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

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

#171

Post by davkan »

Duralias wrote: post #167
davkan wrote: post #154

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very lit…

That is when the conspiracies start popping up, because a lot of people agree with you, me included. However, you cannot make parents actually use such systems, so ignoring the obvious control this gives nation states, giving states this power might help the children of those irresponsible parents, which is the only real argument I have heard, since the effects of it are the same if the child simply had responsible p…

Well it’s not even necessarily irresponsible parents, good luck keeping your child from going anywhere you don’t want them to go if you have internet enabled devices in your house.

In my mind you have states mandate that adult content (porn, gore) and social media services are legally required to check for the age from the OS. No other sites need to do anything. No data collection or ID verification anywhere. All responsibility on parents.

I would imagine for the zealots out there its worth it to go further and destroy the entire internet to prevent a single 14 year old from jerking it to a tiddy. And then of course the advertisers want device attestation. At least it seems California is picking a sensible middle ground.

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

#172

Post by gizajob »

inetknght wrote: post #68
gizajob wrote: post #13

“Introducing age verification is based on the state being able to force social media companies to verify their users’ identities” Users have been doing this themselves without state coercion for twenty years now by putting their real names all over Facebook and all the other socials. Nobody forced them to use their real names and post countless pictures of their faces alongside, and pour out the totality of their wor…

> Nobody forced them to use their real names and post countless pictures of their faces alongside No? You've obviously never been ostracized from your friends, family, or coworkers due to not using Facebook or Instagram or whatever the latest vapid social network is.

Never. Life in the real world is better without it.

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

#173

Post by subscribed »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #121
Animats wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile, yes. Not sure about desktop.

I’ve configured my browser to disable certain tech like webgl, I get infinite captchad by google. Using vanilla chrome works fine. It might not be full blown attestation but it’s not great. Fuck you google for ever thinking infinite captchas are acceptable.

"might as well abuse this tosser to train the AI a bit. Free compute and classification, hey!" - or so, I guess. They immediately know they'll never get you through :)

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

#174

Post by 9rx »

davkan wrote: post #166
9rx wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The compromise is that it is either really easy to work around, effectively defeating what it is trying to do, or it becomes tightly locked down to trusted devices only, destroying the free internet.

How would you work around it without admin access to the computer?

A full answer is somewhat dependent on specific implementation details, but the simplest approach is much like the simplest way to acquire alcohol or other age-restricted product as a child: Ask someone else to act as an intermediary. Get another computer that identifies as an adult, and that isn't concerned about your age, to send the data to you.

And maybe that's a healthy way to think about it. That it doesn't matter if kids find it easy to work around. There is no child who hasn't been able to get their hands on alcohol when they want it, but perhaps the infinitesimally small amount of friction leaves many to second guess their choices? Then again, from what I see out there, just rationally explaining why alcohol might have negative consequences is enough to see that second guessing. Alcohol consumption amongst the youth has completely plummeted now that we no longer treat it as some magical taboo thing and finally started talking honestly about it. The same pattern has been observed over and over in other things with undesirable consequences for children.

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

#175

Post by trashb »

I wonder (and don't hear anyone talking about it) if kids can't upload on social media and "publishing" platforms. Can they still host a website?

I know that my fascination with computers largely began with creating websites and messing about with HTML. Blog platforms can be considered social media I suppose but what if it is just a page of HTML or text?

Should I worry about having to verify my age/identity if I want to host a page on a vps in the future?

I feel like most politicians and people don't understand privacy and the impact of breaking it. Additionally seems the governments don't consider themselves a thread vector for privacy invasion.

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

#176

Post by palata »

roenxi wrote: post #157
palata wrote: post #2

Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification. I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if…

> I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". It is worth recalling that "authoritarian" is a relatively neutral label for a political philosophy (like "liberal", "democrat", "capitalist" or "socialist"). It isn't that people…

I appreciate the comment, but I feel like you miss my point in a way that is (not purposely) manipulative, again.

I don't think that we would call "authoritarian" someone who would ask for, say, guns control. Or at least we wouldn't call "authoritarian" someone who is in favour of having more than 0 law, would we?

You are being manipulative by saying "If you want a law that I don't want, then you are an authoritarian. I mean no offence, it is just what you are". But reality is a lot more nuanced than that.

The vast majority of people who are in favour of age verification are not authoritarians. They really just consider "should kids have access to social media? Not until they are old enough". Whether or not it is technically possible is outside their knowledge. And the fact is that for age verification, there are technical solutions that are privacy-preserving (unlike e.g. ChatControl which is fundamentally building surveillance infrastructure).

And even for ChatControl: people who say "I would be in favour of a magic backdoor that would only work for the well-intentioned good guys" wouldn't count as "authoritarians", would they? It just so happens that there is no such thing as a magic backdoor, so they cannot have what they want.

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

#177

Post by imtringued »

dyauspitr wrote: post #39
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…

Block how? You can block sites now and all it takes is a proxy/vpn to get around it. Nothing short of personalized age verification will work. The best we can do is make sure the age verification system is centralized by the government. The client sites can’t see who you are and the centralized government server should not be able to see the sites you visit. The only way this can go wrong is if the client sites collu…

>Nothing short of personalized age verification will work.

Specifically, daily personalized age verification by the specific app/website, not by a third party.

>The only way this can go wrong is if the client sites collude and publish their visitor logs and then the government can do the legwork to identify you.

Well, the government has the right to request proof that the company in question is properly conducting the age verification process. This means that the companies performing age verification will keep your personally identifying information (PII) and maintain an association between your PII and your account/activity on the platform.

On a different note, the government has the right to gather evidence of criminal activity, where the definition of "criminal" is under their discretion and if there happens to be a convenient stash of information that can be linked to your person, that's just a happy coincidence.

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

#178

Post by palata »

trashb wrote: post #175

I wonder (and don't hear anyone talking about it) if kids can't upload on social media and "publishing" platforms. Can they still host a website? I know that my fascination with computers largely began with creating websites and messing about with HTML. Blog platforms can be considered social media I suppose but what if it is just a page of HTML or text? Should I worry about having to verify my age/identity if I want…

> Should I worry about having to verify my age/identity if I want to host a page on a vps in the future?

Today I cannot get a VPS without verifying my identity. Can you?

> I feel like most politicians and people don't understand privacy and the impact of breaking it.

I feel like it doesn't start like this. Opponents to age verification assume "politicians are authoritarians, therefore politicians try to increase surveillance, therefore politicians try to introduce age verification". I think it goes the other way round: "society knows that social media are bad for children (and adults, to be fair), therefore people try to imagine ways to solve that problem, therefore politicians end up thinking about ways to prevent children from accessing social media".

Of course, most people (technical people included) don't understand whether or not it can be done in a "reasonable" way (e.g. in a privacy-preserving way). But the debate mostly doesn't revolve around that, and it is a pity. Ideally we would think about the best possible way to do it, and only then we would debate about whether or not we want it.

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

#179

Post by davkan »

9rx wrote: post #174
davkan wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you work around it without admin access to the computer?

A full answer is somewhat dependent on specific implementation details, but the simplest approach is much like the simplest way to acquire alcohol or other age-restricted product as a child: Ask someone else to act as an intermediary. Get another computer that identifies as an adult, and that isn't concerned about your age, to send the data to you. And maybe that's a healthy way to think about it. That it doesn't mat…

Yeah there’s no getting around that kind of thing. My parents would unplug the router at night and take the power cable so i found another device in the house with the same cable and plugged it in. But my sister never did that so at least it worked for half of us.

I’m all for sane best efforts for restricting children’s access to mind warping materials online if the consequences on the overall internet are minimal which I think this does. I’m not on board with killing the internet as we know it to get from 80% of children off social media to 90%.

The problem with social media and to a lesser extent porn is addiction. If a kid had to go to a friend’s house or sneak on to their parents computer to scroll tiktok that’s already a huge step in a healthy direction.

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

#180

Post by mhotchen »

idle_zealot wrote: post #101
nodrog3000 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing all OS to do this is a bit of overreach though no? If you want to keep your kids safe get an OS that supports it? Why is it the state’s responsibility?

It's the State's responsibility once something affects enough people. That's why a law like this makes sense but should exempt OSes under some number of users. It's not great that we have such a harsh divide between "do whatever you want so long as not too many people are bothered" and "alright now the people have spoken and it's a State/national law," but it's the system we have and better than the people only getti…

This conversation makes me wonder if age verification at the system level could be considered an externality for its cost to society as a whole, and the solution be to collect tax from any commercial sale of a desktop OS that doesn't implement a defined open standard. If there is any money raised it could be used for eg. education pieces on harm and harm reduction

Maybe it doesn't work in this case, but I think you both make great points. Just feel like there must be a way of bridging this gap

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