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

The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 598 posts

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#61

Post by echelon »

kakacik wrote: post #58
PinkSheep wrote: post #51

btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?

same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up

Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children.

They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984.

Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy.

Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID.

Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases.

All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit.

What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#62

Post by EGreg »

Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need?

On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?

Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.

To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#63

Post by Avicebron »

api wrote: post #49
edot wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no technological fix for the issue you raise. The issue being parents not wanting to bother raising their kids, and thus giving the state and corporations control over what they can and can’t do. That’s a cultural issue. No idea how to solve it.

It's largely a wealth inequality issue. Rich parents can have nannies, expensive software, or a parent who stays home from work. Poorer parents do not have time or energy to police this stuff or supervise their kids. They're too busy putting food on the table and paying rent or a mortgage.

Absolutely, it's the system failing and predatory actors seeing a crisis they can exploit.

I was at the laundromat and a woman with kids was complaining across the room about how she only had $700.00 in her account. Note, she had a car, wasn't homeless, but this is actual reality for a huge number of people in the US.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#64

Post by microgpt »

edot wrote: post #26
api wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree . On this is…

You are missing half of the story. This is not “caring legislators punishing big bad tech”. This IS big bad tech. Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. More than wanting to get kids addicted, Big Tech and the intelligence community wants perfect observability into online activities. This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. I…

Big Tech, most of all, wants a liability shield for the people it turns into school shooters. Because if Big Tech had to pay for the consequences of its algorithms it would be bankrupt.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#65

Post by microgpt »

edot wrote: post #33
api wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm telling you why ordinary people support this, and I can tell you they overwhelmingly do... at least those with children. I'm also aware of what you're talking about. That's called regulatory capture. They know this kind of regulation is coming and want to make sure they're the ones writing it so they can use it to entrench their oligopolies. My point is that something like this will happen unless we find an alter…

There is no technological fix for the issue you raise. The issue being parents not wanting to bother raising their kids, and thus giving the state and corporations control over what they can and can’t do. That’s a cultural issue. No idea how to solve it.

Were you raised solely and exclusively by your parents or did you also, say, attend school?

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#66

Post by kakacik »

llukas wrote: post #35
athrowaway3z wrote: post #17

Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics. It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better. It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.

You mean targeting with ads, sucking into feeds, making kids harm themselves and making money on this with lip service about corporate responsibility? Sounds about right.

Yeah but don't expect much sympathy on a forum full of uber rich folks whose very income is directly tied to the same revenue streams you mention.

I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#67

Post by dogcatdog »

echelon wrote: post #55
dogcatdog wrote: post #50

That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification. The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view,…

> vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification. You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol. This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal. In…

Age verification can be done by a third party, so that the online service isn't provided with any details of your identity, just that you passed an age verification check.

But if you're still worried about online pornographers getting a copy of your identity, maybe don't use their websites? It's an easily avoidable risk. Perhaps use your imagination instead, or read an erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop, or something like that.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#68

Post by throw0101d »

We're approaching forty years of this:

> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.

> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#69

Post by microgpt »

Avicebron wrote: post #63
api wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely a wealth inequality issue. Rich parents can have nannies, expensive software, or a parent who stays home from work. Poorer parents do not have time or energy to police this stuff or supervise their kids. They're too busy putting food on the table and paying rent or a mortgage.

Absolutely, it's the system failing and predatory actors seeing a crisis they can exploit. I was at the laundromat and a woman with kids was complaining across the room about how she only had $700.00 in her account. Note, she had a car, wasn't homeless, but this is actual reality for a huge number of people in the US.

For me that would be a crisis. I always want to have at least a few thousands and then if something unexpected happens, that other people will go into a small debt for, I will just be able to spend the money and not go into debt. And it's not like it's hard to save up a few thousand dollars in a time frame of years, so I don't understand people who don't.

I think it may be that people grew up accustomed to having everything constantly taken away from them, so they learn not to save stuff.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#70

Post by Bender »

shomp wrote: post #23

call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this

and have your children on the phone telling them to not let companies store and leak their information before they are old enough to consent to this.

If they are asking you to leave a message, have your kids leave the message.

Post reply on HN