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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

#481

Post by WarmWash »

sph wrote: post #416
rockskon wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta is publicly posting ads in Europe promoting age verification, so yes Meta is a part of the problem.

What does Meta get out of enacting mass surveillance of the entire Western world (not even for their personal benefit)? That they can avoid spending 6 months implementing ID checks like porn sites have done? Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant

Meta reads the writing on the wall, and is committing to the position that age verification is inevitable and will come down eventually no matter what.

Meta, understanding that it will likely be the poster child for social media, knows that the laws will be likely written to make Meta enforce age verification on their platforms. This is expensive and ridden with liability traps, lawsuits, and government investigations.

SO

To stem the tide of this before it hits their shores, Meta is actively pushing hard to get age verification legislation in place on the OS level.

This would put Google, Apple, and Microsoft in the hot seat, and Meta can carry on while blaming them when kids get through cracks.

Meta is simply playing a strategy game to make everything shittier for everyone else (everyone uses an OS) in order to protect themselves (not everyone uses Meta).

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

#483

Post by angiolillo »

jvvw wrote: post #441
wcarss wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts. Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because th…

I don't agree with age verification, but there isn't anywhere 'set your children's ages in their device accounts' that limits their access to inappropriate content and social media. You can set age in Google Accounts, but they can access pretty much anything when they reach age 13 (which is about the age a lot of these things start to become a real problem) and as a parent you don't have any way to limit that. They d…

Agreed. Many parents I've spoken to want operating systems to provide a standard set of age and/or content flags that app stores and websites are required to respect.

But various groups are deliberately conflating that desire for self-attested flags with verification: Politicians who want to police speech, companies who want to advertise to verified humans, and privacy advocates who want an easier strawman to attack.

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

#484

Post by quectophoton »

saghm wrote: post #406
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things are still illegal for minors. I find that to be a rather weak argument.

They're implemented in a way that people who don't ever buy alcohol or cigarettes get effected by though. I can't feasibly opt out of the entire internet that I use to pay bills, schedule doctors appointments, file taxes, etc. because hypothetical children could use them to access completely unrelated things to those boring parts of my everyday life. The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of…

> The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of my house just in case I might decide to buy alcohol later.

More like requiring ID verification in fridges just to be able to open them, because they might contain alcohol (probably followed by RFID stuff or something).

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

#485

Post by triceratops »

mschuster91 wrote: post #451
triceratops wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they should be. Calling it "routine" is downplaying the seriousness of it though.

The routine is meant for the cops involvement. And that should not be routine.

Ah got it. Sorry about that. I thought you meant ending up in the hospital after drinking too much.

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

#486

Post by tosti »

ben_w wrote: post #427
fivetenpen wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity

> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. I suspect that depends on subtle phrasing. If for the sake of argument I presuppose that film classification ratings are necessary to protect children’s mental health, then the un-filtered contents of shock sites and porn sites will have had an impact even in the early years of the internet. However, the early year…

I don't think the distinction matters that much. Remember ogrish? I was already an adult when that gore came out and I was terrified. I can still picture the throat gasping for air as he was being sliced alive.

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

#487

Post by dormento »

jeroenhd wrote: post #227
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?

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.

Its so good Meta is sponsoring a bill that removes necessary accountability on their side by pushing responsibility to a third party, while at the same time getting accurate headcounts for the ad platform /s

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

#488

Post by odyssey7 »

sph wrote: post #474
odyssey7 wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answering this point directly, not the full argument. If Meta bans young people from their platforms, young people will just go to a different platform, and then Meta loses a generation of customers. But if the age blocking affects all platforms, then the playing field is kept equal with respect to age blocking.

Which other platforms? Age verification affects everyone equally. Any alternative platform that caters to young people that grows large enough will get the ban hammer, unless somehow someone manages to run a Facebook alternative out of Russia for people (kids?) to flock to. I still don’t think that is the case.

This might reflect a misunderstanding of my comment.

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

#489

Post by asah »

_AzMoo wrote: post #464
drob518 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In Australia, the government has certified OAuth2 Identity Providers which act as a broker between social media sites and a provider that can verify your age, such as a bank. This allows age to be verified by a provider, with the social media provider having no access to your identity. If the social media companies chose to support this, they would be complying with the legislation. It's not the government forcing yo…

can these banks/brokers sell the data?

can these banks/brokers get hacked?

I'd love to see a way for people to revoke/replace their personal info, kinda like rotating passwords or changing their names - but for street address, birthday, government ID numbers, etc.

Penalties (of any scale) are insufficient to ensure absolute security.

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

#490

Post by cluckindan »

nimbius wrote: post #477
drob518 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

the effort is being driven by a handful of tech and social media companies who have suddenly realized they cannot close the pandoras box of AI. without a meaningful headcount of real users, advertisers will begin to push back on cost or even reduce and eliminate spending on social media altogether. by proactively identifying real humans, you prevent the collapse of major social media outlets. by tracking their age an…

So now there is a market for verified identities. Good job making the numbers go up.

Besides, major social media platforms can just generate ”verified” profiles to fit a demographic. There is no way for advertisers to verify the audiences are genuine. Even CTR is meaningless unless conversion is tracked. This means Meta et al. will soon be actually buying/scalping advertised products and offloading them onto a secondary market.

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