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So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

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Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#121

Post by jofla_net »

btown wrote: post #61
ryandrake wrote: post #27

My 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…

One aspect of this normalization of photo uploading is that, if a platform allows user-generated content that can splash a modal to kids, a bad actor can do things like say “you need to re-verify or you’ll lose all your in-game currency, go here” and then collect photo identification without even needing to compromise identity verification providers! I truly fear the harm that will be done before legislators realize…

i call this slipstreaming, it can even occur during the signup yeah, once the bouncing around to many domains / uploading photos is psychologically normalized havoc can ensue. this is the greater evil.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#122

Post by triceratops »

cloudfudge wrote: post #60

This 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…

Yes. In fact the 3rd party doesn't even need to know who you are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#123

Post by stickfigure »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #112
stickfigure wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before the widespread adoption of pornography, this rate was near 0% Bullshit. Men and women have been dying of autoerotic asphyxiation long before the internet. And we only hear about the ones that fuck up badly enough to make the news. I'm puzzled by this phenomenon myself, but there is apparently a significant minority of women who enjoy getting choked in bed: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-025…

Nobody is saying that nobody did this before. We are saying now that it is a health crisis, objectively. You're the guy saying that 110 MPH speed limits can't be responsible for crashes because people also died at 20 MPH.

You did in fact just say that nobody did it before - or very strongly implied it based on how sloppy you want to be with the phrase "near 0%".

Stop pretending you know what that number is.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#124

Post by array_key_first »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #101
dakiol wrote: post #65

I’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…

> I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go Because it's not always about their entertainment. I know churches that post info about events only on WhatsApp groups, if you don't use it - you're screwed. I know kindergardens which use Facebook Messenger groups to send announcements to their parents' children - if you don't use it, you will miss important info. For most people, letting go such thing…

People need to be more comfortable being the problem more often. Even if people actually use these solutions, they're almost always suboptimal anyway. We shouldn't be relying on them the way we do.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#125

Post by triceratops »

autoexec wrote: post #120
miki123211 wrote: post #70

> Even though there’s no way to implement mandated age gates in a way that fully protects speech and privacy rights I think the EFF would have more success spreading their message if they didn't outright lie in their blog posts. While cryptographic digital ID schemes have their problems (which they address below), they do fully protect privacy rights. So do extremely simple systems like selling age-verification scrat…

> So do extremely simple systems like selling age-verification scratchcards in grocery stores Which stores sell age-verification scratchcards? How do you make sure they can't be traced back to the person who paid for them or where they were purchased from? How would a website know the person using the card is the same person who paid for them? It may be a simple system, but it still sounds ineffective, dangerous, and…

> Which stores sell age-verification scratchcards?

Stores that sell other age-restricted products.

> How do you make sure they can't be traced back to the person who paid for them

How would they be traced? Pay cash. I've never had my ID scanned or recorded when I buy alcohol. And now I look old enough that I don't even have to show ID.

If someone can trace the store they're bought from and you're that paranoid, rotate between stores. Buy them from a third-party. Drive to another state and buy them there. So many options.

> How would a website know the person using the card is the same person who paid for them?

They don't. How does Philip Morris know the person who bought the cigarettes is the same person lighting up? It's clearly not that important when selling actual poisons so why would it matter for accessing a website? The system works well enough to keep most kids from smoking.

Rate-limit sales in a store (one per visit) and outlaw selling or transferring them to a minor (same penalties as giving alcohol or tobacco to a child). Require websites to implement one code per account policies with a code TTL of 6 months or a year, and identify and disallow account sharing. It's Good Enough verification with nearly perfect anonymity.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#126

Post by stickfigure »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #103
john01dav wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> combined with studies showing there is zero safe threshold without brain damage markers in the blood? Are you saying that there's zero safe threshold of choking, or for viewing porn? (To be clear, choking someone without consent is assault and unacceptable, whether a blood test shows damage or not.)

A. There is zero safe threshold for choking. B. Choking is inherently, obviously, dangerous. C. Pornography has caused choking behaviors among youth to go from negligible to over 38%. D. Brain damage is measurable in anyone who has been choked. E. As such, pornography does, in fact, have blame for encouraging this kind of experimentation. F. If "fighting words" and "misinformation" shouldn't be free speech, who is to…

> Pornography has caused choking behaviors among youth to go from negligible to over 38%.

That which is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#127

Post by MiddleEndian »

cloudfudge wrote: post #60

This 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'm more interested in a business that reliably provides fraudulent IDs to services that unnecessarily want IDs that I cannot avoid for some reason.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#128

Post by JoshTriplett »

hamdingers wrote: post #58
JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

I'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.

"Give up" is not the best option. Certainly not from the EFF's perspective.

I mean, the best option is to fight this legislation, and AIUI they're doing that too. But this article is not about that, it's about how to minimize the harm if you encounter it.

Re: So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

#130

Post by goopypoop »

array_key_first wrote: post #117
kspacewalk2 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fundamental question that needs answering is: should we actually prevent minors below the age of X from accessing social media site Y? Is the harm done significant enough to warrant providing parents with a technical solution for giving them control over which sites their X-aged child signs up, and a solution that like actually works? Obviously pinky-swear "over 13?" checkboxes don't work, so this currently does…

The real solution, IMO, is a second internet. Domain names will be whitelisted, not blacklisted, and you must submit an application to some body or something.

sounds like an app store
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