Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

nonogra.ph

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 663 posts

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

#461

Post by order-matters »

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 simply dont care to control for higher order effects. they enjoy doing things on principle and then dealing with the effects seperately.

the principle of protecting children is strong. the solution of verification, no matter how poorly implemented, cannot be struck down while people are interested in persuing the principle it claims to represent.

the only other way around it is to come up with another solution that supports the principle and hope it gains more traction. but when the powers at be putting forth the verification may have ulterior motives to begin with, alternative solutions have a way of losing traction

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

#462

Post by LtWorf »

rini17 wrote: post #453
mpalmer wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freedom of expression is inseparable from the right to privacy. Should journalists be forced to reveal their sources if the subject of a claim sues for defamation?

Freedom of expression is not absolute and never was. Should everyone just shrug off anonymous hoaxes and hate speech?

Yes, the alternative is that you will only read state propaganda.

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

#463

Post by recursive-call »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #444
Nevermark wrote: post #379

Age verification starts the gating of Internet access by governments. Any site, with any concern about age of user liability, is likely to adopt the practice. Strong laws, sold on their face value safety benefits, will increase that liability. You won’t see any laws removing or limiting that liability. The trend will be many more sites becoming government-gated, than we are imagining now. Beyond surveillance, it’s a…

I agree. But it's not clear to me that the downsides of this outweigh the upsides. The government has control over many areas of life, and in most cases I feel that to be on balance a good thing, even though governments can be corrupt or inefficient. Consider some other domain, like roads. In every country, the government issues licenses that include photographic ID to residents to drive on roads; driving without a l…

That’s because the consequences of unsafe driving is people dying or being maimed. Other than suicide and that one incident with facebook, people do not die in appreciable numbers due to things that happen on the internet.

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

#465

Post by buellerbueller »

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…

>Criminals used to speak in code, meet clandestine, use burner phones and websites were easy to shut down.

And none of these things were ever made illegal.

>Ordinary people do not care about e2ee.

I am an ordinary person, and I care about the right to be secure and private in my communications. The founders of the United States put it in our Bill of Rights. Mail in America can't just be read without a warrant; it is protected by the 4th Amendment.

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

#466

Post by ligne »

Gigachad wrote: post #22
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.

What we need is more personal spaces. Less feeds, more small group chats with people you actually know. I'm totally fine with destroying Reddit/Twitter/etc

Reddit and Twitter can buy their way out of those problems (hell, they can buy their way out of trouble for literally generating sexual abuse content). What makes you think they'll be affected more than the operator of a little Mastodon server do the same?

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

#467

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

cdrini wrote: post #339
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…

I think there are many arguments for and against this type of regulation. Good arguments on both sides take into account nth-order effects. But both sides have different priorities, and have different weighing of the trade-offs. Calling one side effectively "thick" isn't really taking part in the debate. (And cause and effect are taught pretty early on in school; not sure you need to learn "systems thinking" to under…

Violation of rights to privacy — age verification ties an identity to the request, so if you’re surfing porn or browsing controversial threads, you could be flagged by law enforcement or the other third parties that the state might be sharing data with, such as insurance companies that might infer the wrong things about you. You could be blackmailed, too.

And then there’s also the leakage of those data points to rival nation states, in case of a security breach.

Plenty of bad nth order effects if you just think about it

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

#468

Post by hvs »

goalieca wrote: post #417
pc86 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "the authoritarians" (read: almost every politician at every level of government, but a drastically increasing percentage the higher you go) only need to get something passed once then it is there forever. Every law should have an automatic sunset period of 1-10 years that requires it to pass the entire legislative process again, or at least both full chambers + signing.

I remember the patriot act.

The Patriot Act is perfect example of the adage, "Never let a crisis go to waste."

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

#469

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

ccppurcell wrote: post #400
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…

I agree with your broader point but I'm always skeptical of the claim "we should teach xyz in schools!" Because, well, choose your least favourite subject at school. A language, history or geography, mathematics perhaps. How much do you remember? The reason you don't remember is because you weren't motivated to learn, since you didn't, at the time, think it worth learning. If you think kids are champing at the bit to…

And I agree with the commenter’s well-meaning, but we are technically teaching systems theory already in schools. If you’ve had classes in any of the natural sciences, you’ve had systems thinking. If you don’t remember a whit, well then, proves your point—it’s probably not that great of an idea afterall.

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

#470

Post by po1nt »

teiferer wrote: post #235
po1nt wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best level of democracy is no democracy. The problem of voting for road repairs is a problem we created by democracy. We voted ourselves into a system we can't escape, just because people back in the days couldn't fully comprehend side effects of their collective decisions. Very few people realize that there is option to not use government cohersion as a solution to everything. I know this is unpopular opinion. T…

> The best level of democracy is no democracy. That's a quite fatal view. I'm not going to defend the shortcomings of democracy as a system or the issues all real implementations have. But democracy has a feature that is unique about it: as long as it actually is a democracy, as soon as things go a way that the people don't like, they can do something about it and change course. For better or worse, but they can. Tha…

>There is much more to it, like a free conversation in society, strong independent education, journalism, justice, protection of minorities, etc.

All in theory. Otherwise we wouldn't debate this. Historically none of these traits are unique to democracy, but developed society. US had a civil war over protection of minorities even though it was considered a democracy.

>In a democracy you have an independent judical system that you can use against government overreach.

Which can only follow laws passed by the government. Separation of powers is not unique to democracy. Again the coercion mechanisms doesn’t matter, but the severity of it.

Post reply on HN