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UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

theregister.com

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Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#11

Post by resonious »

Bancakes wrote: post #6
alephnan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having credit cards on file is conveniently closer to making more money It will be a drastic change to pivot the company from one where the customer is the product to the customer. Credit card input also introduces friction and bounce rate of user signup. This would hurt Facebook's user growth and MAU KPIs

People already make accounts with phone numbers, I suspect credit cards won't be different.

It's a bit easier to memorize a phone number than a credit card number.

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#13

Post by hughrr »

Oh no they’re not.

People will start buying shitty VPNs advertised on prime time TV instead and entirely side step the issue but create two more at the same time.

Think we need a new national anthem now along the lines of https://youtu.be/P1CyPjQQTAM

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#15

Post by Freak_NL »

Bancakes wrote: post #6
alephnan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having credit cards on file is conveniently closer to making more money It will be a drastic change to pivot the company from one where the customer is the product to the customer. Credit card input also introduces friction and bounce rate of user signup. This would hurt Facebook's user growth and MAU KPIs

People already make accounts with phone numbers, I suspect credit cards won't be different.

The number of active credit card holders in the UK is somewhere in the 35 million range. The number of adults is somewhere over 56 million. There is quite a mismatch there. Unlike the US, owning a credit card is not standard for most people in the world.

People tend to get them for online shopping abroad, and for travels out of their currency zone as a back up.

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#16

Post by pdpi »

pharmakom wrote: post #10

They are also talking about doing it for Reddit, which makes me really sad.

There is no “talking about doing it for Reddit” here. Targeting a measure like this at specific companies is all sorts of gross, it has to be a case of what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

There’s no reasonable definition of who should and shouldn’t be affected by this where Facebook has to comply but Reddit doesn’t.

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#17

Post by boffinism »

This feels like it could be resolved by technology.

I am happy to identify myself to government entity A to prove my age, but I don't want A to know what sites I visit.

I want to visit site B, but I don't want to identify myself.

Is there no API that will allow B to verify my age via A, without A finding out what site B is, and without B finding out anything more than my age bracket?

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#18

Post by samwillis »

There was a thread about this yesterday [0], this is almost certainly not going to happen. I think based on the number of times they have tried to legislate for this, most recently in 2019, I would put the odds of it happening (even in a hamstrung way) at less than 10%.

Big company’s (Facebook, etc) will lobby against it, they will argue about what the threshold of requirement is. Then there is the logistics, privacy, security and cost factors. Not going to happen.

I believe this is all about making it look like politicians are doing “something” without actually doing anything.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30256984

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#19

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

mft_ wrote: post #8
barcoder wrote: post #3

In pre-Brexit Britain we were promised less friction on the internet because we wouldn't have to accept cookies [1]. Who would have thought there would be more friction for just about every part of British life? /s [1] https://preprod.metro.co.uk/2021/08/27/no-more-cookie-pop-up...

I get your dislike of Brexit (and such sentiments get votes on HN) but this isn’t ‘friction because of Brexit’ - a post Brexit government could choose to not do this at all, or choose to implement something better. It’s just an implementation of a crappy idea by a crappy government.

Setting aside Brexit itself, the government currently in power were elected partly on promises to cut such friction, not increase it.

But yeah, it's a crappy, incompetent government who are currently announcing all kinds of badly thought out populist ideas to distract attention from the trouble their leader is in.

Re: UK.gov to make adults give credit card details for access to Facebook or TikTok

#20

Post by mjfisher »

boffinism wrote: post #17

This feels like it could be resolved by technology. I am happy to identify myself to government entity A to prove my age, but I don't want A to know what sites I visit. I want to visit site B, but I don't want to identify myself. Is there no API that will allow B to verify my age via A, without A finding out what site B is, and without B finding out anything more than my age bracket?

I believe they're talking about doing that, but contracting out to approved 3rd parties instead of the government for age verification. I still don't trust them to do it securely, and I worry deeply about the chilling effect it will have on the internet as a whole.
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