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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?

#151

Post by autoexec »

triceratops wrote: post #125
autoexec wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, rotat…

> Stores that sell other age-restricted products.

So far, I've never seen an age verification scratch card sold anywhere

> How would they be traced?

Your ID is collected at retail and its barcode scanned along with a barcode on the card, your personal data and card ID get uploaded to a server operated by the entity that created the cards and/or the state. ID barcode scan can be replaced or used alongside facial recognition, data collected (directly or passively) from your cell phone, your credit card info, etc. Even just being able to link a used card back to the time/place it was purchased could be enough to ID someone and put them at risk.

> It's clearly not important when selling actual poisons so why would it matter for social media?

The main difference is that I can't upload 1 million cigarettes to the internet for anyone of any age to anonymously download and smoke, but I could upload a spreadsheet of 1 million unredeemed scratch off codes to the internet for anyone to use. It seems highly likely that codes would get sold, shared online, generated, or leaked which means cards would be ineffective at keeping children from using them.

Why should we be okay with jumping through a bunch of hoops that don't even do what they're supposed to in the first place while costing us money and opening ourselves up to new risks in the process? I reject the premise that proving my identity to a website is necessary let alone being worth the costs/risks. Scratch cards seem likely to fail at being private or effective. Of course, "Think of the children" is really only the excuse. Surveillance and control is the real motivation and any system that doesn't meet that goal is doomed to be replaced by one that does.

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

#152

Post by irishcoffee »

idiotsecant wrote: post #116
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody studying this issue, from the UK government to independent researchers to NGOs, says this anymore. PornHub in legal filings never uses this argument, but instead focuses on rights to expression rather than dispute the claim. The causation is clear, documented, proven. Increased pornography exposure with dangerous behaviors, causes those dangerous behaviors to be repeated, even when participants are warned of t…

So what? The problem here would be if these activities are nonconsensual. I've seen no evidence of that. If you're just trying to thought police ideas that lead to people doing risky things you better drop your clutching pearls and pick up a pencil cause that's a long list, some of which are probably things you do.

The internet in a nutshell: I’m right and if you don’t agree, you’re wrong. Facts need not apply.

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

#153

Post by terminalshort »

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…

Can you explain point A? It seems fundamentally flawed unless there is also brain damage from breath holding, hiking at high altitude, and other normal activities that involve operating at lower oxygen levels.

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

#154

Post by Jblx2 »

jimbob45 wrote: post #5

Is there a throwaway identity that people are using? A dead person unchecked in Mississippi somewhere? Like every teen in America using the same identity like everyone's extended family does with their uncle's Netflix account? I don't want to google it because I don't want to be put on a list but I also feel somewhat confident that this is being done. Apparently, HN feels safe to ask questions like that for me.

>I don't want to google it because I don't want to be put on a list

You might think about using something like the Tor Browser for anonymous web surfing:

https://www.torproject.org/download/

...If you are worried about getting on a list by downloading the Tor browser, then take a trip to the next-town-over public library and download it from there. I guess your ISP could still guess that you were using Tor, and you might end up on a list of people using Tor. Also: If everyone is on the list, then no one is on the list.

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

#155

Post by nitwit005 »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #40
AshamedCaptain wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Google account is more than 18 years old and I hit an age prompt when I was trying to watch some FPGA video (out of all things). So no, account age is not necessarily a factor.

They probably need to account for parents allowing kids to use their account, so account age can be a factor but not an automatic pass.

One result of a US fine was making it clear that adults letting kids use their accounts is still a legal problem: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2019/09/...

Note that this is adults letting kids use their accounts to view kids content, as the issue was parental approval for ad tracking.

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

#156

Post by ulrikrasmussen »

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 don't believe that choking leads to brain damage in every single individual who has been choked, for whatever duration. If that is the case, then holding your breath should lead to brain damage too, no? You really need to back up that claim with some evidence.

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

#157

Post by terminalshort »

zackmorris wrote: post #85
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…

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 be…

If "information wants to be free," doesn't that cut both ways? It applies equally to the personal data that I don't want to upload to an age gate as it does to the information that people want to keep behind an age gate.

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

#158

Post by ryandrake »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #98
btown wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 fundamental question that needs answering is: should we actually prevent minors below the age of X from accessing social media site Y?

This is only an interesting question if we can prevent it. We couldn't prevent minors from smoking, and that was in a world where you had to physically walk into a store to buy cigarettes. The internet is even more anonymous, remote-controlled, and wild-west. What makes us think we can actually effectively age gate the Internet, where even Nobody Knows You're A Dog (1993)[1].

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_...

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

#159

Post by terminalshort »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #131
luke727 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

The entire concept of public support breaks down when the majority of the public doesn't actually know what a VPN is.
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