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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

#111

Post by nephihaha »

sschueller wrote: post #46
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…

Why do we need to verify age? You can't tell me that these social media companies don't already know exactly how old someone is just based on the enormous data that is collected.

Because it's all about bringing in digital ID and gated internet. Not age.

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

#112

Post by roblabla »

inigyou wrote: post #91
palata wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not completely true. With ZKP, if you make a business out of reselling tokens you get with your own identity, eventually they will see that you use orders of magnitude more tokens than normal people. So with ZKP it's more difficult to cheat. Not impossible, just less accessible.

They're not ZK if they can do that

Each individual proof is zero knowledge, but downloading a _bunch_ of them is an indicator, yes. There's no real way to work around this with the current ZKP scheme. I'd argue ZKP is, in theory, the least worse option of all current age verification scheme.

My personal opinion is that age verification itself is a bad idea, but if we're going to go ahead with it, I'd much rather we use ZKP for it than the current mess of "upload your passport and picture of yourself to dodgy 3rd parties that likely now have your browsing traffic associated with your real name"...

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

#113

Post by amazingamazing »

neuroticnews25 wrote: post #98
amazingamazing wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental controls don’t solve all of the issues. The same way telling your kids not to do drugs is not a solution to vaping use.

If you don't even try to use simple available measures to prevent your own child from vaping then it's unfair to say you have zero tolerance for children vaping.

Strange comment, plenty of parents try and fail to stop their kids to do certain things.

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

#114

Post by IshKebab »

sunaookami wrote: post #27

This coordinated worldwide effort at the same time is very creepy.

I think this is actually a reaction to the over-reaching laws various governments are enacting. This is the way it should work - parents check a box that says "the user is 13 years old", and then apps and websites can see what the parent set.

This is much much better than having to do face scans and credit checks etc. to prove to some sketchy third party that you are over 18.

I think if Google had bothered to do this 5 years ago we might not be in the shitty situation we are now, but it's probably too late now.

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

#115

Post by throwa356262 »

sschueller wrote: post #34
xinayder wrote: post #11

Can't we build a gateway in the internet that detects if someone is a influential CEO or something and just bar access to the internet?

If you have more than 100 million in the bank you should be barred from using the internet...

Good idea, you got my vote!

... unfortunately I don't have a vote according to Tobi

https://fortune.com/2026/07/27/shopify-ceo-voting-rights-str...

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

#116

Post by inigyou »

owbt wrote: post #60
inigyou wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What should they do about it?

Who? The lawmakers? I believe banning children up to a certain age from having Internet-enabled mobile devices is a good starting point, and both child protection services and law enforcement services should fully cooperate with parents in enforcing that ban. If you see a kid smoking a cigarette or taking drugs, you know parents have failed somewhere along the road and it would be preferable if the government could s…

This is a reasonable perspective, but don't you think the internet has the potential to do good as well as evil? I remember seeing some interactive lever applet as a kid where you could move the fulcrum. (Slightly) educational stuff. Shouldn't that be allowed?

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

#117

Post by inigyou »

roblabla wrote: post #112
inigyou wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not ZK if they can do that

Each individual proof is zero knowledge, but downloading a _bunch_ of them is an indicator, yes. There's no real way to work around this with the current ZKP scheme. I'd argue ZKP is, in theory, the least worse option of all current age verification scheme. My personal opinion is that age verification itself is a bad idea, but if we're going to go ahead with it, I'd much rather we use ZKP for it than the current mess…

So the government would impose a maximum limit on the number of porn sites you can visit each day?

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

#118

Post by jeroenhd »

cluckindan wrote: post #95
jeroenhd wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authorities open letters all the time. Try sending a letter to prison without it getting scanned. The problem with this comparison is that the authorities can open a letter if they need to for various well-intended reasons, but they cannot open an encrypted message. Either the authorities can scan all messages, or they can scan no messages, there's no inbetween. The mandate to verify age before selling alcohol ha…

Communicating via PGP encrypted snail mail seems an attractive option.

It would make for a good alternative, but so would any app that doesn't implement scanning. If they can force Signal to implement client-side scanning or ban it entirely, they can do the same to PGP software. In theory you could do RSA by hand, but it would require a lot of hard work.

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

#119

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jeroenhd wrote: post #83
tjpnz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until relatively recently you would have to install custom VPNs and maybe add Pihole into the mix to achieve anything close to that. Easy for us here, but we're in a small minority.

Parental controls have been part of mobile devices for years, but so have bypasses. For instance, you can bypass Google's parental control settings by opening the help page in the Google settings and clicking links until you get to the Google homepage. I doubt it matters because nobody seems to configure the parental controls that are there, anyway. Only schools seem to try, and only because they're legally held resp…

Parental controls are complicated and obscure, IME. Setting up a child to play Minecraft through Microsoft was like setting up a web server with firewalls and reverse proxy... only less sensible. I'd appreciate that is so they can get parents to set accounts as 'adult' so Microsoft can exploit them.

You can set up, for example a child friendly DNS (Family version of OpenDNS) then Firefox come along and bypass it (DoH).

Probably, we need an OS level setting, per account, browsers would need to expose it to websites, apps installed would have to check and provide content according to local legislation/rules. Bypasses would have to be performed by an "adult" account.

The main issue is that adults would be able to set themselves as children and avoid negative commercial activity. That's a problem because it means FANG, etc, will lobby against it and then ensure their implementations are convoluted and broken.

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

#120

Post by creatacc »

Havoc wrote: post #38

Global surveillance incoming. Heard Google is also rolling out QR codes to get past captchas? Ie linked to a device that would now be identity linked too. All seems pretty dystopian or to quote googles slogan - being evil

I already saw it on youtube. However, ctrl + f5 fixed it.

On the other hand, youtube became so unusable that I have spotify premium now.

So, give it a few years and corpos will take it down because of missing profits.

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