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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

#301

Post by StingyJelly »

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…

> Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause

> This is where regulation is supposed to come in.

This is such a misdirected effort... Why the heck are we focusing on addressing those problems for a small subset of population (kids) while creating even bigger problems for the rest? Lets regulate those companies into actually addressing the problems they cause for everyone!

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

#303

Post by warkdarrior »

gnoll_of_gozag wrote: post #230
user43928 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would that make sense? If anything, I would imagine that Google's changes are motivated by driving traffic to their Google Play Store, where they make billions in commissions. Once this framework is in place for the Google Play Store, perhaps they can lobby for strict age verification laws, and then tell developers who publish outside of Google Play that they are responsible for compliance themselves.

people on discord get sniped semi regularly by fraudulent child exploitation reports

And these Discord child exploitation reports are sent to Google? And Google enforces them by locking down the user's Android phone?

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

#304

Post by jck86 »

Half the internet will be gated in the next two years. If you thought mfa for every silly little site was utterly annoying and social media was an invasion of your privacy then this next wave of digital surveilance will finally turn you into a tech luddite.

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

#305

Post by MyMemoryfails »

Noaidi wrote: post #267
arielcostas wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not like this argument. Does an adult theater let anyone in without an ID? Do movie theaters let kids under 18 into an R rated movie without ID? Why do we think this should be different on the internet? I don't like this one either. Does the cinema store the ID (or information extracted from said ID) of every single user visiting, along with what they've watched, on electronic records that can and will eventua…

> On the cinema you show your ID to the person in front of you, they check the birth date, if it's valid (and not an obvious forgery) and if the photo matches the person providing it. This is something that can be done online as well. Capitalism is controllable.

Governments aren't clearly willing to regulate the companies. They just let them do whatever they want once they're too big to regulate. Internet Companies has 20 years of history of datamining for sake advertising. Still nothing is done about, why even allow them obtain even more leverage?

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

#306

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

> 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.

This could be done with setting the age too. Kids don't have their own money and can't sign their own cell contracts, their parents do, and during the phone setup process, the parent could set "the owner of this phone is a minor" checkmark, set the age of birth (so it auto "unlocks" at 18), add a parental password to manually unlock for whatever app needed (or reset or change the setting). Then the phone would just send "user_is_a_minor" flag to whatever and/or filter the 18+ stuff.

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

#307

Post by masfuerte »

mrguyorama wrote: post #285
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So kids shouldn’t have access to sites like Wikipedia? Banning the internet is not the correct solution many kids depend on the internet to have access to education. The argument could be made for banning social media but the whole internet I don’t think it’s the correct approach

If we had a "Safe for everyone" public internet and a locked down "Prove you are an adult" internet beside it, nothing prevents wikipedia from being on the Safe for Everyone internet. Also, Encarta was a thing. Expensive though. Some states would legislate wikipedia onto the "Adults only" web though because they don't like what it says about things like abortion and trans people. A lot of ecommerce companies would pr…

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

#308

Post by adiabatichottub »

mrguyorama wrote: post #285
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So kids shouldn’t have access to sites like Wikipedia? Banning the internet is not the correct solution many kids depend on the internet to have access to education. The argument could be made for banning social media but the whole internet I don’t think it’s the correct approach

If we had a "Safe for everyone" public internet and a locked down "Prove you are an adult" internet beside it, nothing prevents wikipedia from being on the Safe for Everyone internet. Also, Encarta was a thing. Expensive though. Some states would legislate wikipedia onto the "Adults only" web though because they don't like what it says about things like abortion and trans people. A lot of ecommerce companies would pr…

Well... Wikipedia has content that some would consider offensive or unsuitable for children. I'm not in favor of limiting any access to Wikipedia, but I'd consider it a certainty that the day would come when Wikipedia had to decide whether to implement age restrictions or try to police content. I believe that event would change it's governance and social structure in a negative way and significantly degrade it as a public resource.

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

#309

Post by neilv »

> The Play Age Signals API is a privacy-preserving tool that puts parents in the driver's seat allowing them to share their child's age range (e.g. 16-17) directly with apps.

Sounds like an adtech targeting demographic, not protecting children.

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