This could have been avoided [1] if the real goal was to protect small children. No need for third parties or sharing sensitive data that will eventually be "ooopsie leaked totally by mistake" or outright sold/shared. No perfect, nothing is.
Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
141–150 of 371 posts
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’ll just not use Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android? In other words, you’ll just not use any computers? Seems nonsensical.
Did I miss a memo on Linux somehow requiring age verification now? How would that even work?
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will be when everyone starts leaking from the big players. Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment.
> Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment. Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
So you’ll just not use Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android? In other words, you’ll just not use any computers? Seems nonsensical.
Did I miss a memo on Linux somehow requiring age verification now? How would that even work?
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#145Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda. Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for…
Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago.
The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage.
Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.
Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.
Wild exaggeration. Here's an example just recently: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would like to point out GenX is middle management age in the US. It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd. Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
Deregulation of financial markets and glorification of monetary wealth above all else was also their doing? Gen X were kids when Carter and Regan sent us down the path we’re on now.
They were not kids a decade ago
Two decades ago
Why is it 20-30 somethings of 40-50 years ago put the world on an immutable path but 20-30 somethings now are stuck with?
If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do too
Especially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethings
Kids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30s
Who speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#148Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…
This. Every time I point out that I shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote or complete KYC, 15 people immediately come out of the woods to point out that addresses are public information. The point is they shouldn't be. That's how people get stalked, harassed, and murdered at their home.
It's full of people from ad-tech who believe data protection is the enemy and the GDPR is a European conspiracy against growth.
You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data.
EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some of the accounts being blocked from certain access are themselves 18! You would think Reddit would consider that, but nope it doesn't.
Age of account was sufficient for Google and third-party services for verification until recently. My gmail account is almost 22 years old, in continuous use. I have a credit card on file with Google Pay. Why would I need to submit a photo to engage with a private service, outside of volunteering to help train a surveillance apparatus? Is there any forum short of a senate subcommittee that the public can ask companie…
There is a reason why I don't accept private enterprise as something separate from Government. The nature of the incorporation legal fiction makes them proxies of Government power and influence, hence why I believe private enterprise should in some ways be as heavily restricted by Constitutional guardrails as the Government itself (allegedly) is.
Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults
#150Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…
Congrats Germany, for electing another CDU government. We are digging our own graves here and we are too uninformed and too entertained to see it. Next election will probably be the breaking point, when AfD manages to get many majorities, due to how unhappy CDU, SPD, and other mainstream parties have made the populace. And then we will have these right-wing extremists as our government.
Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.