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Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

nonogra.ph

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Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#81

Post by marcus_holmes »

zarzavat wrote: post #19

I don't like age verification. However I'm not concerned about it. The internet needs new spaces that are more decentralized and less in bed with governments. We already lost our freedom when we agreed to move from IRC to Discord, from phpBB to Reddit, etc. The teenagers who are blocked from mainstream social media will deliver us new free online spaces that are better than what they're blocked from.

Nope, they just break the law:

https://www.bmj.com/content/393/bmj-2026-363695

> Conclusions: Despite the intent of the Social Media Minimum Age Act 2024 to delay access to social media platforms and reduce the potential for online harms, little evidence was found of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use by adolescents under 16 years.

We are training teenagers that laws are stupid and can be circumvented easily and without consequences. As well as continuing to subject them to the harms of social media, only now without any means of monitoring them or holding the social media companies responsible.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#82

Post by microgpt »

LandenLove wrote: post #13

My theory is that age verification is just another way to push human verification. These large tech companies need a way to verify a user is a real person and not an AI bot. Both for displaying ads to real users and cutting down on spam. Nobody would support a "give away my anonymity online so I can be shown an ad for Coca Cola" bill. But it's easier to sell a law to boomers and lawmakers if you use the disguise of "…

That's why recaptcha is now doing human verification via mobile phone QR scan

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#83

Post by shevy-java »

RachelF wrote: post #41

Age verification is just one part of this crackdown. Device attestation is another - making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system and apps linked to your ID.

> making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system

Will be interesting to see if this leads to more Linux systems being deployed. Then again with systemd supporting age sniffing (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954), evading this becomes harder and harder.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#84

Post by microgpt »

OutOfHere wrote: post #24

We do need a decentralized scalable permissionless platform for speech. For it to remain sustainable, there should be a slight cost in Monero to making each post on it, preloadable in batches.

Have one. Called the internet.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#85

Post by Nursie »

NoPicklez wrote: post #53

I think you can look at all things pessimistically, like this article does but at the end of the day we all agree that there are things online we don't want our kids seeing or engaging with and it takes regulators to push how we protect them from those online places. What other options to regulators have? Age restriction has been around for longer than the internet itself, so its regulators applying that logic to the…

Yep, there are all sorts of technically interesting ways in which age can be proven without identity being compromised, this link has a good exploration of anonymous credentials, for a start - https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...

And there are all sorts of reasons governments want to do this, up to and including the stated-on-the-surface reasons they give; a lot of people don't want their kids exposed to internet harms, be that extreme material or addictive services and doom-scrolling, and don't have the technical know-how to effect that themselves.

The insistence by so many in tech that there is no honest intent and that there is no way to practically provide age verification in a thoughtful, anonymous way is frustrating.

It's frustrating to see so many people engaged in effective conspiratorial thinking and it's frustrating because there are many good arguments to be had here, but they won't land if the 'anti' side doesn't address the real concerns that real people have about the safety and mental health of their kids.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#86

Post by microgpt »

derektank wrote: post #20
arkhiver wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

farmer arrested over datacenter debate: https://www.gadgetreview.com/arrest-him-the-moment-police-ha...

I’m not exactly sure how an abuse of power occurring at a public event relates to the question of privacy or freedom of speech. The law did not allow the officer to arrest the man for the content of his speech so he retaliated by enforcing a different law unjustly. This kind of selective enforcement of the law can be a violation of federal law and the man likely has standing to sue.

it's an example of the government silencing people for speech

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#87

Post by Nursie »

shevy-java wrote: post #75

Fascism will lose in the long run. Right now the lobbyists coordinate rather effectively, looking at how many democracies already succumbed here. Well, we need direct democracy - the system that we have right now with regard to democracies, is undermined by corruption.

What makes you think that age verification on the internet wouldn't be wildly popular with the demos?

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#88

Post by freefaler »

Cory Doctorow had a very profound talk about it very long time ago (10+years).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

As the internet become the place where people do a lot of things, no government (and especially no security services) will be able to keep themselves from trying to control it or at least monitor it. And with the new LLM features they can automatically do much more than before.

Human nature is a constant and when the government sees an easy way to enforce something, many more bureaucrats will try to do it.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#89

Post by samplifier »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #49
Synthetic7346 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you fix the child education problem without fixing the parent education? School is but a few hours a day, and kids spend more time with parents and learn from them. I was lucky that my parents liked to read and encouraged me to read, but my friends didn't have the same exposure that I did and never liked to read books.

What? School is basically the same hours as a full time job. How is it but a few hours a day? Did you time travel from the 1800s?

Indeed, and then after school care because both parents are still working until 6 pm, quietly eat dinner, watch cocomelon, and then to bed. Horror.

Re: Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

#90

Post by rockskon »

microgpt wrote: post #80
rockskon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law alone cannot fix it. Tech alone cannot fix it. If we wish to preserve the values we grew up with, we need both.

Law can fix 90% of it. Tech can fix 10%.

As cynical as it sounds given its frequent use in marketing and often inappropriate use in legal circles, securing what data is collected is important too.

Raise the bar for a data breach. It has value. Much more value if the law did a much better job of restricting what is collected in the first place and its dissemination.

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