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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

#291

Post by wowyouredumb »

mrtksn wrote: post #222
vorpalhex wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is a parents issue. If you are depending on the police to keep your kid from doing drugs, you have failed as a parent. I promise you, your kid can locate drugs better than the cops can arrest low level dealers. You as a parent need to teach your kid how to behave (mostly through things like teaching ethics and morals) not by running a safe prison until your kid is 18. And yes, I am a parent of multiple kid…

I agree, however the problem is that large number of parents can't do that and it becomes a societal issue. That's why we are talking about that, otherwise it would have been private family issue. Drugs, alcohol, teen pregnancy and now social media has become societal issue as enough parents failed to control their kids actions or development.

I think Darwin had a solution to that.

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

#292

Post by saltcured »

fn-mote wrote: post #272
izend wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a parent? I have personally used the parental controls on Android, iOS and ChromeOS and to be honest they are terrible. Issues with syncing changes, the terrible UX for parental access control (iOS...), issues around audit/access logs, issues around prompting the parent for access. I am honestly shocked that Apple known for its polished experience hasn't been forced by angry parents. My daughter's school actu…

> my daughter was caught playing web games in class Hilarious to me. The biggest game of whack-a-mole ever. I would love to know if this lockdown was successful (and if so, how it worked). In my city, there is a district that is so “locked down” that the images from Wikipedia don’t even load. But guess what? Kids still find ways to play games.

Of course, that whack-a-mole is an intrinsic part youth and adolescence too. I think back to my mostly analogue school days. We found ways to disobey and amuse ourselves in the classroom.

Imagine pusing for locked down paper so kids can't pass notes nor make spit-wads and airplanes. Or locked down pens to prevent tic-tac-toe, doodling, lewd drawings, or scrawling graffiti on those old desks.

Some kind of KYC rules so that the older kids at school cannot pass their broader understanding of the world and cussing vocabulary down to the impressionable younger kids. Age restrictions on the trail to the woods, where kids somehow always knew about that stash of dirty magazines...

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

#293

Post by charcircuit »

prartichoke wrote: post #66

What a pain reading this blog post. It's about them complying with recent regulations, but they never mention it once: they word it so it sounds like they are doing this out of the good of their hearts. The words "law," "regulation," or "compliance" do not appear once, despite being the entire reason the post exists. Also on the "privacy-preserving tool", technically apps get a bracket ("16–17") instead of a birthdat…

Google has always had your birthday.

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

#294

Post by mrguyorama »

fsflover wrote: post #184
ben_w wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In principle, it is possible to make a privacy-preserving age check. Site/app asks "≥18?", device generates a UUID specifically for that [app/domain + device], the device passes that UUID to government database along with the "≥18?" question and the ID card info but not the app/domain, government database gives the answer and signs just the UUID and the answer and doesn't include any ID card info. Government doesn't…

> Government doesn't know what you're looking at, website doesn't know your ID. But then the government knows your location at any point of time and how often you use websites requiring the age check. Also, if your device is configured to do it automatically, a child can also follow this verification.

Google and Verizon sell that data to the government right now. The US's official position is that buying info they aren't legally allowed to collect is perfectly fine, as if you were given a privacy right in the constitution only to enable an info broker economy, and not because of the obvious and understood harms of the government having whatever info about you they want.

If you want the US government to not know something about you, unfortunately there's a lot of changes that need to happen, including entirely new political parties and making changes to the Supreme Court, and popular support for taking the privacy rights you already have much more seriously.

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

#295

Post by Zak »

1718627440 wrote: post #214
mrtksn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're making the mistake of assuming that every kid has access to identified device and that device is under parent control. You can't make this assumption because that's not true. It might be true for some middle class helicopter parents that have iPhones and time to manage and keep it under strict control but there are non-middle class kids out there who just use whatever device they can get their hands on and the…

How many children, actually have the money to buy themself another smartphone, or get a smartphone gifted by random people? I bet that's very rare.

The commercial value of a ten year old smartphone in a wealthy country is approximately $0. It's probably not terribly hard for a determined child who goes to school and has friends to obtain one.

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

#296

Post by polipputter »

inigyou wrote: post #131
sevenzero wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small example would be to set the device into "kiosk mode" which many companies use for their employee devices too. Prevent app installs, check what pages ur kids visit with their browsers and whatnot. Just make sure to be open about it so you don't hurt your kids by violating their privacy and trust towards you. Hell we even got parents having their kids take air tags with them so the parents know where they are.

Or the device could be mandated to have a "child mode" with more specific restrictions designed for children.

[dead]

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

#297

Post by warkdarrior »

ooterness wrote: post #253
reorder9695 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me to fully drop google someone needs to create something compatible with Android Auto in my car, it doesn't sound like a big deal but that's a big enough thing for me to need it now.

Buy a separate tablet and a roll of duct tape. If you're careful, you can completely cover whatever obsolete nonsense is built into the car.

Is there an open-source alternative to Android Auto? It cannot be a regular tablet app, its UI has to be adapted to car driving (bigger buttons and simplified UI, at a minimum) and it should make use of the car ECU data.

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

#298

Post by cute_boi »

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…

Exactly. In the future, to view a youtube video we will need create a Gmail account, we'll need a phone, SMS verification, an ID card, and we'll probably have to rotate your head two or three times and talk to some AI.

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

#299

Post by 1dom »

account42 wrote: post #170
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…

And instead of an age you could even make the indication about what is potentially objectionable so that parents can choose when to allow their kids to see what - and adults can also choose to avoid certain things.

I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them.

I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset.

I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission slips to websites aimed at kids before they would create an account for me.

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

#300

Post by nativeit »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #142
K0nserv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps. I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of ra…

I want the market solving this but I don’t want to give any information to anyone who asks. I want Apple to verify me once, and then others to trust Apple that the device accessing their service is owned by someone over 18. I’ll bet that most people are in the same boat - they trust their device manufacturer with information like their credit card number, but not anyone else. And I think it’s a pragmatic compromise.

I’d personally prefer if nobody verified me ever, and people stopped asking for it altogether. It’s not a compromise, because nothing about this is pragmatic, necessary, or for any benefit of society—this is yet more creeping authoritarian control, and I’m absolutely floored how readily everyone else bends over for it. I say no. Fuck no. I will sabotage and obfuscate every aspect of this at every opportunity.

The people clutching pearls and screaming “what about the children” can deliver universal healthcare, child care, parental leave, and free education FIRST, and then I will extend a modicum of trust for their overriding “concerns”. Until then, I’m gonna treat this as the bad faith power grab that it very clearly is.

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