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The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#101
There are alternatives to ID verification if the goal is protecting children.

You could, for example, make it illegal to target children with targeted advertising campaigns and addictive content. Then throw the executives who authorized such programs in jail. Punish the people causing the harm.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#102
Big tech likes this because there are a lot more face recognition technologies in the wild in real life and being able to connect all real life data to online data is quite valuable. It's also quite possibly the largest training set ever for face recognition if ids are stored and given how ids and images are sold across many companies it seems very high probability that some company will retain the data rather than delete after use.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#103

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

I don't support ID for internet use, only for adult content specifically. There's things on Discord that would shock you to your core if you saw some of it, I don't think children should be blindly exposed to any of it. Specifically porn. Tumblr almost got kicked out of the app store over porn, they went the route of banning it and killing what to me felt like a dying social media platform as things stood.

Do you think strip clubs and bars should stop IDing people at the door? I don't. Why should porn sites be any different?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you’re young, the overwhelming and irrepressible desire to overcome society's proscriptions to satisfy your intellectual and sexual curiosity is natural and understandable. The open Internet made that easier than ever, and I enjoyed that freedom when I was younger—though I can’t say it was totally harmless. When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because…

So you basically want to prevent your children from doing what you did at their age? And you don't mind that freedoms of all of us would be restricted as a result? And then, we keep blaming boomers for those restrictions.

Yes, in exactly the same way that my dad would want me to only use SawStop table saws so that I don't lose a finger like he did.

As for "freedoms," you're not free to vote or drink alcohol below a certain age. And before the internet, minors couldn't purchase pornography, either. Some people perceive this change as a return to normal, not an egregious destruction of freedom.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#105

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

As a tech-literate person, I'm not 100% against the concept of ID if only because I think people will be more reasonable if they weren't anonymous. This conflicts with my concerns about government crackdowns and the importance of anonymity when discussing topics that cover people who have a monopoly on violence and a tendency to use it. So it's not entirely a black/white discussion to me.

Both Google and Facebook have enforced real identity and its not improved the state of peoples comments at all. I don't think anonymity particular changes what many people are willing to say or how they say it, people are just the creature you see and anonymity simple protects them it doesn't change their behaviour all that much.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#106
post #76

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

I used to be so against this but after the never ending cat and mouse game with my kids (especially my son) I don't think the tech crowd really appreciates how frustrating it is and how many different screens there are. Tons of data also showing higher suicide rates, depression rates, eating disorders etc. so it's not as if there is no good side to this.

If they are so intent on disobeying what makes you they won't just use a VPN or ask someone older to login for them (or any other workaround, depending on the technology)?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a tech-literate person, I'm not 100% against the concept of ID if only because I think people will be more reasonable if they weren't anonymous. This conflicts with my concerns about government crackdowns and the importance of anonymity when discussing topics that cover people who have a monopoly on violence and a tendency to use it. So it's not entirely a black/white discussion to me.

The problem is this is only true for values of "reasonable" that are "unlikely to be viewed in a negative light by my government, job, or family; either now or at any time in the future". The chilling effect is insane. There was a time in living memory when saying "women should be able to vote" was not a popular thing. I mean, this is _literally the only thing needed_ for the Trump admin to tie real names to people c…

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#109

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

Better to let a hundred people’s “privacy” be violated than to let another child be radicalized or abused or misled by online predation.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#110
Why is no one talking about using zero knowledge proofs for solving this? Instead of every platform verifying all its users itself (and storing PII on its own servers), a small number of providers could expose an API which provides proof of verification. I'm not sure if some kind of machine vision algorithm could be used in combination with zero-knowledge technology to prevent even that party from storing original documents, but I don't see why not. The companies implementing these measures really seem to be just phoning it in from a privacy perspective.
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