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Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

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Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#111

Post by hackinthebochs »

heavyset_go wrote: post #74
edgyquant wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other stance is that most parents are not capable of winning a battle against tech giants for the mind of their children, just as parents were not capable of winning this fight with tobacco and alcohol companies.

The tech giants want this. They drafted the bill. They paid tens of millions of dollars to promote it. Think about that for a minute.

They want it because it absolves them of responsibility for what their app does to kids. They can then just point to the existence of an already working mechanism for parents to intervene. The alternative would be for each app to implement stringent age verification or redesign itself to avoid addictive patterns. Neither option is good for their earnings.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#113

Post by MSFT_Edging »

ndriscoll wrote: post #98
heavyset_go wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS To be honest, I worry that the framing of this legislation and ZKP generally presents a false dichotomy, where second-option bias[1] prevails because of the draconian first option. There's always another option: don't implement age verification laws a…

> App and website developers shouldn't be burdened with extra costly liability Why not? Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children. As far as I know, strip clubs are liable for who enters. Selling alcohol to a child carries personal criminal liability for store clerks. Assuming society decides to restrict something from children, why should online businesses be exempt? On who…

> Physical businesses have liability if they provide age restricted items to children.

These are often clear cut. They're physical controlled items. Tobacco, alcohol, guns, physical porn, and sometimes things like spray paint.

The internet is not. There are people who believe discussions about human sexuality (ie "how do I know if I'm gay?") should be age restricted. There are people who believe any discussion about the human form should be age restricted. What about discussions of other forms of government? Plenty would prefer their children not be able to learn about communism from anywhere other than the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

The landscape of age restricting information is infinitely more complex than age restricting physical items. This complexity enables certain actors to censor wide swaths of information due to a provider's fear of liability.

This is closer to a law that says "if a store sells an item that is used to damage property whatsoever, they are liable", so now the store owner must fear the full can of soda could be used to break a window.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#114

Post by SkyeCA »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #81

I don't understand why nobody in the comments is freaked out about this. This isn't just "oh Google knows my age", or "oh politicians being corrupt again!" This is "the government made a law that every computer in the world must track every person's identity and send it to the cloud". No offline devices. Commercial vendors get your biometric data (and the equivalent of your driver's license / SSN). Every application…

> I don't understand why nobody in the comments is freaked out about this.

Because it's hopeless? It's been proven time and time again there's nothing the average person can do to fight this sort of thing.

It's just better to sit back and watch as everything gets ruined.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#115

Post by PeterisP »

What I'm confused about is how the proposed bills would apply to servers.

Like, in general, a software change to add an "age class" attribute to user accounts and a syscall "what's this attribute for the current user account" would satisfy the California bill and that's a relatively minor change (the bad part is the NY bill that allegedly requires technical verification of whatever the user claimed).

The weird issue is how should that attribute be filled for the 'root' or 'www-data' user of a linux machine I have on the cloud. Or, to put aside open source for that matter, the Administrator account on a Windows Active Directory system.

Because "user accounts" don't necessarily have any mapping (much less a 1-to-1 mapping) to a person; many user accounts are personal but many are not.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#116

Post by tclancy »

neya wrote: post #94

Damn, had to scroll a couple of comments to find this: Anthropic donated $20 million to Public First Action, a PAC that promotes Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and her sponsored Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), a bill that will force everyone to scan their faces and IDs to use the internet under the guise of saving the children. The legislative angle taken by companies like Anthropic is that they will provide the…

Christ on a crutch, had they donated $25k or something you'd figure it was just a rounding error, but why this much from a company that isn't profitable? This is doing nothing to disabuse me of my theory 90% of "Startup Culture" is just an excuse for rich people to move money around. "Need to get your stoned mope of a C student a head-start on a resume that will let him stay gainfully employed? Well, I just brokered a VC deal for these kids that want to throw micro-concerts in parking spaces, we'll get your boy in as Senior Music Programmer."

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#117

Post by qup »

mijoharas wrote: post #78
himata4113 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! This is the way, give parents the ABILITY to advertise the users age to browsers, apps and everything in between. Only target cooperations, do not target open source projects. Fine websites for not using this API (ex: porn sites). Assume an adult if not present.

This is what I think. I saw someone else on HN suggested provide an `X-User-Age` header to these sites, and provide parents with a password protected page to set that in the browser/OS. Responsibility should be on the website to not provide the content if the header is sent with an inappropriate age, and for the parent to set it up on the device, or to not provide a child a device without child-safe restrictions. It…

Seems simple until you try to figure out what's allowed for what age, which surely will differ by country at a minimum.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#118

Post by gosub100 »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #41
Chance-Device wrote: post #7

TLDR: Meta want to push all the age verification requirements onto the OS makers (Apple, Google, everyone else gets caught in the crossfire) so that they don’t have to do anything AND they want it done in such a way that they can use it to profile people to push them targeted ads. Its like they want to keep being seen as the bad guys.

I want age verification but not at the OS level.

I want reverse age verification that lists the ages of every social network post. I think a lot of people that criticize social network toxicity don't realize their interlocutors are half their age. It's not one-to-one, meaning maturity doesn't follow from age, but I think there would be some affordances made in both directions. A younger person would be less surprised that a 60+ yr old would hold certain views. And vice versa.

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#119

Post by iamnothere »

gzread wrote: post #101
iamnothere wrote: post #64

For a project attempting to track these and coordinate technical resistance, see: https://github.com/AntiSurv/oss-anti-surveillance These bills also need to be opposed on a legal/political level. Something I realized last night is that people who lie about their age to send false signals may inadvertently open themselves up to CFAA liability (a felony ). So this is a serious matter for users who want to maintain anon…

I believe CFAA talks about exceeding authorization, not just typing in things that are not true.

CFAA has been narrowed in scope through legal decisions but AFAIK it still applies to anyone using false information to bypass security measures. In my view, a federal prosecutor could easily make the argument that age gating is a security measure. You’re welcome to be a test case if you disagree!

Re: Meta Platforms: Lobbying, dark money, and the App Store Accountability Act

#120

Post by graemep »

pjc50 wrote: post #35
tasuki wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My stance is that if somebody is a minor, his/her/their parents/tutors/legal guardian are responsible for what they can/cannot do online As a parent, sure, that is my stance as well. What... what other stances are there even? How would they work?

The steelman argument is that parents are not necessarily up to date on the technology, and cannot reasonably be expected to supervise teenagers 24/7 up to the age of 18. Compare movie ratings or alcohol laws, for example: there's a non-parental obligation on third parties not to provide alcohol to children or let them in to R18 showings. But the implementation matters, and almost all of these bills internationally a…

In the UK parents can give children alcohol below the age of 18. parents get to make the final decision at home so I do not think its really comparable.

I would personally favour allowing parents to buy drinks for children below the current limits (18 without a meal, 16 for wine, beer and cider with a meal).

The alternative to this is empowering parents by regulating SIM cards (child safe cards already exist) and allowing parents to control internet connectivity either through the ISP or at the router - far better than regulating general purpose devices. The devices come with sensible defaults that parents can change.

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