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The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#121

Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift. If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an eas…

I mean look, there's a point where the manufacturers back off and entrust the parents.

Any parent can be reckless and give their children all kinds of things - poison, weapons, pornographic magazines ... at some point the device has enough protective features and it is the parents responsibility.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#122

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

We have a Scylla vs Charybdis situation, where lack of ID leads to an internet of bots, while on the other end we get a dystopia where everything anyone has ever said about any topic is available to a not-so-liberal government. Back in the day, it was very clear that the second problem was far worse than the first. I still think it is, but I sure see arguments for how improved tooling, and more value in manipulating…

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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#123
post #102

Big tech likes this because there are a lot more face recognition technologies in the wild in real life and being able to connect all real life data to online data is quite valuable. It's also quite possibly the largest training set ever for face recognition if ids are stored and given how ids and images are sold across many companies it seems very high probability that some company will retain the data rather than d…

China (and US via latin american countries and it's own poor people ...via benefit programs access via id.gov) is testing both biometrics and device id to evaluate pros and cons, and to merge data, when it come to autocratic control.

In china there are places to scan you device and get coupons. usually at elevators in residential buildings so they can track also if you're arriving or leaving easily.

In the US every store tracks and report to ad networks your Bluetooth ids. and we know what happens to ad networks.

US now requires cars to report data, which was optional before (e.g. onstar) and china joined on this since the ev boom.

the public id space is booming.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#124
> And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely.

This is a false premise already; the company can check the age (or have a third party like iDIN [0] do it), then set a marker "this person is 18+" and "we verified it using this method at this date". That should be enough.

[0] https://www.idin.nl/en/

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#125

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

A lot of people are unhappy with the state of the Internet and the safety of people of all ages on it. I believe we should be focusing on building a way to authenticate as a human of a nation without providing any more information, and try to raise the bar for astroturfing to be identity theft.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#126

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

There's a high chance the government is attempting to influence public opinion by using botted comments, which is easier than ever to pull off.

Unless you live in North Korea, no there is not. This is pure conspiracy theory.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a high chance the government is attempting to influence public opinion by using botted comments, which is easier than ever to pull off.

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Yeah, I've been saying for years that LLMs are a technology that basically unlock three major new technologies:

1. Automatic shaping of online community discussions (social media, bots, etc)

2. Automatic datamining, manipulating and reacting to all digitally communicated conversations (think dropping calls or MITM manipulation of conversations between organizers of a rival poltical party in swing districts proir to an election, etc. CointelPro as a service)

3. Giving users a new UI (speech) with which they can communicate with computer applications

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#128
I have a problem with an open internet and allowing open access to everything the internet can offer to young children.

It cannot be a friction-less experience. Allowing children to see gore and extreme porn at a young age is not healthy. And then we have all the "trading" platforms (gambling).

Even though my brothers were able to get many hard drugs when I was young, around 1977, there was a lot of friction. Finding a dealer, trusting them, etc. Some bars would not card us but even then there was risk and sometimes they got caught. In NY we could buy cigarettes, no friction, and the one drug I took when I was young, addicted to them at 16, finally quitting for good at 20. I could have used some friction there.

So how do we create friction? Maybe hold the parents liable? They are doing this with guns right now, big trial is just finishing and it looks like a father who gave his kid an ak47 at 13 is about to go to jail.

I would like to see a state ID program when the ID is just verified by the State ID system. This way nothing needs to be sent to any private party. Sites like Discord could just get a OK signal from the state system. They could use facial recognition on the phone that would match it with the ID.

Something needs to be done however. I disagree that the internet needs to be open to all at any age. You do not need an ID to walk into a library, but you need one to get into a strip club. I do not see why that should not be the same on the internet.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#129

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

Better to let a hundred people’s “privacy” be violated than to let another child be radicalized or abused or misled by online predation.

I don't subscribe to this. I value my privacy more.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#130

We are missing accessible cryptographic infrastructure for human identity verification. For age verification specifically, the only information that services need proof of is that the users age is above a certain threshold. i.e. that the user is 14 years or older. But in order to make this determination, we see services asking for government ID (which many 14-year-olds do not have), or for invasive face scans. These…

A significant obstacle to adoption is that cryptographic research aims for a perfect system that overshadows simpler, less private approaches. For instance, it does not seem that one should really need unlinkability across sessions. If that's the case, a simple range proof for a commitment encoding the birth year is sufficient to prove eligibility for age, where the commitment is static and signed by a trusted third party to actually encode the correct year.
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