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The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

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Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#121

Post by applfanboysbgon »

ranger_danger wrote: post #118
applfanboysbgon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulating parental controls by making you scan an ID to use a computer is even worse than doing it to access a website. I understand that today's laws are not doing that, but do you genuinely, truly believe in your heart of hearts that once every OS has mandatory age fields, that nobody is going to start proposing legislation to attempt to enforce its validity by ID verification + hardware attestation? You're not wi…

What law anywhere in the US is specifically forcing the physical scanning of an ID to use a computer?

> I understand that today's laws are not doing that,

Come on. Like 80% of my entire post was devoted to pointing out a gradual erosion of rights over time, and I explicitly stated that it's not the case today.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#122

Post by ranger_danger »

walrus01 wrote: post #29
anigbrowl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech people keep ignoring the fact that many people a) find the parental controls too hard to use and b) have no confidence that their kids won't find a way to circumvent them. If parents felt in control of technology they wouldn't be calling on governments to regulate it in the first place. I know a lot of tech people like to assume that government wants to control everything and these parents are fake front groups…

I recently put some thought into what I would have done if I had encountered "parental controls" to use the Internet when I first encountered it as a young teen in 1992. I would have made it my personal mission in life to circumvent everything and anything possible. I feel fortunate that no such controls existed and the adults in my life knew significantly less about the technology than I did. Was I exposed to some c…

As usual it seems education is the only long-term solution. Forcibly keeping people out just makes them want it more.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#123

Post by judge2020 »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

> By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves.

There is a really good way to do this that solves most concerns: https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu...

The only real downside to this is that a 0kp cannot be reliably tied to an identity of the person using the device and thus tickets could be proxied/shared around with semi technical tools (and/or an ai agent tasked with creating a proxy). This really isn't solvable without device-level attestation[0], as if a website needs to reliably say "this person is actually this person" then it needs all pieces of data itself.

This could be solved by adding in a still privacy-preserving step like "The device is doing periodic face id scans and matching them to an identity, and constantly renews/re-presents to the age assurance consumer", but that has its own drawbacks[0].

0: Namely, lock in to devices that can do this, and that includes basically guaranteeing a double digit percentage of adult humans would not have access due to their device being old, unsupported, missing the hardware, etc. And with so many humans excluded, you would not have mass adoption. Probably also excludes rooted devices if we bring in attestation of unmodified software.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#125

Post by Gigachad »

josh_p wrote: post #113
drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as…

We know what good UX is already from history. Movies for example have an age rating system that clearly lists the ages the movie is suitable for. If you look underage, you get asked to provide ID.

Parents do not have the time or energy to configure modern parental controls which work more like tuning firewall rules.

The other part of the problem is you need collective action, if you ban your child from Facebook, they won’t get invited to parties anymore. If all children get banned, the parties will be arranged over sms or some other non social media. As it is today, banning your kids from social media is overly punishing since all the other kids are using it.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#126

Post by energy123 »

josh_p wrote: post #113
drivebyhooting wrote: post #34

Like it or not, there is a large constituency who wants to “protect the children”. By demonizing them and failing to engage with the worries over social media and pornography We have brought it on ourselves. Is it to be wondered at that many people are angry when tech companies have polluted the commons with their effluvium?

I agree with the other commenter who replied to you. I don’t think this comes from actual parents. And the article suggests this latest push is from right-leaning groups whose goals are surveillance and censorship. That said, I’m a father of 3. I’m a millennial and tech worker. I have the digital literacy to teach my kids about the internet and its horrors in a safe way. Not every parent does, so passing this off as…

> I don’t think this comes from actual parents.

The polling I have seen from Germany and Australia of a social media ban for children was quite in favor of it. Sentiment here on HN and on Reddit was the polar opposite. We are in a bubble.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#127

Post by anonreeeeplor »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #3

> These NGOs have converged upon a unified strategy: use the rhetoric of ‘child safety’ to advocate for digital ID laws that would prevent adults from using the internet anonymously. Of course. Anyone who brings up kids is trying to manipulate you into giving up your freedom for security. Whatever argument they make should be simply ignored and dismissed.

[dead]

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#128

Post by kelseyfrog »

Gigachad wrote: post #115
kelseyfrog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why repeat the same argument if it clearly hasn't worked? Do you expect it to suddenly become effective? Change in behavior can only follow from change in incentives. Parents must be held legally liable if they allow their children access to social media. That means jail time for negligence.

Why would we even consider jailing parents before banning social media from kids and jailing Mark Zuckerberg for pushing it on them? The power imbalance between individual parents and big tech is immense. How can we be mad at random parents for not defeating the most powerful and rich people in history?

Because according to HN there's no way to force social media companies to not serve children without destroying privacy. That leaves parents who aren't changing their behavior because nothing has incited them to change. Legal liabily is an incentive that changes behavior.

Re: The UK's war on anonymity has come to America

#129

Post by Buttons840 »

It seems to me the intrusiveness of age verification will continue to grow.

They want the OS to report the user's age. People will use this to claim whatever age they want. For instance, if companies cannot advertise to children, they might find that almost every computer is reporting that the user is a child--turns out adults want the protections kids receive as well--sometimes.

Eventually they will have to enforce a system intrusive enough that no lying or abuse of the system is possible. We might even approach "Verification Can" levels of verification.

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