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The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

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

#431

Post by cowboylowrez »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #426
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Too many people expressing themselves on the internet with nothing that can be done against them... From a government perspective, it is a gold mine to know who's on the internet. For advertisers it is another goldmine - you can target at will without having to figure out first some demographics. An probably there are some angles I don't yet see, but the fact that this is a concentrated effort across the world make m…

I agree with this especially as these laws specifically still allow kids to carry smartphones and use them away from parents watchful eye. There is no protection here. Get the kids off of the internet, there is nothing good for them there.

Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids. as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that.

The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.

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

#432

Post by patrickk »

bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...

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

#433

Post by lbnzuni »

LunicLynx wrote: post #429
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children. But the way it is done is weird for sure. But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent? Or is your point that the internet should be used by children? If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content? From my point of view we are…

> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents

Yea wouldn’t want to have parents be involved and managing what their kids interact with. What?

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

#434

Post by spicyusername »

LunicLynx wrote: post #429
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children. But the way it is done is weird for sure. But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent? Or is your point that the internet should be used by children? If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content? From my point of view we are…

I don't think it's a given that this can't be partly or mostly policed by parents if they were provided good tools to do so.

As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster.

So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.

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

#435

Post by ethbr1 »

Amezarak wrote: post #399
ethbr1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [World leaders] see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed. This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web. It's what the original 90s crypto wars were about: the right of individuals to access strong encryption to preserve the privacy of their communications from the government. Absent that, pandora's…

> This has been true ever since the creation of the internet and web. It's true that some have always seen it this way, but it's become much more salient in the current political context. The average politician 30 years ago was barely aware of what the Internet was - it wasn't a major concern. For a brief period, the prevailing (but not only, as you mention with encryption) attitude was that the information superhigh…

I think the slide towards control rather than freedom on the internet is more subtle than that.

   1. Increased centralization (FAANG et al.)
   2. Larger tech entities willing (and able) to strike deals with government in exchange for favors
   3. All governments always wanting more power over citizens
   4. Today
This isn't a left vs right thing, as both sides have come up with kooky internet-control schemes.

It's a 'centralization breeds coercion' thing.

The antidote to that is decentralization (especially breaking up large firms) and an individual right to privacy (including the technical methods to ensure it).

Imagine DeCSS today! Facebook and Google and Microsoft and Apple would get calls, then Anthropic and OpenAI, and the key would be wiped off large portions of the internet.

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

#436

Post by drob518 »

bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.

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

#437

Post by like_any_other »

spicyusername wrote: post #434
LunicLynx wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children. But the way it is done is weird for sure. But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent? Or is your point that the internet should be used by children? If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content? From my point of view we are…

I don't think it's a given that this can't be partly or mostly policed by parents if they were provided good tools to do so. As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster. So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.

Nonsense. They've already passed so many laws giving parents easy-to-use tools to manage their kids internet access, and other laws that make unlocking internet access for children that aren't yours just as illegal as buying them alcohol.

It was only after all of that failed, with no measurable effect, that our governments, reluctantly and as a last resort, proposed these privacy-destroying measures. And even then, they respected their citizens' rejection of these proposals [1].

I mean I didn't actually check that this is how it went, but with all the lecturing about "democracy" from our rulers, surely that's how they went about it, right?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707719

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

#438

Post by MSFT_Edging »

sph wrote: post #346
jeroenhd wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has been documented for sponsoring these bills in the USA. But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives. I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.

That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it. It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278

It's still in their interest to offload the responsibility to legislation so they're not held accountable for frying kids brains.

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

#439

Post by choo-t »

LunicLynx wrote: post #429
bArray wrote: post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children. But the way it is done is weird for sure. But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent? Or is your point that the internet should be used by children? If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content? From my point of view we are…

>But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents

Why should we aim to do that ? Who give internet-enables device to their children? In most cases, who give pay for their internet access?

> So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.

Defining the problem, and if it exist altogether should be a good start. I'm not even sure the problem is defined, even less it need a solution so badly that we should kill everyone privacy for it.

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

#440

Post by verytrivial »

I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity.

Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"?

I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the world's social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here either.

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