the proposal, pretty much every website, messaging platform or online game would fall under the definition of social network.

You understand almost all games are online now, how would that work?

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would it be functionally impossible? At one point kids could buy cigarettes. Now, across hundreds of thousands of stores, they can't. There's only a few social media sites, it's seems infinitely easier. Trivial even.

When you buy cigarettes in a store, you normally get carded. It stands to reason that an equivalent online system would require a similar online solution; most people are not particularly enthused by the idea of having to present an ID to consume any information that could potentially considered to fall under “social media.”

They already card you in most social media apps. This is like saying "oh no, they want you to use your real identity". It's already a part of the process.

This is incredibly destructive and addictive stuff. The days of the wild west of the internet are over.

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