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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?

#201

Post by phatfish »

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…

I see lots of claims about governments using age gating to "track" people, but no evidence. Your last point about uploading ID documents to random online services (which i agree is a privacy risk) would be solved with a government digital ID.

That is never going to happen it seems, as -- in the UK at least -- people go crazy whenever it is mentioned. Despite "the government" having the ability to track whatever they wanted already, should they care to.

Age gating discussions always devolve into some fantasy land were people are arguing for children to have access to porn and other inappropriate material, and happily construct some straw man where age gates lead to censorship for everyone.

If your government wanted to censor the internet they can do it without age gates. As a parent I am happy to have society agree on some basic rules around what children can do online, as there are rules on what children can do in the real world.

Yes, I know all the come back arguments about how it is my responsibility as a parent. Don't worry, I will be responsible for what my children do online when they are older. But in the end a society raises children, and society should agree a limit on what children can be exposed to online.

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

#203

Post by iamnothere »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #198
iamnothere wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share more details about this? Which account? What do you mean by “suspicious”? What specific effects does this have? I use a VPN 24/7 on one machine. Zero issues even with banking, although sometimes I have to answer CAPTCHAs.

Your VPN provider shares their IP lists publicly. For a lot of website owners, blocking those is a simple way of getting rid of 80% of spam.

And yet I don’t get blocked. Curious.

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

#204

Post by mckn1ght »

immibis wrote: post #193
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…

Can we actually prevent children under 16 from buying beer?

Is there actually a difference between transactions between humans in meatspace (getting a government ID, then using it at a store) and age estimation algorithms?

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

#205

Post by mckn1ght »

anal_reactor wrote: post #148
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…

It's never been about porn. By marking certain part of the internet "adult-only" you imply that the rest is "family-friendly" and parents can feel less bad about themselves leaving their children with iPads rather than actually parenting them, which is exactly what Big Tech wants for obvious reasons. If I had a child I'd rather have it watch porn than Cocomelon, which has been scientifically developed so that it turn…

> If I had a child I'd rather have it watch porn than Cocomelon

As a parent that regularly fears who my children will encounter in the world, I’m glad there’s an “if” at the beginning of this sentence.

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

#206

Post by AlienRobot »

firefoxd wrote: post #69

My main concern is that there isn't a reliable way to know your information is securely stored[0]. > A few years ago, I received a letter in the mail addressed to my then-toddler. It was from a company I had never heard of. Apparently, there had been a breach and some customer information had been stolen. They offered a year of credit monitoring and other services. I had to read through every single word in that barr…

Exactly. Everything "private" that you post online will become public eventually.

Everyone says "we only store the data temporarily and it's deleted right after" including everyone who didn't do that and got hacked.

But I think we're far too late into this issue by now.

It's 2026 and we still don't have a way to know if our passwords are being stored in a secure way in their databases. What hope do we have to know about how our photos are being handled?

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

#207

Post by petre »

kreco wrote: post #176
idopmstuff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you suggest they verify age? I am not aware of a good way to do it from a privacy and security perspective.

You can take a look at what Switzerland is about to do: https://www.homburger.ch/de/insights/swiss-voters-approve-ne... !

I'm obviously not going to show my id to Zuckerberg's website or any porn sites, casinos because I don't trust those bastards. They're also not the police, so they lack the proper autoritah to request my an id.

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

#208

Post by phatfish »

idopmstuff wrote: post #170
thewebguyd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I truly fear the harm that will be done before legislators realize what they’ve created. Not defending the legislation as I overwhelmingly disagree with it, but if I recall, I don't think any of the age verification legislation specifies a specific implementation of how to verify age. Requiring photos, or photo ID, or any other number of methods being employed, were all decided on by the various private companies.…

How would you suggest they verify age? I am not aware of a good way to do it from a privacy and security perspective.

A digital ID, like someone said below. But people (in the UK at least) go mental about that, despite the government already having all the information anyway. Creating a easy way to securely share that information with a 3rd party for online verification is apparently the work of the devil.

In the real world you turn up in person with a passport, or maybe use snail mail as a way to verify an address which is hard to fake.

Online we have to pretend it is still the internet of the 90s where it's all just chill people having a fun time using their handle...

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

#209

Post by sroussey »

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.

AOL returns!

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

#210

Post by bhelkey »

iamnothere wrote: post #181
Retr0id wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many cases, using a VPN is a great way to get your account flagged as suspicious.

Care to share more details about this? Which account? What do you mean by “suspicious”? What specific effects does this have? I use a VPN 24/7 on one machine. Zero issues even with banking, although sometimes I have to answer CAPTCHAs.

Some sites block or offer a degraded experience for VPN traffic. This happens occasionally when I use Mullvad.

Some examples: Imgur loads but does not display any content. USPS's website does not load.

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