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

android-developers.googleblog.com

321–330 of 549 posts

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

#321

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 sensible solution doesn't build a consumer profile for resale and government surveillance.

Imagine, starts much earlier, everyone has a birth certificate. /s

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

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Force a PEGI-like system for every apps please. It would be awesome.

PEGI: Pan-European Game Information, a video game content rating system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEGI>

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

#323

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…

Parents haven't asked for help keeping their children from driving their car though.

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

#324
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… but how many people really believe that will happen? Fight together with everyone else, or when stage 2 (“full KYC”) is implemented you won’t have any leverage.

It won’t because KYC is a legal process and you don’t want to prophets that across the entire system with bypasses for it. That’s legal trouble waiting to happen. Yes, Google also wants to tie back to legal identities to sell ads. I’m not saying they’re doing this in good faith, but proxies like this get messy and dangerous for legal/compliance.

"you don’t want to prophets that across the entire system"?

Typo? But it's hard to tell what.

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

#325
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In real life, it doesn't work like this for most people. In real life, kids want something and either the parents agree to buy that and then they no longer bother with that device or the kid saves its money trades something and get that device. The idea that a kid gets an expensive device that can't buy by itself and the parents have control or what device the kid gets is a very middle-class assumption. Life isn't th…

With all due respect, this just sounds like justification for lazy parenting. We're 2 generations into the digital era: parents of such an era should have enough digital literacy to make sure their kids do not get in danger.

Let's use another analog: Kids want sweets and parents either agree to buy that and no longer bother with their diet, or saves money to go to the candy store. Yet if a kid gets too unhealthy we (IMO, rightfully) have CPS sent to their house to investigate their home life.

Kids were never meant to be a convenience. And parents talked about here aren't rich enough to delegate their parenting off to someone else. Take a few hours to research what you give to your kid and monitor what they might get outside of your vision.

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

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, without this you’re handing the power to decide what is “appropriate” to someone else.

> you’re handing the power to The user?

I’m in favor of voluntarily giving the user (device owner) full control over what categories of content they want to allow. Age buckets don’t do that.

(This includes giving the option for “everything is allowed” without any kind of verification. You bought it, you own it.)

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

#327

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 shown that they will abuse any personal information that is shared with them

This is the rot at the center of tech IMO. We have all these wondrous toys but we can't do something as simple as verify age without abuse. What's the point of all this tech if we can't trust any of it?

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

#328
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reality, the ones making such check will want extra capabilities 'just in case' as we observe now, or just go for simpler solution because it's cheaper. How does it prevent fingerprinting if you get access to both logs and try to time it? Even more so if you include already present tracking infrastructure, which as a government you can just request data from. It is possible to de-anonymize people based on aggregat…

> How does it prevent fingerprinting if you get access to both logs and try to time it? Even more so if you include already present tracking infrastructure, which as a government you can just request data from. True, but as this problem exists without any ID at all*, I don't see how the addition of the ID cards makes any difference? > It is possible to de-anonymize people based on aggregate data already, and this pro…

>The options-space for doing this appears to be:

(0) give up

...

(n) waste resources

yeah, i think current state is good enough, might as well slap regulation and ban any form of targetted ads.

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

#329
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the child can also go and buy a porn magazin, which is likely to be eventually found by the parent, just like the burner phone you suggest. The former is also going to be cheaper.

Guess what they check before they sell the kid a porn magazine

So you're suggesting resellers require ID's to sell smartphones? I completely agree. Not much difference between a porn magazine and a portal to infinite porn magazines.

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

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it should be. Make the Internet 18+ by default and sites targeted at younger audiences can add a more detailed rating. Let people configure their devices however they like it. The whole problem with the regulation we have right now is that it assumes the Internet is for kids, and everything for adults must be hidden. When we really just should declare the whole Internet as 18+ and the sites for kids should…

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 Wikipedia can't put in the effort with those millions in donations to get an age rating? I guess not. We know Youtube will.
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