Just requiring it for social media companies is probably enough of a win to not have to pursue any further. We require age verification for sports betting and things like that, I'm not sure why we wouldn't do the same or some variation of that for other massively addicting products that we know as a matter of scientific study have a very bad impact on some number of kids.
Online age verification is the hill to die on
161–170 of 750 posts
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#162Age verification can be achieved without destroying anonymity and privacy online using anonymous credential systems, but it has to be designed that way from the ground up, and no one pushing age verification is interested in preserving privacy.
This comes up in every thread, but the purpose of the laws is not to verify that someone can access an anonymous token. If we had a true anonymous token system then everyone would just share tokens around. The real world analog would be if you could buy beer at the store with anyone's ID because they didn't make any effort to reasonably check that the ID was yours or discourage people from sharing or copying IDs. The…
Matthew Green talks about this in his blog on the subject: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...
The two methods that seem feasible are making it hard to copy (putting it in the secure element in your phone, for example, which I don't love) or doing tokens that can only be used a limited number of times per day, like in : https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/454
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#163>age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak... Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course). Really th…
In the US, the plan is to require adults to take a picture of their state ID and upload it to a third party that provides age verification. It's not explicitly part of the proposed law but there are only a handful of companies who meet the qualifications to provide this service (id.me, Persona) and this is how they do it.
I believe if you are a "minor" then you can go the post-a-selfy route.
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
When I read those seemingly outrageous claims, I didn't immediately dismiss the author. I allowed him to substantiate the claims and kept reading. I found myself agreeing with his argument and his train of thought of how, once digital IDs are accepted as a norm, they won't be unwound, and all online activity will likely require them and then, as he says, "Your children will never know what it was like to think freely…
The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products. Would that be such a bad thing? Frankly I would welcome a world in which kids are not using Instagram or TikTok. They don’t have to live in a cage if we don’t let them in the cage. Personally, my plan is that when age verification laws get passed, every service that requires ID is a service I stop using. And I expect my life to be…
> The best way to not be in a digital cage is to opt out of the current digital products.
Bullshit. These are all-encompassing monopolies and government services. More likely, they'll ban you and you'll end up having to go to court out of desperation to demand that they service you.
This is very limited thinking. If you lacked this sort of imagination 20 years ago, you wouldn't have been able to predict today.
> Frankly I would welcome a world in which kids are not using Instagram or TikTok.
This is the sort of passive reactionary nonsense that causes the danger that we're in. Everything isn't something to give up lightly, even if you think that it will force your neighbor to turn his music down, or get rid of bad reality television. I don't like kids on social media either. I don't like adults on it. I think kids are suffering more from surveillance than from TikTok.
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#165>age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak... Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course). Really th…
Reddit is one thing but would you do the same for a porn site?
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal to have sites voluntarily set an age header, so parents/employers/etc could use to block the site if they wish. People said it would never work, because adult sites had a financial incentive not to opt in to reduce their own traffic.
The porn companies already set the RTA header. It was designed by an organisation funded by the porn companies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_Sites_Advocatin...
It seems there is a GitHub repo somewhere mapping Meta money to lobbyists inside other companies
Which is at least interesting
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#167It is not like a digital control for id verification could be used anyway to control a narrative in war times right?
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
What, in the same way movie studios wouldn't comply with the Hayes Code, or comic book publishers wouldn't comply with the CCA, or games publishers wouldn't comply with the ESRB? The financial incentive is to police yourself, because government policing is much, much worse.
There's a great relevant quip: "If you think that the cost of compliance is high, try noncompliance".
If only it were true today :|
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#169The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…
This doesn't address the wider array of age-verification related problems that people want to solve, like social media where age verification is needed to police interactions between users.
This is assuming children should be on social media at all, which I for one would debate.
Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on
#170The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…
This doesn't address the wider array of age-verification related problems that people want to solve, like social media where age verification is needed to police interactions between users.
I could be misunderstanding the context but to me that sounds like a moderation issue assuming we even want small children on social media in the first place. There should probably be a dedicated child-safe social media site that limits what communication can take place for small children and has severe punishments for adults pretending to be children for the purposes of grooming.