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Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

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Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#321
post #9

This should be held up as a visceral demonstration of how the "slippery slope" isn't inherently a fallacy, as many oft like to claim: it is merely a form of argument that is easy enough to get wrong--leading to a fallacy when the cause is disconnected--that people have become overly-wary of it, reacting to the premise of the conclusion without even bothering to analyze how steep the slope might be before tuning the i…

Also why "ad hominem" can be legit. Lawmakers' personal beliefs and incentives say a lot more than whatever generic arguments they pick.

Ad hominem is a weird one where the more abstract the argument, the less it applies, but the more concrete and visceral it is the better it is as a first-pass filter.

Like, think of the worst guy you know. Now think of what that guy thinks about the state of the world, in as concrete detail as you can. That's probably a pretty good reason in itself not to think that, because if you think like that for too long, you risk becoming that guy yourself.

This feels like it should work far less often than it actually does.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#322
post #9

This should be held up as a visceral demonstration of how the "slippery slope" isn't inherently a fallacy, as many oft like to claim: it is merely a form of argument that is easy enough to get wrong--leading to a fallacy when the cause is disconnected--that people have become overly-wary of it, reacting to the premise of the conclusion without even bothering to analyze how steep the slope might be before tuning the i…

Exactly. It ain't a fallacy to call out the folks actively greasing down the slope.

Grease down a slope, and you'll slide for a day

Grease down your self, and you'll slide for a lifetime

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#323
post #85

Our state-issued eID cards are supposed to have a function that allows anonymous age verification to a trusted party. It should work like this: a requesting party sends a request signed by state-issued certificate to the ID card, the card verifies the request authenticity and responds with a signed confirmation of legal age and that signature then can be verified by the requester. No personal information is shared. W…

> No personal information is shared. You'd know the state they're a legal resident of as they use state-specific keys used for signatures. If the request allows checking arbitrary ages like Apple's, then you can get their age with a handful of requests. If one has to verify every visit, then you can get exact birthdate eventually. If the one verifying has to pass data to the verifier site or the request to the verifi…

> If the request allows checking arbitrary ages like Apple's, then you can get their age with a handful of requests. If one has to verify every visit, then you can get exact birthdate eventually.

If you assume a sensible rate limit, that entering the check is voluntary (and unlikely to fail), and that people age monotonically, then it's going to require a lot of cooperation from the victim to get more than a couple of bits of entropy.

I wouldn't trust Apple here regardless, since they are not the state and have their own separate interests.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuanced difference: Everyone _has_ to traverse all of public to get anywhere, hence 'decency laws' so parents can take kids around without blindfolds. You're taking the metaphor a bit too literally.

> You're taking the metaphor a bit too literally. Or maybe the metaphor is flawed? GP says that public spaces are adult-only by default, the parent rightly points out this is nonsense: public spaces are Safe for Work (and for kids) by default, and you have to prove you're an adult to access the adult-only spaces. Which is exactly what laws like this are trying to do by analogy to the physical world . It's not OP that…

Leaving children unattended with random strangers is bad parenting this should be obvious to anyone.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#325

> California’s AB-728 mandates age verification for anyone purchasing skin care products or cosmetics that contain certain chemicals like Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids. On the surface, this may seem harmless—who doesn't want to ensure that minors are safe from harmful chemicals? Why would we want to keep minors safe from "harmful chemicals" but not adults? If skin cream products with Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy aci…

In the recent years there’s been a boom in kids using skin care - often products though that aren’t meant for them. And with kids I mean pre-teens. Some have even become influencers themselves.

However, there’s also been a rise in reports in kids damaging their skin by using these products in the first place or using them wrongly (vitamin A and AHA are amazing but they are very tricky to handle and can easily lead to chemical burns / retinol burns …).

I don’t think there’s any good reason to let kids handle those on their own. And stuff like retinol is starting to get regulated for “everyone” anyway.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended? At age 8 I was wandering in Munich unattended. But okay, gotta admit, this is Germany we're talking about, so not many issues with hordes of mentally ill and/or homeless people doing anything from drugs to defecating on the sidewalk right next to big tech's offices [1]. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/18/san-fr...

>homeless people doing anything from drugs to defecating on the sidewalk right next to big tech's offices And this harms people how?

The problem with the drug addicts is that, well, they are on drugs and behave completely irrationally. Stoners are harmless but cocaine, meth and alcohol are prone to cause aggression and fights.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is more of it now, certainly. Is it worse than goatse?

More of it yes, but the themes and extremes have been shifting over the years as well, with family fantasies and misogyny/sexual violence becoming increasingly prevalent. This was actually on the front page recently [0], and while I'm no prude, I do think it's worth taking the trends in porn seriously when comparing the old Internet to the current day. - [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43196585

Then you have a different problem.

Suppose you have some content that depicts healthy and loving relationships, but is also sexually explicit. The prudes are going to want that inside the porn filter along with the rest of it, even though it's something that does the opposite of what you're concerned about.

Meanwhile, insert "watch it for the plot" joke, because we all know that kind of content gets produced when the goal is to appeal to the prurient interest without allocating a lot of budget to writers. But that's actually the problem. Age gates and things are friction. Suppose you want to create something good that appeals to a mass audience because it's thoughtful, but it's also sexually explicit. As soon as you put it behind the wall you lose the large majority of the audience, not because they're minors but because they're adults not willing to swipe their ID in order to watch "porn", whether out of the assumption that anything with that tag on the gate is inherently immoral or concern that someone else would assume that if anyone found out they were watching it.

And then the wholesome and salutary stuff doesn't get produced. You'll notice that such content is uncommon, because it's effectively banned in most of the places with even moderate production values. You can't put it on broadcast TV, "porn" is banned wholesale on YouTube, corporations the likes of Disney would generally be skittish about producing it etc. You'll occasionally get something like that on HBO or Netflix but even then the incentive to produce it is lower because they wouldn't be able to license it to as many other places.

Which means the main place it gets created is in places like the old Tumblr before the prudes killed it. But killing Tumblr doesn't get rid of porn, it just lowers the quality of it, where "lower quality" is more rather than less misogynistic and insalubrious.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#329
post #184

For the issue of underage people purchasing products they should not be able to I wonder if this could be handled by requiring sellers to only accept payment by credit card, and to only complete the sale if the shipping address matches the credit card account address? A child could borrow an adult's card, but then the items would be shipped to that adult's address which could make it hard for the child to get them wi…

In my country people above 13, but under 18 are allowed to have debit cards (Mastercard/Visa) and bank accounts themselves (with parent's permission and automatic power of attorney to this account) I've had an account, card and state-issued ID since I was 13, all look the same as for any adult, the only difference being the date of birth on that ID. My parents just agreed, and didn't ever check or accessed the account (nor they probably even knew how).

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drugs and mentally ill people.

LA is full of those. Mostly junkies. My girlfriend often has such encounters when she takes the bus. It is awful. I am in Hungary and there is no such issues here. It is extremely safe in comparison. There was a stabbing (one in 30 years) and everyone rushed to help and to catch the perpetuator (who ended up stabbing himself anyways). BTW I am a junkie myself, but I do not engage in such behaviors at all. And by "jun…

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