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What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

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Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#101
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the users chooses what they are shown and the order they are shown in, then it's fine. If the platform chooses, then it's not, because they will always choose what creates the most engagement.

So HN should be banned

Not necessarily. Just fix the algorithm. Showing all submissions by time should be ok, showing all submissions by number of upvotes should be ok if the user chooses that.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#102
The new laws in the US don't require any real verification. Parents who care will just select a flag on device/OS setup that gets passed to websites. They can also just lie if they really want to. In the EU, they are trying to verify age with zero knowledge proofs.

It would be nice if the author actually spelled out the specific weaknesses of those approaches or even just referenced those laws instead of fear-mongering about "spying on kids", but I suppose that would be to much to ask of someone who made a career out of vibes based rage. Ironic that Doctorow is so eager to capitalize on the enshittification of journalism.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? I don't personally see a way to verify someone's age which doesn't involve either credit card verification, photo id verification, or some sort of facial recognition. If you know enough about someone to verify their age—even to a relatively low degree of accuracy—you probably know enough to pinpoint who they are in general. Heck—in most cases, we can't even tell…

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

So now I have to have a mobile phone?

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#104

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

Could you be more specific as to what you're imagining? I don't personally see a way to verify someone's age which doesn't involve either credit card verification, photo id verification, or some sort of facial recognition. If you know enough about someone to verify their age—even to a relatively low degree of accuracy—you probably know enough to pinpoint who they are in general. Heck—in most cases, we can't even tell…

Perfect is the enemy of the good, right? I mean a page header or some other simple means to identify "adult" vs not is good for most cases? Just thinking about it.. obviously it can be bypassed but is there a good enough?

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#105
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headline news: children infiltrate the universal adult one time password scheme for porn, parents panic! Turns out the 18 year olds started selling access to their younger friends, who resold it to their younger friends.

this happens with alcohol and tobacco every day. i cant think of the last time it reached headline news.

It does not reach headline news because everyone just accepts that the "filter" is imperfect.

But, for some reason, little twelve year old Jimmy obtaining access to porn evokes some kind of far more visceral reaction in Jimmy's parents (or if not Jimmy's parents, some "busybody" who wants to "protect all the children") than Jimmy managing to get himself a pack of Salem's or a Pabst Blue Ribbon tallboy.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#106

What an exceptionally bad faith way to put this whole thing. A five year old watching hours of the most depraved porn available is harmful to that child. Even if you disagree with that statement, you surely must acknowledge that it is an entirely reasonable opinion to hold and one our societies have generally held to this sort of thing for ages. I also acknowledge that there is a reasonable debate to be had if the di…

This comment should not be downvoted. The original article lost me in the first sentence with this:

"The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet"

Sorry, but a firehose of unlimited pornography, violence, racist, misogynist, and divisive content for developing children is bad. You can "well actually..." me all day I don't care at all.

I agree that there's no good solutions here, and I think this is a genuinely complicated and difficult issue for exactly the reasons people often state. But every argument that pretends that it's a one-sided discussion should be dismissed out of hand. There are two sides to this, both thorny.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#107

What an exceptionally bad faith way to put this whole thing. A five year old watching hours of the most depraved porn available is harmful to that child. Even if you disagree with that statement, you surely must acknowledge that it is an entirely reasonable opinion to hold and one our societies have generally held to this sort of thing for ages. I also acknowledge that there is a reasonable debate to be had if the di…

Disclaimer: I do not agree this take was made in bad faith. I think that raising a kid comes with its own set of expectations around caring and curating experiences of said kid. Therefore, I do think that offloading that responsibility to the state (and by extension, businesses that offer age-gating tech to that state...) is not the right way to do it. And even in the absence of that, my experience taught me it is en…

California's proposal is better than the one you're proposing, so Californian legislators goals are actually to solve GP's problem. Articles like this one that don't consider other proposals like California's are idiotic because voters actually want to solve GP's problem, and pretending they don't exist does not convince voters.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#108

> "Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. its been said 1000 times here, but: age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking and recording unless you are somehow hoping to achieve 100% success rate (something we have not done with any other law ever). there are sev…

> age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia of 24/7 fine-grained tracking Personally I don't care how much age sniffing is mandatory in that I think it is inacceptable on any level. Do you try to insinuate that a little bit of tracking is ok? Because I can not buy into that premise. To me the whole assumption is wrong from the get go.

>Do you try to insinuate that a little bit of tracking is ok?

no, and you can read through other comments here and on the many threads of the same topic for proposals which have no tracking.

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way identity wallets work: The government issues an eID to your wallet. The ID is signed by the government and linked to the device to prevent transferring the credential. A public/private key-pair is generated by the secure enclave in your phone, the public key along with proof of possession of the private key is included in the request for the government eID. The government signs individual attributes combined…

So now I have to have a mobile phone?

[deleted]

Re: What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't this mean we don't know what age these 10% are in?

i dont know what point you are trying to make. there are laws against underage drinking and buying alcohol. some kids still get access to alcohol. the law is mostly successful, with an acceptable amount of failure rate. same concept.

Gating is not just for porn, they are talking about using for social media and various other things. You can imagine that many things end up age gated if this becomes legislation, as a preventative measure.

Then your 10% becomes problematic because you are either restricting or granting access based on invalid information. So in your world here we then need ways for people who were incorrectly gated to reach out and be corrected somehow.

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