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Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

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Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#291
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would IAC lead to less slop? What's the mechanism here?

Imagine if it was possible to ban people who spam instead of only being able to ban the IP of a spammer.

So IAC is magically removing slop AND spam from the internet? It's still not clear how? Are we always broadcasting our government issued identity documents to every website we visit? I don't think that's gonna work out the way you think it's gonna work out

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#292
post #9

It's too late and never about children, simply deeper forms of data harvesting and surveillance. What makes me extremely sad and concerned is that more recent generations simply have no idea or expectation of privacy online anymore. There will never be more of a fight against all this Orwellian behavior.

I live in an area that has been declared among the safest in America. Two months ago a 17 year old girl from our city disappeared. Turns out she had been being groomed for a year over Discord and in Roblox by a 39 year old the next state over. He eventually convinced her to let him pick her up, after which he filmed himself having sex with her, killed her, and then dismembered her body. He apparently was grooming oth…

There will always be weird tail risks. The law should only get involved where there are widespread systemic problems.

People are occasionally hospitalized due to self, family, or friends handling food improperly. That doesn't warrant a legal intervention whereas dining establishments do.

> before someone inevitably says “where were the parents?” and wash their hands of the situation

Nope, that's exactly what I say. The law cannot reasonably replace responsible parenting if society is to remain a pleasant place to live.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#293
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not very soon, it’s already the case that if one wants to enable the latest models in the OpenAI api you have to submit your details to their “identity provider”.

Given the recent mexican telecom hacks were allegedly done with significant help from openai/anthropic's chatbots, it seems at least somewhat prudent to require some sort of identity verification for API access? I'm struggling to see how this isn't the tech community's version of "no background checks for gun purchases" or "no KYC for bank accounts".

They were also likely done with keyboards and mice. Should we require id at point of purchase for those?

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#294
post #240
post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're also about suppressing LGBT+ content >> Keeping trans content away [...] Isn't it a stretch to round off "trans content" to "LGBT+ content"? I mean, from a pure logical point of view the statement is correct, because "trans content" is a subset of "LGBT+ content", and therefore "suppressing LGBT+ content" is technically correct, but it's at least misleading. The left's version of this would be something like…

Hi, I've been openly queer for over 20 years. Using trans people as a wedge to pry apart the entire LGBTQ community is a tale as old as time. This isn't theoretical or a slippery slope argument; it's recent history. It's effective because it sounds "reasonable" on its face, but it's a ploy. Just one of the many, many, many reasons that trans rights are human rights.

>This isn't theoretical or a slippery slope argument; it's recent history. It's effective because it sounds "reasonable" on its face, but it's a ploy.

It quite literally is the slippery slope argument. You just don't want to call it that because the term is almost always used in the context of a fallacy, and you think you're right. It's like "freedom fighters" vs "terrorists". Nobody calls themselves terrorists, even terrorists.

Moreover the "It's effective because it sounds "reasonable" on its face, but it's a ploy" argument works equally well for any side, eg. it's not hard to imagine someone on the right saying "today it's Jan 6th protesters and that might seem reasonable, but tomorrow it's anyone at unite the right protests, and when president AOC's in power it's anyone who's protesting against trans surgery for minors".

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#295
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the recent mexican telecom hacks were allegedly done with significant help from openai/anthropic's chatbots, it seems at least somewhat prudent to require some sort of identity verification for API access? I'm struggling to see how this isn't the tech community's version of "no background checks for gun purchases" or "no KYC for bank accounts".

They were also likely done with keyboards and mice. Should we require id at point of purchase for those?

Alright, so does that mean we don't need KYC for gun purchases or bank accounts either?

Of course you're probably going to say something about how guns and bank accounts are crucial components to crime, in which case the same holds for AI in the mexican telecoms hack.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not entirely wrong; ultimately if they put enough resources towards it they can probably catch quite a number of people. But governments have limited resources and really don't track everyone all the time. Not even in 2026 are they able to do that yet. It helps if you maintain some level of opsec. If they really want to get you, they can get close, but see eg Ed Snowden; who managed to stay ahead of the US gov…

Snowden’s experience doesn’t generalise to, well, anyone really.

Well, I wouldn't personally recommend single-handedly taking on the most powerful nation on earth, myself.

But turns out that if your opsec is decent, and even using mostly publicly available tools like Snowden did, you might survive even that.

In the nuanced case, normal people applying more normal opsec can handle more normal things, would seem to follow.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#297
post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically parents set the child's age and apps rely on that if they need to know if the user is old enough? That's pretty similar to the California bill. Parents set an age when creating a child's account. The OS provides an API to get the user's age bracket from that, which apps that need to know the age bracket of the user can call.

The California bill gets it backwards. Rather than Internet services taking the user's age and deciding what content to serve, the Internet service or app should broadcast the age rating of its content to the OS (if convenience is desired), like how movie ratings work. The responsibility to decide what content is suitable for a child should rest in the hands of that child's parent, not the state or the corporation. e…

That's not my understanding. This is what the bill says: Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies [the age group].

So the app requests a signal (like, calling an API), and the OS returns the signal (returning the age group).

Regarding API vs installation lock, TBH I don't think the law concerns that level of details. An OS or app-store installation lock that checks app ratings can be considered as a valid implementation.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you implemented that simple solution the expected outcome is businesses collecting ID at the door. But unlike the age verification bills there'd be no prohibition of or penalty for misuse of the collected information. It's a strictly worse outcome. You can make intentional targeting illegal without criminalizing the accidental. And mandating self categorization of content by service providers would enable standard…

Okay, so make it illegal for them to record any information which is what the actual laws do (or better, explicitly criminalize all the other current stalking). The point is you don't need to be prescriptive about how to prevent children from accessing the sites. Just make it so you can face massive fines and be arrested if you don't. They can figure out how to comply with the law, and they can be effective or be shu…

I agree that open ended requirements are better than the imposition of prescriptive solutions. But I don't want online ID verification and that's where your proposal logically leads so I am equally opposed to it.

> They're not actually owed a solution for how to make their business model work. They can just be told that what they're doing is unacceptable,

You listed a few different things previously. Which one are we talking about here?

I think the rest of us are owed a solution where we can still do what we want without having our privacy violated. Regulations need to take the end user into account.

I already proposed what I think would be a workable solution to achieve the stated goals without unduly eroding the status quo. Do you have any response to it?

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#299
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were also likely done with keyboards and mice. Should we require id at point of purchase for those?

Alright, so does that mean we don't need KYC for gun purchases or bank accounts either? Of course you're probably going to say something about how guns and bank accounts are crucial components to crime, in which case the same holds for AI in the mexican telecoms hack.

What happens when everyone needs to use AI for their job? Genuine question that I think gets at the heart of the debate.

Once a common technology that everyone has access to becomes powerful enough to alter the lives of others on command, do we as a society just need to do away with the concept of anonymity? We are all just too powerful in isolation, and too much of a threat to the collective, that we cannot reasonably expect not to have some governing body watching at all times?

Today, you can buy parts/print a completely untraceable firearm, so do we license sales of steel tubing and 3D printers?

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