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Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#171

Post by account42 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #80
sevenzero wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its the same thing with Europe allowing scans of private chats now. Nobody would tolerate a person opening the letters from ur physical mail box and reading through each of them just to see if you do [insert illegal activity]. But once this stuff happens digitally, people seem to simply tolerate it. If I remember correctly, in 2019 there were huge protests against upload filters were people actually protested on the…

The authorities open letters all the time. Try sending a letter to prison without it getting scanned. The problem with this comparison is that the authorities can open a letter if they need to for various well-intended reasons, but they cannot open an encrypted message. Either the authorities can scan all messages, or they can scan no messages, there's no inbetween. The mandate to verify age before selling alcohol ha…

And if everyone is treated the same as someone who has been tried and convicted of a crime worthy of incarceration we are well into the dystopia.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#172

Post by owbt »

inigyou wrote: post #116
owbt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who? The lawmakers? I believe banning children up to a certain age from having Internet-enabled mobile devices is a good starting point, and both child protection services and law enforcement services should fully cooperate with parents in enforcing that ban. If you see a kid smoking a cigarette or taking drugs, you know parents have failed somewhere along the road and it would be preferable if the government could s…

This is a reasonable perspective, but don't you think the internet has the potential to do good as well as evil? I remember seeing some interactive lever applet as a kid where you could move the fulcrum. (Slightly) educational stuff. Shouldn't that be allowed?

I have a feeling that, currently, the cons outweigh the pros. Maybe if the digital landscape changes in the future, then we can reconsider those limitations. So far, the mobile Internet - the apps mainly - is a hostile environment for a young human, and I'd say they are pretty dangerous to the adults too.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#173

Post by owbt »

ranger_danger wrote: post #166
owbt wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who? The lawmakers? I believe banning children up to a certain age from having Internet-enabled mobile devices is a good starting point, and both child protection services and law enforcement services should fully cooperate with parents in enforcing that ban. If you see a kid smoking a cigarette or taking drugs, you know parents have failed somewhere along the road and it would be preferable if the government could s…

In many schools in the US now, kids are issued mandatory iPads from age 5 and are required to use them to complete school assignments.

That is extremely upsetting.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#175

Post by docjay »

trentor wrote: post #141
sschueller wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we need to verify age? You can't tell me that these social media companies don't already know exactly how old someone is just based on the enormous data that is collected.

If you want to use a service that is age restricted either by law or the company providing it how else would you do it? It's the same IRL. I don't like it as well and we certainly lived through the wild wild west times in the 90s and 00s but the more something gets economical important the more scrutiny it gets. Maybe we just need something new.

Well these kind of laws are trying to legislate technology into existence; we don’t have a means to do it, yet “we demand for the technology to exist through ‘reasonable methods’, now get to work.”

If that’s the nearly infinite wiggle room we’re playing with then I’d say what about Adult and Child versions of phones? You have to flash your ID to the clerk to buy an adult one, like buying cigarettes at a gas station, and then you get to do what the internet offers. Child phones - let parents and governments come up with whatever they want to block. The phone autoupdates in the background with the blocklist, the device can’t do those things. There ya go. Each person and family gets to make their own choices and nobody has to give an ID card to PornHub or a company that literally exists to harvest your information. Win-win?

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#176

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

RandomGerm4n wrote: post #154

I'm fundamentally opposed to age verification because it usually leads to mandatory account creation no matter how privacy friendly the age verification process itself may be. It's already extremely annoying that, for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. Furthermore, the whole thing also reinforces monopolies. Once you've verified your age on one platform, the barrier to switch…

I wonder if it would work to make it illegal to sell ad impressions of underage people. Do whatever you want as long as you can prove its being done to adults, or prove you have no economic incentive to algorithmically engagement bait

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#177

Post by mapontosevenths »

Okawari wrote: post #161
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #16

I find myself stuck on the fence with age checks. Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause. And market forces are not working to correct things. It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter. This is where regulation is supposed to come in. At the same time, c…

We have cars, and kids are not allowed to drive them. Yet we do not have mechanisms in place to ensure kids aren't driving cars because the responsibility falls on the parents, and it works. By and large, parents understand the threats and navigate this requirement perfectly fine; outliers are few enough that we can deal with them on an individual basis. The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unf…

> The reason the current system doesn't work when it comes to unfettered internet access is either that parents by and large don't actually agree with the threat assessment of said internet access for kids, or they ignore it because the consequences of doing so are disproportionately small.

Sometimes parents know their children, and what's best for them, better than faceless politicians (who we've seen are often attracted to said children for some reason).

Growing up in my household there was a time when I was allowed to read and watch whatever I found interesting. My younger brother was not. That was because my parents knew us and judged that at my level of maturity I was unlikely to be negatively impacted, whereas my brother would get nightmares or copy-cat things he saw that he definitely shouldn't.

That's how it should be. Yes, there are bad parents who will decide poorly. That's the cost of freedom.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#179

Post by Steltek »

RandomGerm4n wrote: post #154

I'm fundamentally opposed to age verification because it usually leads to mandatory account creation no matter how privacy friendly the age verification process itself may be. It's already extremely annoying that, for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. Furthermore, the whole thing also reinforces monopolies. Once you've verified your age on one platform, the barrier to switch…

> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating.

I'm afraid you'd get the cookie banner problem but way worse. Everyone that's not Meta/Google/Apple would immediately add a legal CYA "18+" age rating and stop thinking any more about it.

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