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Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

mullvad.net

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Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#161

Post by palata »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #8
palata wrote: post #2

Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification. I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if…

Parents need to either control the internet, or control their children’s devices and screentime. The latter sounds like the obvious option, except that Google wants every second grader to have a school-mismanaged chromebook and Google wants to mediate control of the internet, and by pushing parents to the former they win on both fronts.

What about this: go ask parents why they allowed their kid to get a smartphone and access to social media, and only then decide whether they are morons, fascists or just bad parents?

I have a simple example: when all the kids have a smartphone, it is very hard to tell your kid that they cannot have one. When all the kids have a shared culture built around social media, it is very hard to tell yours to not conform. "It's okay my son, you don't need friends. Anyway the parents of all those kids are bad parents".

I don't have children, but it doesn't sound completely weird that parents may say "we should prevent most kids from accessing social media, so that my kid wouldn't be the weirdo if I don't let them have access".

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#162

Post by palata »

cdrnsf wrote: post #20
benfortuna wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring parents to police their child's every move is not going to end well.

And having the state do it is better?

The state mandates laws that say we cannot sell guns to kids. Is that a bad idea? Would you rather let the parents deal with that?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#163

Post by 9rx »

davkan wrote: post #154

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very lit…

The compromise is that it is either really easy to work around, effectively defeating what it is trying to do, or it becomes tightly locked down to trusted devices only, destroying the free internet.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#164

Post by s-zeng »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #79

Back to the internet's peer-to-peer roots. Many protocols besides the www The www became infested with so-called "tech" companies acting as intermediaries (middlemen) Lots of folks making money from surveillance ad system on the www. Oversized, unmanageable websites calling themselves "platforms" The www is an ad network. Not a great place for non-commercial activity Fortunately, the internet is more than the www. Th…

I've really enjoyed playing around with https://github.com/markqvist/nomadnet and the reticulum protocol in general as a peer-to-peer alternative to www

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#165

Post by nicce »

no-name-here wrote: post #127
gorgoiler wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you have to declare your accounts to border police prior to international travel.

Are you referring to financial accounts or social media accounts? (If social media accounts, I'm guessing you're referring to the US specifically, and during advance visa processing rather than at the border.)

> and during advance visa processing rather than at the border.)

This got extended to every traveler, visa or not.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#166

Post by davkan »

9rx wrote: post #163
davkan wrote: post #154

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very lit…

The compromise is that it is either really easy to work around, effectively defeating what it is trying to do, or it becomes tightly locked down to trusted devices only, destroying the free internet.

How would you work around it without admin access to the computer?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#167

Post by Duralias »

davkan wrote: post #154

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very lit…

That is when the conspiracies start popping up, because a lot of people agree with you, me included.

However, you cannot make parents actually use such systems, so ignoring the obvious control this gives nation states, giving states this power might help the children of those irresponsible parents, which is the only real argument I have heard, since the effects of it are the same if the child simply had responsible parents.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#168

Post by palata »

idiotsecant wrote: post #17
palata wrote: post #2

Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification. I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if…

Age verification literally already exists in a way that doesn't require orwellian centralized control. The tag has existed for decades. If you want to restrict access force websites to apply these tags, then use a browser that obeys them. Parents control what their kids access, mostly, like it's been since forever. Think carefully about why a politician might disregard this extremely simple mechanism and you'll have…

> Think carefully about why a politician might disregard this extremely simple mechanism and you'll have your answer about the real goals here

You (and many others) frame it as "the government versus the people". I think this is extremely naive.

Many, many, many parents are in favour of preventing social media access to kid, assuming it is done in a reasonable way. For instance, having a police officer follow every kid everywhere they go 24/7 is not a reasonable way, and everybody agrees on that. Now what if there was a reasonable way?

Ask yourself this: do you believe that privacy-preserving age verification is not a reasonable way, or do you know it? In order to know it, you have to understand how the cryptography works at some reasonable level. Do you? Most comments I read online come from people who believe and then repeat arguments they have read that confirm their beliefs.

I was noting that the Mullvad article actually addresses ZKP (which is good and a very rare thing), but that I found it was a bit evasive in a way that feels slightly manipulative to me (probably not on purpose).

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#169

Post by palata »

userbinator wrote: post #3
palata wrote: post #2

Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification. I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if…

Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if you are open to age verification you are either a fascist or a moron" is not constructive. We know they'll take a mile if you give them an inch. Ditto with "trusted" computing and the rest of that wormcan. That's why the opposition has to be absolute.

I strongly disagree.

Democracy is not "they" vs "us". Democracy is not "opposition has to be absolute". What you describe here is extremism. If you believe that anyone disagreeing with you is an extremist and that the only viable way to react is to be an extremist yourself, well... you are the extremist. Whether you are fighting extremists or not (this "they" you conveniently do not define) is unclear, though.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#170

Post by palata »

esseph wrote: post #24
benfortuna wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is this "they" you speak of? We have age verification for all kinds of things that can harm minors. Most of them have adequate penalties for breach such that operators of said harms ensure they comply (checks for ID when selling alcohol, entry to over-18s pubs/clubs, etc.) There's nothing sinister going on here, just attempts to prevent social/mental harm to minors.

> There's nothing sinister going on here There absolutely is you're just not aware of it. This whole thing is meta financially backing right wing conservative groups that want age verification because meta wants to avoid liability for the harms their platforms cause. In addition, this is the beginning of the end of any sort of anonymity on the internet, which has disastrous consequences for politically minded individ…

> There absolutely is you're just not aware of it.

Can you show here that you understand how privacy-preserving age verification works?

I mean the rest of your message really, really sounds like you don't. Don't get me wrong: I do agree that identity verification is bad. But it is not okay to say "I know of a system that is bad, and I don't know the nuances of how it could be implemented in a better way, so I will just assume that there is no better way".

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