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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?

#131

Post by JoshTriplett »

luke727 wrote: post #72
pc86 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone seems to forget that using VPNs to violate your local laws gives lots of good ammo to the authoritarians that want to ban VPNs. The answer isn't to use a VPN to get around it (and thus give fodder to your enemies) but to change the law.

While I agree with this in spirit, here in the UK both major parties along with the public at large generally support these types of laws.

Two of the major parties support it, but it's not entirely obvious how much public support there is; it's not most people's top issue, and it's easy to make polls say what you want depending on the question you ask.

You'd get different answers if, for instance, you ask "do you want to have to show ID or submit a picture of your face in order to access many sites on the Internet".

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

#132

Post by anon84873628 »

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.

I agree. There were attempts to do something like this with porn sites via the .xxx TLD I believe, but that inverts the problem. Don't force the public to go to a dark alley for their guilty pleasures. Instead, the sites that want to target kids need to be allowlisted. That is much more practical and palatable.

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

#133

Post by d1sxeyes »

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…

I have a lot of concerns about your presentation of this.

A. It’s also true that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption and yet we sort of see experimentation with alcohol as a rite of passage.

B. I mean, so is walking out your front door. I don’t see this as adding much to point A.

C. This is a big jump. First, we see more openness about sexual behaviour. While I’m prepared to agree that it has likely gone up, I would not be comfortable with the degree you imply. Second, while I do think it is likely that pornography has indeed contributed to this, pornography has also likely contributed to an increase in experimentation in general, with other sexual behaviours also likely seeing an increase (for example oral/anal sex, water play, etc).

D. I find this very hard to accept at face value. Do you have studies/evidence to support this claim?

E. Yes, I would likely agree, although whether “encourages sexual experimentation” is a bad thing or not is a question for further debate.

F. This conflates some very weird things. “Fighting words” are a specific type of restricted speech (i.e. you can’t go round shouting “I’ll kill you”). Sharing misinformation is broadly not illegal (except in very specific sets of circumstances-fraud, inciting violence, etc.). It’s also broadly speaking not against the law to tell the truth. “Some people like to choke each other during sex” is a true statement, even if it’s harmful.

Do you support a ban on porn all together? That’s quite a radical view.

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

#135

Post by tracker1 »

I'm honestly a bit mixed on this... I don't think that (especially young) children should have access to explicit, graphic sexual content, especially kink. If you as a parent want your kids to have access, so be it... but then the onus should be on the parent.

On similar lines, I think that something between an unrestricted smart phone and the classic dumb phone is a market segment that is needed.

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

#136

Post by neilv »

> At some point, you may have been faced with the decision yourself: should I continue to use this service if I have to verify my age?

An excellent question, which I didn't see the article really get into.

> If you’re given the option of selecting a verification method and are deciding which to use, we recommend considering the following questions for each process allowed by each vendor:

Their criteria implies a lot of understanding on the part of the user -- regarding how modern Web systems work, widespread industry practices and motivations, how 'privacy policies' are often exceeded and assurances are often not satisfied, how much "audits" should be trusted, etc.

I'd like to see advice that starts by communicating that the information will almost certainly be leaked and abused, in n different ways, and goes from there.

> But unless your threat model includes being specifically targeted by a state actor or Private ID, that’s unlikely to be something you need to worry about.

For the US, this was better advice pre-2025, before the guy who did salutes from the capitol was also an AI bro who then went around hoovering up data from all over government. Followed by a new veritable army and camps being created for domestic action. Paired with a posture from the top that's calling harmless ordinary citizens "terrorists", and taking quite a lot of liberties with power.

We'll see how that plays out, but giving the old threat model advice, without qualification, might be doing a disservice.

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

#137

Post by anon84873628 »

turblety wrote: post #52
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…

There seems to be a big movement (UK specifically) from governments using age gateing as an excuse to increase surveillance and online tracking. I don't know where Roblox is based or it's policies, but it's likely they are just implementing what the government has forced them to do. We need to push back against governments that try and restrict the freedom of the internet and educate them on better regulations. Why c…

IMO it should not be hard for large services like Roblox and Instagram to get together with device makers to come up with a sensible solution.

When you create a new profile on Netflix you mark it as "kids" and voila. Devices should have kid profiles with lots of sane defaults. The parent profiles have a thorough monitoring and governance features that are dead simple to use.

As always it's not perfect but it will go a long way. Just getting a majority of parents on sane defaults will help unknot the broader coordination problems.

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

#138

Post by tracker1 »

anon84873628 wrote: post #132
array_key_first wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. There were attempts to do something like this with porn sites via the .xxx TLD I believe, but that inverts the problem. Don't force the public to go to a dark alley for their guilty pleasures. Instead, the sites that want to target kids need to be allowlisted. That is much more practical and palatable.

Yeah.. the opposition was just a bad take IMO... "but it will create a virtual red light district" which is EXACTLY what you want online, unlike a physical city, you aren't going to accidentally take a wrong turn, and if you're blocking *.xxx then it's even easier to avoid.

Then require all nudity to be on a .edu, .art or .xxx, problem mostly solved.

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

#139

Post by cloudfudge »

triceratops wrote: post #122
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

That's quite an elaborate system. It goes through a lot of gyrations (not the least of which is inventing a whole new type of crime and passing laws about it) and doesn't sound even as strong as the age verification "required" to buy cigarettes in the US. I'd think "welcome to pornhub. Either log in or do Privacy-enhanced Age Verification by Auth0 (TM)" would be a lot easier to get off the ground.

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

#140

Post by xmprt »

cons0le wrote: post #6

>If Google can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Your Google account is typically connected to your YouTube account, so if (like mine) your YouTube account is old enough to vote, you may not need to verify your Google account at all. This has been proven false a bunch of times, at least if the 1000s of people complaining online about it are to be believed. My google account is definit…

I think the reality is a lot less nefarious. They don't want your face. But they also don't care enough to not take your face. Why would Google spend lobbying and legal money trying to fight this requirement when it doesn't hurt their bottom line? On the other hand, requirements like storing ID cards does hurt their bottom line because it means:

1. they need additional security measures to avoid leaking government documents (leaking face photos doesn't hurt them as much) 2. not every person has a valid government document 3. additional customer support staff to verify the age on documents rather than just using some fuzzy machine learning model with "good enough" accuracy.

The bottom line is that companies are lazy and will do the easiest thing to comply with regulations that don't hurt them.

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