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Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

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

#301

Post by drtgh »

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #209
monssooon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I fear the most. It is gas lighting and just manipulation. The idea of privacy will become associated with crime. Further down the line technical solutions that are private will become illegal and in general not being pro survailance will get you in trouble

Do you acknowledge that for many people and practically e2ee and crime are connected? e2ee is a very useful tool for crime and combined with crypto useful tool for monetizing crime. Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down. Now they don't need to. The solution to privacy problem is not to shout while closing your ears but to make it clear that you see th…

> But chat control and age verification are different things.

Although they appear to be different different things at first sight, they share the same agenda and objective, mass surveillance and identification of the citizens. Once the door is opened, it can be expected that things will not end there; Politicians and their patrons will exploit this data under "committees" (and of course be excluded from such surveillance as an aggravating factor).

Nowadays it's needed a court order to access legally to the privacy of citizens, and this must be done by the Police or the Interpol, nevertheless someones want to break this.

If they were really worried by the citizens security, they would increase the number of police and judges working in this digital divisions, among other things related to this.

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

#302

Post by simoncion »

Nursie wrote: post #277
simoncion wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, 'papers please' mechanisms are a type of law and regulation... Yes, they are. I still have no idea how laws of the form "You must honor the signals you get from Beefed-Up Parental Controls and we fine or jail you if you do not" fails to constrain the behavior of US-based businesses. You seem to have an understanding of how it won't, so do let me know what I'm missing? > An arms race to work around the contr…

> "You must honor the signals you get from Beefed-Up Parental Controls and we fine or jail you if you do not" > If anything, I'd expect a client-side implementation to be far more robust... You're not really describing a client-side solution, you're describing legislation of something like the old Do Not Track header, which is a server-side solution, and fines for services which don't respect it. In such a situation…

> Even though what they are doing is...

I suppose you missed the part where I said

  Australia has been a shithole for a long time now.
This "You must present ID to use a computer" shit is relatively new.

> You're not really describing a client-side solution, you're describing legislation of something like the old Do Not Track header, which is a server-side solution...

Mmm. No, there are three systems being described here.

1) "Beefed up Parental Controls", where all service-restriction information is entered and stored client-side and sent server-side as needed.

2) "Age Please!", where a "guardian account" associates the birthdate/year of one or more users to their respective accounts using the client device. This information is entered and stored client-side and is sent server-side as needed.

3) "Papers Please!" -which is what #2 will become-, where a user uses their client device to photograph their government-issued photo ID to be sent to a third-party and processed server-side.

Because we're talking about accessing an Internet-hosted service, your apparent confusion about the need to send some information to the services servers is -itself- confusing.

> You don't seem to be against age verification in principle...

I'm 100% against it. I'm 100% for guardian-controlled content-restriction policies. I'm also completely fine with a "How old is your cutie? What things do you want them to not see or do?" wizard that populates those policies with some defaults that the guardian can fine-tune if they wish to.

> It's not even about being "all niceys" it's about recognising that the concern people have is genuinely held, and addressing it.

An equally important skill is recognizing when those concerns are not genuinely held. Anyone who should know about "Parental Controls" and chooses "Papers Please!" or "Age Please!" is evil. Lawmakers and regulators pushing for this stuff are in this bucket. Anyone who -once introduced to the concept- claims to see no world in which "Parental Controls" can be beefed up and also claims that "Age Please!" or "Papers Please!" is the only viable option is -at minimum- unrecoverably stupid, and is probably also evil.

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

#303

Post by vaylian »

alt227 wrote: post #200
pibaker wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you want to run a BBS for say vintage motorcycle owners, you have to move to a country without such laws and make sure to never set foot in any country that does?

No, you just have to host it there and use a VPN. Like all piracy sites are done right now.

If privacy is outlawed, only outlaws will have privacy.

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

#304

Post by big85 »

romankolpak wrote: post #298
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…

What’s the alternative? How do you solve the problem of not allowing children into online spaces where they shouldn’t be allowed in?

The existing paradigm is on-device parental controls. It's worked for the past 30 years, and the alternative is forcing everyone to show government ID to use websites.

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

#305

Post by DrScientist »

friendzis wrote: post #166
roenxi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, the evidence is that people already pretty firmly against things like chat control and the will to push it through tends to come from the political circles more than popular belief it is a good idea. I expect that if the measure itself went to a general vote, the majority would be against it once they have to deal with a specific proposal. It takes repeated pushes by the authoritarians looking for an opp…

When you think about it, the idea of a representative democracy is rooted in the technical difficulties of implementing a direct democracy: both spread of information/discussion to the masses and organizing the votes. In this day and age, probably with a relatively tiny investment into public access points, we could very reasonably have a technically functional direct democracy. The legislative cycle is already authe…

You are confusing the ability to bring information to people, with the ability of people to consume it.

As has been mentioned elsewhere on the thread - the real issue is often there are complex 2nd and third order effects, often there are devils in the details.

I'm not saying people are not capable of consuming it, I'm saying people don't have the bandwidth.

Direct democracy is best when it's used for very specific proposals with lots of time for debate - not every decision.

If you use it for every decision, time poor citizens will end up at the mercy of professional story tellers.

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

#307

Post by harshreality »

philipallstar wrote: post #299
romankolpak wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the alternative? How do you solve the problem of not allowing children into online spaces where they shouldn’t be allowed in?

We should assign one or two adults to children who provide for them, and prevent various dangers, including online ones, from reaching them. It sounds like a lot of effort, but it is also the most important task on the planet.

A generation of kids have grown up with just such assigned adults, who overwhelmingly did not apply sufficient oversight to the kids' use of social media.

In large part that's because, if they'd done so, the kids would've been socially isolated from their peers, at least the most normal ones with the most normal parents, which are the kinds of friends most other normal parents want their kids to have.

It's a collective action problem, except instead of "I can be better off if I ignore what I know is best for society", it's "if I ignore what I know is best for my kids psychologically, they will still have friends, and social media brainrot is a lesser evil than socially isolating my kid from all the normal kids at school."

And also, giving kids social media interaction devices is a convenient form of babysitting. It reduces up-front effort of parenting.

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

#308

Post by Tade0 »

romankolpak wrote: post #298
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…

What’s the alternative? How do you solve the problem of not allowing children into online spaces where they shouldn’t be allowed in?

Parents who wish to have both the child and themselves remain sane are already watching over the way their offspring uses the internet.

Truth be told the worst kind of content is nominally child friendly - just incredibly addictive and overstimulating. We're all so preoccupied with preventing our children from looking at gore or porn or even meeting predators online that we forget that those who stand to make money on addictive content will pull every lever necessary.

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

#309

Post by bcjdjsndon »

shakna wrote: post #219
msy wrote: post #213

I find myself in an odd predicament. For nearly all my life I would have seen all of this as an unconscionable anathema. But having watched what social media has done to our society, the tsunami of bullshit collapsing critical thought, science and reason I just don’t think civilisation can survive this without controls. Too many people are too gullible, too uncritical for it to survive without the state being able to…

Wouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices, and improve things for everyone, rather than force the audience to carry the weight of responsibility?

> Wouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices

Hacker news has a doomscroll front page. Ive never notice you have a problem with it

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

#310

Post by big85 »

stretchwithme wrote: post #44

Maybe it should be possible for a parent to set a child age in a device. Everyone else can stay anonymous. I look forward to hearing why that won't work and what problems it will cause.

Parental controls. Client-side blocking of content. Apple's parental controls are so good that parents give young children unsupervised internet access--the entire generation if iPad babies. Current iPads even use on-device AI to detect nudity in photos and prevent them from being taken, sent, recieved, or viewed.
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