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Age verification is incompatible with the internet

jonaharagon.com

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Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#51

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

JohnMakin wrote: post #4

Parents and caretakers have the ability to restrict children’s content on any device a child has access to. The burden should be on them to ensure their child is not consuming porn. It shouldn’t be everyone else’s problem that people are unwilling to parent their children.

Parents can achieve this without resorting to an atmosphere of paranoia and control. If parents foster transparency, trust, and open communication with their children, where no secrets are kept and children are not afraid to discuss difficult subjects with parents, then a lot of problems are already solved, or nipped in the bud.

Minor children really shouldn't have an expectation of privacy while they're out on the big, bad Internet. The best advice is for families to have computers in common areas only, where children's screens can be noticed and observed by parents at all times. That's not so much about a lack of trust in your own children, but beware the rest of the Internet.

By all means, teens can be granted increasing privileges and privacy as they grow up and begin to have their own lives. IF you as a parent have fostered their trust and you've inculcated "street smarts", then at a certain point you let go and trust them as well. Amazing how that all works.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#52

Post by JohnMakin »

dmm wrote: post #8
JohnMakin wrote: post #4

Parents and caretakers have the ability to restrict children’s content on any device a child has access to. The burden should be on them to ensure their child is not consuming porn. It shouldn’t be everyone else’s problem that people are unwilling to parent their children.

> any device a child has access to. That's not the world we live in today. Stores local to me will sell a (terrible but internet capable) phone for $35 to anyone. So you are proposing moving the age verification to the device purchasing stage?

Complete strawman on a complete strawman situation that isn’t even real. What $35 phone out there has the network bandwidth for porn that isn’t tied to identity in a way that a parent couldn’t easily spot and prevent?

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#53

Post by JohnMakin »

phantom784 wrote: post #16
dmm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any device a child has access to. That's not the world we live in today. Stores local to me will sell a (terrible but internet capable) phone for $35 to anyone. So you are proposing moving the age verification to the device purchasing stage?

Plus, a minor could use their friends' devices. Their parents may not have set up any controls on those devices.

If only parents had a way of controlling who children associated with. If only.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#54

Post by mewpmewp2 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

There are valid complaints to the idea being challenged, but it absolutely can be done technically and through legislation enforcing technical controls. Sophisticated users will use VPNs if they want to evade geoblocks, your average person won't (and any business that attempts to help them will be met with a legal hammer), and digital IDs are both reasonable and feasible to deploy at nation scale. Should it be used t…

Kids will just download shady software to get past all that. And if you block that, everything they want to do must be vetted even if they are 17.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#55

Post by alright2565 »

usrusr wrote: post #26

Something like that parody of printed manual check copy protection on the original Larry game might actually work? Years later I had a huge "oh, so that's the answer!" moment when I finally discovered the meaning of the words agent orange. Jokes aside, what would be the failure mode if some metadata about audience minimum age was given legal blessing? Regular browsers would simply ignore it, browsers with enabled par…

> if some metadata about audience minimum age was given legal blessing?

There's no legal blessing for this, but there's already an industry standard (in the vein of the ESRB ratings): https://www.rtalabel.org/index.html?content=howto Most porn sites have already voluntarily applied this label.

> What am I missing?

My best explanation is that moral panic always plays well to voters.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#56

Post by gary_0 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #39
gary_0 wrote: post #17

This should not be that hard. How about: - At point of purchase for a consumer device that can view Internet content, the salesperson (or web store) is required to ask if the device is for an underage child, in which case either the device is placed in "child safe" mode, or printed instructions are directly provided giving instructions to do such. The child protection settings should be linked to the parent's e-mail…

This means disabling any means of downloading custom software for the under 18, right? Forget coding if you are under 18, because all of that would be so simple to bypass unless you completely lock it all. Games and everything need to be vetted when you are 17? Since if you allow them any kid could also download a custom browser as well to get past that, and if there is a way, this info will be shared amongst kids.

Google Play and the App Store already have account-based restrictions and fairly annoying rules about apps that can access unrestricted content. When I was a kid and smartphones weren't a thing, I knew kids whose parents had installed similar restrictions on their PCs and Macs.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#57

Post by Barrin92 »

This is another article that tries to turn what is a subjective political grievance into a technical discussion. Age verification by id in fairly privacy preserving ways is technically trivial. I've lived in South Korea where this is standard and digital identification is used for everything.

My German national id has an eid feature that you can use, for example when buying booze online to verify your age. There's a dedicated public company set up for this, so the vendor only gets a yes/no. That's much, much better than typing your personal information into some random website from a privacy standpoint. It's better to have verification behind a dedicated API abiding by some standards than the "type everying into the webform and pray" status quo.

And as a sidenote on the cultural issue itself. I have no problem with porn or drinking etc, but when I go into a store for anything adult related someone at the door asks me for my id. Idk why people make a fuzz about having some basic due dilligence in digital marketplaces. Cinemas need to make sure people who attend adult movies are of age, bar owners need to make sure underaged kids don't order drinks. This is a completely reasonable level of responsiblity on business owners.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#58

Post by stjohnswarts »

texas2toss wrote: post #14
shkkmo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are users supposed to know where they can and can't safely upload a sensitive picture of their ID?

The vast majority (90%+)of all AV is not photo ID. It’s phone number or name/address (in the US), depending on the industry. This info is usually collected. For adult industry, the issue is gating web traffic. But as I explained to a regulator mentioned in the article, as long as there are shady companies who won’t comply and can’t be fined, it’s a moot point.

The adult sites will simply move offshore where the country trying to stop the flow of information doesn't have jurisdictions. It's whack-a-mole. The only solution is that parents control their kids, install nanny software, and teach them what is age appropriate. I chose to skip all that but supposedly I'm supposed to just accept that they are taking more of my freedom away and expect me to turn my ID over to random internet companies and trust that they'll "do the right thing"

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#59

Post by JohnMakin »

NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #51
JohnMakin wrote: post #4

Parents and caretakers have the ability to restrict children’s content on any device a child has access to. The burden should be on them to ensure their child is not consuming porn. It shouldn’t be everyone else’s problem that people are unwilling to parent their children.

Parents can achieve this without resorting to an atmosphere of paranoia and control. If parents foster transparency, trust, and open communication with their children, where no secrets are kept and children are not afraid to discuss difficult subjects with parents, then a lot of problems are already solved, or nipped in the bud. Minor children really shouldn't have an expectation of privacy while they're out on the b…

Or we could admit that this isn’t actually that big of an issue to change the way the entire internet works for the worse. We could also do that.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#60

Post by pavel_lishin »

gary_0 wrote: post #17

This should not be that hard. How about: - At point of purchase for a consumer device that can view Internet content, the salesperson (or web store) is required to ask if the device is for an underage child, in which case either the device is placed in "child safe" mode, or printed instructions are directly provided giving instructions to do such. The child protection settings should be linked to the parent's e-mail…

> the salesperson (or web store) is required to ask if the device is for an underage child

Is there a penalty if they don't?

Is there a penalty if an adult lies? Is there a penalty if an underage person pretends to be an adult?

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