If government is concerned shouldn't government just deliver auth based on birth certificate for everyone to use?
The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
181–190 of 1001 posts
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#182Someone explain me like I'm 5: there are some solutions already in effect that are based on cryptographically generated, anonymous, one-time use tokens that allow to confirm adults's age without being tied up yo your ID. Why on earth even technically skilled people completely ignore those? Is this pure NIMBY ignorance or am missing something?
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#183It'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?
The average tech “literate” person uses discord, social media, a GitHub with their real name, a verified LinkedIn, and Amazon Echo.
These are not the same people from 30 years ago. The new generation has come to love big brother. All it took to sell their soul was karma points.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although there is some organic support, there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. It’s apparent if you watch the discussions across platforms, there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves. Governments (and a few companies) really want this.
> Governments (and a few companies) really want this. The cynic in me fears they don't want a privacy-preserving solution, which blinds them to 'who'. Because that would satisfy parents worried about their kids and many privacy conscious folks. Rather, they want a blank check to blackmail or imprison only their opponents.
This is not a cynical take, it is blindingly obvious. Right now, governments around the world are watching, salivating over what is effectively remote control over the literal thoughts of and total surveillance over their entire population. They are itching insatiably to get control over these systems.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#185From the second paragraph: > And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. This is not true and made me immediately stop reading. If a social media app uses a third party vendor to do facial/ID age estimation, the vendor can (and in many cases does) only send an estimated age range back to the caller. Some of the more privacy invasive KYC vendors like Persona persist and optionally pass…
If you don't keep and cross-reference documents it is really easy to circumvent, e.g. by kids asking their older siblings to sign them up.
I don't think a bulletproof age verification system can be implemented on the server side without serious privacy implications. It would be quite easy to build it on the client side (child mode) but the ones pushing for these systems (usually politicians) don't seem to care about that.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#186In my experience the people who want "privacy preserving age verification" are the same people who want "encryption backdoors but only for the good guys." Shockingly the technically minded among them do seem to recognize the impossibility of the latter, without applying the same chain of thought to the former.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#187> "Social media is going the way of alcohol, gambling, and other social sins: societies are deciding it’s no longer kids’ stuff." Oh, remember those good old times when alcohol was kids' stuff.......
In Italy it is common for 13 and 14 year olds to have a glass of wine with dinner. The sin is not drinking, it is gluttony.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s bots pushing another false narrative. You’ll notice this in anything around politics or intelligence the past 10+ years, with big booms around 2016 and 2024 “for some reason”
No. There are significant numbers of real people who genuinely support this type of thing. Dismissing it as "bots" or a "false narrative" leads to complacency that allows this stuff to pass unchallenged.
The problem is: The people who typically support this type of thing are either technically illiterate and they support it, because it sounds good. Or they are promoting these laws because they actually want more surveillance and control. It's not about protecting children.
I still haven't read any truly compelling argument, why this type of surveillance is actually effective and proportionate.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#189It'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.
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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although there is some organic support, there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. It’s apparent if you watch the discussions across platforms, there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves. Governments (and a few companies) really want this.
I think we should be careful of writing off this sea change as simple professional influence campaigns. That kind of thinking is just what got Trump to the Whitehouse, and is currently getting the immigrants rounded up. Things that didn't seem likely to have broad support previously, now are seen as acceptable. In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants. No one could envision uploading an ID card to use…
>In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants.
Both Clinton and Obama deported way more people than Trump.