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Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

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Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#361

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

zo1 wrote: post #314
repeekad wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think a child is more likely to be abducted by police in NYC than anything else? What are you talking about?

Well they're not allowed to beat up and intimidate criminals, so what else are they supposed to do? We've turned police into armed Karens.

They shouldn't be allowed to intimidate anybody or beat anybody up unless necessary. I shudder to think about such judgements being made based on a high school dropout's likely-malevolent guess at whether I'm a criminal.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#362

Post by washadjeffmad »

genewitch wrote: post #292
washadjeffmad wrote: post #72

Who could have predicted this, though? If only there were some, no, any benevolent corporate deity poised to provide trusted global identity services for an event exactly like this. If only this hadn't come out of the blue, maybe there'd be someone out there, right now, who could make it so that your identity traveled with you everywhere across the internet, an authentic digital fingerprint and passport so invisible…

Google should be able to say that I've had continuous access to my Gmail account since 2005 and therefore it's impossible for me to be under 18. Or 21. Right? All of a sudden, the internet is incapable of tracking me with that much fidelity. They don't know how old I am. Discord knows how old I am. I never told them my birthday. This gets a big "hrrrrrrr. Durrrrrrr." From me.

Like "appearing under the age of 35" for carding for alcohol (note also that there's no legal requirement to verify age prior to sale), that's not an invalid method of age validation; there is no requirement for precision, only accuracy.

Having an account that's at least 5 years old, assuming a legal age of 13 for registration on most services, should be enough.

Some services already do it this way. Others offer to scan and analyze your face or ID. Leisure Suit Larry 1 used 1960s trivia for age verification.

Given the list of states and awareness of some notable tech companies that operate out of them, it sounds like someone is doing a little competitive market making with the help of their legislators.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#363

Post by somenameforme »

EarthMephit wrote: post #251
7952 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the internet is the mixing of different contexts. You can have cute cats, disney fandom, hobbies, politics, porn, extremism all on the same platform. In the real world you don't have strip clubs at disney world or children wandering about in a bar.

You used to walk into a newsagent and see the regular papers and magazines, and then the rack of playboy and porn just sitting off to the side, often not that far from the kids magazines and comics.

Dunno if this has changed, but it used to be this way in the US at basically any gas station in a ruralish area by a highway (in other words - stops with truckers), and you'd just have row after row of porn mags. The only 'censorship' is that they tended to be in racks that covered up about 3/5th of their height, so you could see the title and a bit more, but generally anything explicit would be in the lower 3/5th that you could only see if you picked it up.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#364

Post by myvoiceismypass »

Aeolun wrote: post #255
wongarsu wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kind of hierarchies we deem necessary are certainly different. In most of Europe (spoiler: overgeneralization incoming) nobody would have an issue with a child walking alone through a city, going into a bar and ordering a coke. Nobody is going to stop them from taking public transit to a book store, and nothing is legally or physically preventing them from looking at a couple pages in the latest playboy issue in…

> You will however be asked for ID before being allowed in a strip club, brothel or casino, or before being sold a DVD of some action movie. The action movie too? I’ve never seen that happen, and I’m certain I rented a whole bunch of age inappropriate DVD’s (or was it VCR’s?) back in the day. Maybe we were required to be ID’ed and the teenager behind the counter just gave zero fucks?

I know movie theaters are different from video rental stores - but I once got carded on a date at age 16, to see the movie Johnny Pneumonic. It was rated R. Still had one more year to go. It was rather embarrassing.

I still have not watched Johnny Pneumonic.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#365

Post by gabeio »

Privacy Passes for adults where age verification is needed would be an interesting solution. The government hands you as many tokens as you’d like to access websites as an “adult”. Defaulting to getting tokens so that it isn’t only people accessing websites for only adults which are grabbing tokens. I’m know this is a newer project but Kagi implemented this as a way to completely decouple users from their searches, when the user would like to be fully anonymous.

https://privacypass.github.io/

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#366

Post by squigz »

balamatom wrote: post #352
squigz wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably for the same reason we allow adults to smoke and drink but not children.

Not really. The reason "we", scratch that, the reason the state allows adults to drink and smoke is because adults have been known to fight back , sometimes quite effectively, when they feel like something is been "taken away" from them. The obvious example here is the rise of bootlegging during prohibition; all that did was empower the organized criminal class, rather than get the nation to realize the awesome benef…

Spot the American. Not everyone has such an inherently negative view of "the state"

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#367

Post by jrmg »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #355

The internet should be free, open and uncensored. Parents should then have the obligation of looking after their children. Yes, that means not buying a smartphone and give it to your 3 year old. I think, slowly, the world is starting to realize this.

The age you picked here makes your argument obviously right. But what age _should_ people get a phone and be able to use it unsupervised? I don’t think it’s reasonable that it be 21 or 18, even 16 feels quite puritanical.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#368

Post by icepat »

7952 wrote: post #209
lolinder wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Internet should be Unrated and thus Adults Only by default. Just like public spaces. This is exactly the opposite of the way public spaces actually work, and the way that public spaces actually work is the very justification for laws like this in the first place! You've just taken their exact rationale and imagined a world that would lead that metaphor to the opposite conclusion. In most of the real-life US, yo…

The problem with the internet is the mixing of different contexts. You can have cute cats, disney fandom, hobbies, politics, porn, extremism all on the same platform. In the real world you don't have strip clubs at disney world or children wandering about in a bar.

This sounds to me like an argument against platform centralization, as the internet itself isn't a platform, but a protocol. So this is a problem of platforms, and their improper design. Not a problem of the internet itself.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#369

Post by Nevermark »

ty6853 wrote: post #213
7952 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with the internet is the mixing of different contexts. You can have cute cats, disney fandom, hobbies, politics, porn, extremism all on the same platform. In the real world you don't have strip clubs at disney world or children wandering about in a bar.

In my state children can wander in a bar. They can even sit at the stool in front the bar counter. It's considered better to allow it than have children neglected at home without supervision.

The US hard-separates children and adults more than other countries.

In Europe, my ex and our two teen daughters could go out in the late evening and feel comfortable socializing in places that would be unthinkable in the US.

In general, US culture seems to stratify people by ages in all sorts of ways, official and just cultural. It doesn't feel as socially healthy to me. We are all better for having a wide variety of friends and family around us.

Re: Age Verification Laws: A Backdoor to Surveillance

#370

Post by scarface_74 »

mjevans wrote: post #71

The Internet should be Unrated and thus Adults Only by default. Just like public spaces. (Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended? Arguments can be made for more controlled spaces but...) Have a website and want the chance for kids to see it? Advertise in the headers that it's moderated and intended to be a given rating. Various indexers can pick that up. Complaints can be forward to relevant…

> Would you allow an 8 year old to wander New York City unattended

You might be surprised, but back in the day before overprotective parents, “free range kids” were a thing. I was riding my bike all over the city (albeit not New York) with friends and just told to be home by 8:00 with no cell phones. I was 10-11 years old.

Even in Atlanta where my wife grew up she was riding the public bus at 12 with her younger brother going to the mall.

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