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Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

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Re: Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

#11
post #8
post #2

If you wanted to actually empower parents in helping their kids, you'd make sites emit some form of standard as TXT, SRV, /.well-known, whatever end points Then you'd make sure that the owner of the device has the ability to enable this, factoring in some tags for the category us-min-age:21:drinking gb-min-age:18:drinking au-min-age:16:socialmedia us-min-age:13:socialmedia Then I can use my existing parental controls…

FYI for adult content, there's a standard called RTA-Label that already integrates with all parental controls and is already deployed on all major adult sites.

https://web.archive.org/web/20260215201718/https://www.rtala... seems a bother, nevermind the lack of granularity that RTA has. The competing options seem to have a Christian focus as well, from what I recall. There does not seem to be any good option currently.

Re: Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

#13
post #8
post #2

If you wanted to actually empower parents in helping their kids, you'd make sites emit some form of standard as TXT, SRV, /.well-known, whatever end points Then you'd make sure that the owner of the device has the ability to enable this, factoring in some tags for the category us-min-age:21:drinking gb-min-age:18:drinking au-min-age:16:socialmedia us-min-age:13:socialmedia Then I can use my existing parental controls…

FYI for adult content, there's a standard called RTA-Label that already integrates with all parental controls and is already deployed on all major adult sites.

Yes but isn't that limited to only tagging adult sites? That's great and it works but it only applies to a small piece of the stated problem. It seems to be largely social media that's driving popular support for this latest go round.

RTA is an excellent demonstration that a self categorization system can be expected to work provided it's standardized and service operators make use of it. What's missing then is granularity and a way to coerce the vast majority of sites to adopt whatever gets standardized.

Given the current browser duopoly coercing adoption should prove relatively straightforward. So we just need an RFC document and then to somehow gain public support for it.

Re: Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

#15
post #2

If you wanted to actually empower parents in helping their kids, you'd make sites emit some form of standard as TXT, SRV, /.well-known, whatever end points Then you'd make sure that the owner of the device has the ability to enable this, factoring in some tags for the category us-min-age:21:drinking gb-min-age:18:drinking au-min-age:16:socialmedia us-min-age:13:socialmedia Then I can use my existing parental controls…

There is an unfortunate lack of unity for such things. It would work if governments made it easily understandable how to categorize content, but the vast majority is handled by closed boards of people, so no "case law" exists for the difficult edge cases.

Additionally, some jurisdictions have laws based around religious and cultural values which are not immediately obvious, I'm sure many webmasters would be happy to spend 30 minutes or so writing something for such a framework, but the current subsequent obligation of learning the laws of relevant jurisdictions, the decisions of age rating boards, etc. would blow things out to weeks of research and potentially quite a bit of lawyer money.

Re: Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't offer a workable solution to an excuse. Nobody pushing this wants to protect the children, therefore offering a solution that will protect the children is irrelevant.

While the powers pushing this aren't doing it for protecting children, there are many people who want restricting the internet to protect children. This is why it's a good cover instead of an obvious power grab, because parents want to stop their ten year old children from seeing porn or getting addicted to social media, but they don't know much about how to do it, the technology involved or who is pushing it. You mi…

I'm sorry, what?!

I have an 11yo. I know a ton of parents. And I don't know a single person - not one - who thinks this is a good idea. And I've asked.

Obviously this is just an anecdote and not a substitute for data. But... is there data on sentiment? I don't think it's actual parents who are pushing for this.

Re: Age verification tech could put children at greater risk, says think tank

#18
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty certain they understand that and are offering a workable solution instead of just repiping “age tech bad.”

You can't offer a workable solution to an excuse. Nobody pushing this wants to protect the children, therefore offering a solution that will protect the children is irrelevant.

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