That was the goal.
The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
211–220 of 1001 posts
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#212Earlier 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.
> 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. Is that really evidence of astroturfing? If we're in the middle of an ongoing political debate, it doesn't seem that far fetched for me that people reach similar conclusions. What you're hearing then isn't "astro-turfing" but one coalition, of potential…
> it doesn't seem that far fetched for me that people reach similar conclusions.
How do you suppose it is that millions of people, separated by vast geographic distances, somehow all reach similar conclusions all at once?
Related: How do you suppose it is that out of 350-700+ million people (depending on whose numbers you believe), there's always only two "choices" and both of them suck?
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#213We should just ban smartphones, it's where a great deal of the harm comes from and is harder for parents to manage. No need for children to have cameras connected to the internet whether via smartphones or computers.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#214I am so surprised by the comments on this thread. I was not expecting to see so many people on Hacker News in favor of this. As is typically the case with things like this, the reasoning stems from agreeing with the goal of age verification, with little regard to whether age verification could ever actually work. It reminds me in some sense to the situation with encryption where politicians want encryption that block…
Whatever happened to all the innovation the tech world was capable of? This is 100% a solvable problem. It only needs the will and good law.
1) Person signs up with discord with fake name and fake email.
2) Discord asks (state system) for an age validation.
3) In pop up window, state validates the persons age with ID matching with face recognition.
3) State system sends token to discord with yes or no with zero data retention in the state records.
4) Discord takes action on the account.
What is so hard about this?
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#215We are missing accessible cryptographic infrastructure for human identity verification. For age verification specifically, the only information that services need proof of is that the users age is above a certain threshold. i.e. that the user is 14 years or older. But in order to make this determination, we see services asking for government ID (which many 14-year-olds do not have), or for invasive face scans. These…
A significant obstacle to adoption is that cryptographic research aims for a perfect system that overshadows simpler, less private approaches. For instance, it does not seem that one should really need unlinkability across sessions. If that's the case, a simple range proof for a commitment encoding the birth year is sufficient to prove eligibility for age, where the commitment is static and signed by a trusted third…
I agree. I've been researching a lot of this tech lately as a part of a C2PA / content authenticity project and it's clear that the math are outrunning practicality in a lot of cases.
As it is we're seeing companies capture IDs and face scans and it's incredibly invasive relative to the need - "prove your birth year is in range". Getting hung up on unlinkable sessions is missing the forest for the trees.
At this point I think the challenge has less to do with the crypto primitives and more to do with building infrastructure that hides 100% of the complexity of identity validation from users. My state already has a gov't ID that can be added to an apple wallet. Extending that to support proofs about identity without requiring users to unmask huge amounts of personal information would be valuable in its own right.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#216Isn't it a simpler solution to create some protocol for a browser or device announce an age restricted user is present and then have parents lock down devices as they see fit? Aside from the privacy concerns, all this age verification tech seems incredibly complicated and expensive.
I think this solution exists (e.g. android parental lock, but also ISP routers). But parents and industry have failed to do so on a greater scale. So legislation is going for a more affirmative action that doesn't require parental consent or collaboration.
A service provider of adult content now cannot serve a child, regardless of the involvement or lack thereof of a parent.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is Nirvana/Perfect Solution fallacy. That's like saying limiting smoking to 18 y/o was futile because teenagers could always have some other adult buy them cigs, or use fake IDs. Ridiculous take.
Well, age verification is the "we have to do something about this nebulous problem even if the best thing we can think of actually makes everything worse for everyone but it makes us feel better" fallacy, which is equally ridiculous.
No, it's not the same. There are anonymous solutions that solve this problem that are perfectly acceptable. Not perfect for prevention, but a good compromise nonetheless. Like cig/alcohol underage consumption prevention.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#218Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift. If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an eas…
I actually don't hate this??? As long as parents can set up their own whitelists and it's not up to the government to have the final say on any particular block.
Parents can do this today if they wanted to
The problem of "kids accessing the Internet" is a purposeful distraction from the intent of these laws, which is population-level surveillance and Verified Ad Impressions.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#219If there's only a centralized system that uses digital IDs to hand off providers only a "yay" or "nay"...
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#220Someone 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?
Because those solutions always have obvious flaws. If the cryptographic token is anonymous, how do you know the user verifying is the same one who generated the token? How do you know the same cryptographic key isn't verifying several accounts belonging to other people?