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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

#121

Post by stavros »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #119

If I say something illegal during a meeting, people will notice it and will report it to the police. Then I may get arrested or fined. Why should it be different on the internet ? Provided we live in countries where freedom of speech is enacted. Of course in Russia or china it's different but surely they already have tools like that.

Because perfect law enforcement means society can never change. Imagine if, back when it was illegal to be gay, every gay person was immediately sentenced. Do you think we'd be accepting homosexuality today?

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

#122

Post by stavros »

jrflowers wrote: post #93
yamillove wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That page says most kids can barely read. Are you a kid?

> Across student groups, average fourth-grade reading scores in 2022 were lower for the following student groups:

> [..] > male and female students;

So reading scores were lower for everyone? Why single out groups?

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

#123

Post by bluegatty »

dv_dt wrote: post #111
simondotau wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A poor analogy. The public square has never been properly anonymous. If you start saying things which contravene laws or the rights of others, the police have been able to capture you and unmask your identity, if concealed.

So the solution for criminals in the public is for everybody to show their papers walking into a public square? It is not, we have requirements for police process like warrants and a process for determining the requirements for urgent conditions of arrest.

No, obviously not, and this is a completely glib argument.

Who is suggesting people 'show their papers' to go into a public square?

Literally nobody.

It really demonstrates how bad the analogy is - so much so that it's not even analogy.

The 'social controls' on the 'public square' are limited by a few laws (aka directed violence) but apart from that you can say as you like, kids can as well - it's where parents can be parents.

And - don't have problem with kids in the public square.

We have a very real problem with kids on social media, verifiable, scientific.

Kids are depressed, distracted, they bully each other, they're creeped on, and they're not yet in the business having serious discussions about 'Mein Kampf' - they're kids.

Everything in kids lives is introduced in an 'age appropriate' fashion - literally everything.

Given the toxicity of social media, it's a 'primary concern' for one of those gated things.

This is not even an argument - the only argument is 'the slippery slope'.

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

#124

Post by microgpt »

rockskon wrote: post #90
microgpt wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Punishing companies for data breaches will solve more data breaches than any amount of encryption.

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

#125

Post by microgpt »

Nursie wrote: post #91
microgpt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have this in Germany for copyright. If you torrent, you automatically get a fine letter in your email. If you don't pay, you get a court summons in the post. If you take it to court, you will lose that case and also have to pay court fees.

It's funny how this played out in different countries. In Australia there is no chance of anything happening, because the courts ruled that payouts were limited to provable incurred losses. You pirated a movie? The maximum awarded at the end of a court case is going to be about $20, and as you can't buy very much lawyer-time for $20, it's never taken to court and the copyright-holders have effectively stopped pursuin…

I imagine they still go after prolific totrenters

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

#126

Post by simoncion »

Nursie wrote: post #85
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 k…

> The insistence by so many in tech that there is no honest intent...

If there were honest intent, then the regs would be beefing up the "Parental Controls" mechanisms present in every major OS and commanding that there be fines for not respecting those settings. Not only does this mechanism require zero involvement of an unrelated third party, it allows a guardian to protect both a child too ignorant of the dangers of the world to be trusted to competently handle them and an adult whose mind has been so damaged by age and/or disease that they can no longer handle those same dangers.

Instead, the systems that we're getting are ones in which computer users are -when it's not mandatory- very, very strongly encouraged to present photo ID to a third party. While all the US regs I can find currently "only" require adding mechanisms for punching in a birth date, it's all but certain that continued evidence of minors lying about their age will cause those laws to be "upgraded" to require a photo ID.

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

#127

Post by palata »

onion2k wrote: post #10

If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spo…

> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin.

What about climate change and the current mass extinction?

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

#128

Post by 14 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #119

If I say something illegal during a meeting, people will notice it and will report it to the police. Then I may get arrested or fined. Why should it be different on the internet ? Provided we live in countries where freedom of speech is enacted. Of course in Russia or china it's different but surely they already have tools like that.

Because it has been shown that even if freedom is speech is a right that people will still be afraid to speak up if they know they are being monitored. Because the reality is that even if you are allowed to speak you might still be punished through other means.

This is much bigger than saying something illegal on the internet. This is about not being able to criticize your government without fear of retribution. Or how about if this was possible 60 years ago. Gays would have been all caught and gay rights never emerged. Or say you are discussing wanting an abortion and are arrested for arrested for it because at that point in time it is made illegal. The right to have private communication is integral to a free and democratic society. Morals change. Beliefs change. This is good. If you are monitored for everything we will be oppressed and stuck with no way to progress and grow.

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

#129

Post by miohtama »

onion2k wrote: post #10

If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spo…

Most people just want to blame someone else of their problems

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

#130

Post by mawadev »

If you look at how workers are mistreated in authoritarian corporations and how some people say it is perfectly fine because you get paid a lot of money to be used and abused, I can't imagine what a reality like this would look like. It does not stop with what you post online, we still can't really tell how our phones know about stuff we talk about irl to serve ads.
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