Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

mullvad.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 561 posts

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#131

Post by selfhoster1312 »

secult wrote: post #129

ZKP is definitely a good idea, definitely more open for this kind of age verification than anything else. And I don't buy the argument of "closing internet", social networks are a proprietary service and if you don't want to obey with the regulations, create your own website and post things there if you want. However you have to provide your identity to the domain name registry or to the intermediary. Also other serv…

It is closing Internet. The same companies that produced the ills of social media are now pushing for a non-remedy (that doesn't prevent kids, and doesn't solve the problems they created) that only benefit them and not society. It's just like tobacco: it's toxic and probably overall should be banned because it does not benefit society (or anybody except tobacco executives). Do we make a mandatory nation-wide electronic log of whoever buys tobacco in the name of age verification?

Our ancestors here in France literally fought the nazis so you don't have to have a nazi-approved « Ausweis » to go wherever suits you. We would be well inspired to follow their example.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#132

Post by Cthulhu_ »

simulator5g wrote: post #38
Cider9986 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't sign up for a Facebook account without giving a live selfie. Any image of your family you post will be scraped by Clearview AI, bypassing the restrictions that make it hard for you to create accounts, to create a worldwide facial recognition system.

Well yeah, Facebook has been a data harvesting scheme from the beginning. It was originally called LifeLog. It is not part of the “free” web.

Indeed, well before Clearview, Facebook demonstrated they can identify faces and asked people to tag people in it, creating one of the earlier massive facial ID databases.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#133

Post by alecco »

sshine wrote: post #128

It would be an excellent case for zero-knowledge cryptography: All that you need to know is that I am above 18 years of age. You don't need to know how old I am, what my birthday is, what state I was born in, my gender, or when my passport expires. The downside with ZK cryptography is the complexity. Something would have to be insanely inconvenient to justify it.

Judges and lawmakers are lawyers and a significant chunk of them are Boomers. Good luck with that.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#134

Post by officialchicken »

secult wrote: post #129

ZKP is definitely a good idea, definitely more open for this kind of age verification than anything else. And I don't buy the argument of "closing internet", social networks are a proprietary service and if you don't want to obey with the regulations, create your own website and post things there if you want. However you have to provide your identity to the domain name registry or to the intermediary. Also other serv…

a.k.a. Think of the children.

But don't teach them how to navigate the world and interact with both good and bad.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#135

Post by northernsausage »

Whilst getting excited about 'loss of freedom' the reason these companies are getting forced into this is because they've become so large, fundamentally evil and untrustworthy that we can't regulate them in to doing better so we have to ban susceptible citizens from consuming their output. See tobacco, alcohol, porn, cannabis, driving licences for other examples. /s

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#136

Post by Cthulhu_ »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #65
drivebyhooting wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse. Banks now require pictures of faces to fucking close the account and pull the money out.

You find it to be a negative that banks require identity verification to drain an account? Personally, I would refuse to keep my money with a bank that doesn’t do this.

I'd consider it a negative that they trust a shitty webcam / selfie camera to cut the expenses of having an actual office with trained personnel.

Who aren't flawless of course, but selfies have been easily circumvented with photos or video game cameras.

Hell, at one point we had to implement age verification for a Japanese tobacco product website via a 3rd party vendor, I just used the wiki page's picture of a Japanese ID to test it, worked fine.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#137

Post by Cthulhu_ »

falkensmaize wrote: post #31

One very simple way to give parents control over what their children see and participate in without violating everyone else’s privacy is to create adult and social TLDs and require these sites to migrate to them. So instagram.com becomes instagram.social, etc. Then mandate that all consumer network equipment mfrs and internet providers provide easily accessible ways to block these TLDs. Maybe combine that with some p…

This only works if ALL TLDs become strictly regulated, which goes against the idea of a free, open and distributed internet.

And even then, what about social networks showing porn? Chat apps like Whatsapp and Discord having porn etc groups?

Any platform that accepts user-generated content, from Pinterest to Ebay to forums, etc can host it. And that's just what's on the public internet.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#138

Post by Cthulhu_ »

thefz wrote: post #125
falkensmaize wrote: post #31

One very simple way to give parents control over what their children see and participate in without violating everyone else’s privacy is to create adult and social TLDs and require these sites to migrate to them. So instagram.com becomes instagram.social, etc. Then mandate that all consumer network equipment mfrs and internet providers provide easily accessible ways to block these TLDs. Maybe combine that with some p…

I don't get why a problem specific of parenthood should apply to everyone else. Don't give your kid a smartphone then.

This is such a naive take, I see it a lot. Have you considered they can:

* Buy one themselves

* Get / use a friend's

* Use public internet access points

* Need one for school

* Use the smart fridge / tv / gaming console / anything with a browser

* Access stuff in Minecraft, Roblox, etc

You can only stop it by going offline and raising them in a cabin in the woods, which is a whole other thing.

What you can do is give them The Talk, of course (but that only helps / prevents to a point, it's more to prepare them for what they may find or how they can identify problematic things). And the other is to push back as a community effort, with e.g. many schools banning kids from having phones in the first place.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#139

Post by swiftcoder »

sshine wrote: post #128

It would be an excellent case for zero-knowledge cryptography: All that you need to know is that I am above 18 years of age. You don't need to know how old I am, what my birthday is, what state I was born in, my gender, or when my passport expires. The downside with ZK cryptography is the complexity. Something would have to be insanely inconvenient to justify it.

> It would be an excellent case for zero-knowledge cryptography:

The last ~third of the article is about the EU's zero-knowledge approach

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#140

Post by LazyGooze »

Cider9986 wrote: post #34
Animats wrote: post #5

So, to post something in 2027: - You have to have an approved browser. - It has to be installed on an approved platform, Google or Apple, for which you have a valid account. - You have to have an account on the posting platform. - You have to get past moderation on the posting platform. That's without age verification.

You can't sign up for a Facebook account without giving a live selfie. Any image of your family you post will be scraped by Clearview AI, bypassing the restrictions that make it hard for you to create accounts, to create a worldwide facial recognition system.

just use a video of a video game character and pause the video at the required face positions
Post reply on HN