Switch VPN region or upload a random picture generated by AI, problem solved.
So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
81–90 of 306 posts
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#82Why can't the EFF tell people to lie? Because if you can get away with it, lying is almost always your best option. Unless there are actual real world consequences to lying like you may anger the police. And maybe consider using a VPN.
For real. This should be an article about circumvention, not compliance.
That's not EFFs job, just ask your kids how they circumvent age gates for that :)
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#83Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#84My kid has recently just quit playing Roblox because of the sketchy facial age check process. She said that her and all her friends know not to ever upload a picture of themselves to the Internet (good job, fellow Other Parents!!) so they're either moving on to other games or just downloading stock photos of people from the internet and uploading those (which apparently works). What a total joke. These companies need…
I think the way Roblox is doing right now separating the users in age groups just makes it easier for predators to find victim.
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#85I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go. Take a hypothetical case where HN requires ID verification. I'd just stop using HN, even if that meant giving up checking tech news. Sometimes things end, and that's fine. I used to watch good soccer matches on public TV. When services like DAZN appeared, only one major match was available each weekend on public TV. Later, none were free to watch unless…
Funny, I'm the opposite. Since information wants to be free, and storage/compute get more affordable every year, then really everything ever posted on the web should be mirrored somewhere, like Neocities.
I grew up in the 80s when office software and desktop publishing were popular. Arguably MS Access, FileMaker and HyperCard were more advanced in some ways than anything today. There was a feeling of self-reliance before the internet that seems to have been lost. To me, there appears to be very little actual logic in most websites, apps and even games. They're all about surveillance capitalism now.
Now that AI is here, I hope that hobbyists begin openly copying websites and apps. All of them. Use them as templates and to automate building integration tests. Whatever ranking algorithm that HN uses, or at least the part(s) they haven't disclosed, should be straightforward to reverse engineer from the data.
That plants a little seed in the back of every oligopoly's psyche that ensh@ttification is no longer an option.
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
I expect I'll need to employ some other technical means of circumvention, but the principle of refusing to engage with the thing on its own terms will remain the same.
These things are integrated into the authentication systems of these services. They aren't implemented client side. Refusing to engage with them means you cannot use the service.
Then it wasn't meant to be. Let it go.
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#87This makes me wonder if there's a business case for a privacy-preserving identity service which does age verification. Say you have a strong identity provider that you have proven your age to. Just as the 3rd party site could use SSO login from your identity provider, perhaps the identity provider could provide signed evidence to the 3rd party site that asserts "I have verified that this person is age X" but not divu…
I’ve been noodling on this idea for a while but I think getting commercial acceptance would be hard. People have tried it with crypto albeit with lukewarm results. I think to have the network effects required to be successful in such an endeavor, it would have to come from a vendor like apple or google unfortunately.
You kind of want an mTLS for the masses with a chain of trust that makes sense.
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#88I'm surprised that the EFF does not highlight the best option, here: use a VPN to a jurisdiction that doesn't have such ridiculous laws.
Next step: the same government that is demanding the age verification will ban VPNs.
I doubt this would be workable.
They could, sadly, however, make it a crime to bypass things like The Online Safety Bill. Downloading or using Tor, for example.
At that point, the only sane option is to become a criminal.
Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?
#89This makes me wonder if there's a business case for a privacy-preserving identity service which does age verification. Say you have a strong identity provider that you have proven your age to. Just as the 3rd party site could use SSO login from your identity provider, perhaps the identity provider could provide signed evidence to the 3rd party site that asserts "I have verified that this person is age X" but not divu…
This is how Swiss e-ID was proposed to work: https://www.eid.admin.ch/en