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Online age verification is the hill to die on

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Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#171
post #113
post #41

Age 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.

No it really can’t. Age verification requires identification. Even if you could anonymously verify age to issue a “confirmed adult” credential, the whole chain of trust breaks down if one bad actor shares their anonymous credential and suddenly everyone is verifiably an adult. The solution to that attack is naturally to have some kind of system for sites to report obviously-shared credentials. Which means tracking.

There's already authorities that know your age, so verifying age with them to get the credential isn't the part that needs to be anonymous. The issue is them knowing what you do with your credential, which anonymous credentials solves by making it impossible to track tokens back to the credential holder. As far as sharing, there are some possible mitigations.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#172
Kids will always find ways around regulation. Look at cigarettes, vapes, alcohol, weed; they will just get it from their dealers. Pornography? I expect something like: download a Torrent, get it from a classmate, share HardDrives in school, get it through an older brother.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#173
post #6

> If you love your family, you must stop online age verification. > If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification. > Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives. Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual poi…

A lot of people dismissed RMS's "Right to Read"[1] essay long ago. All the things it was warning about have come to pass, in spades. 1: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

It's mind boggling how far Stallman saw into the future. Saddest part is we're losing this war. They're going to destroy freedom of computation, freedom of information, and it turns out that... Nobody cares. Nobody but a bunch of nerds.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#174
post #138

>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.

Imagine so if that was a pltr right Or like someone who uses pltr What could possibly go wrong? People are being paranoid for no reason!

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#176

The argument being made seems plausible but it’s complete fear mongering. The surveillance mechanisms already exist and are in play and people can be identified in endless ways. States have broad power to do what is being feared in the thread and haven’t already and to think that they’re waiting for this final piece of the puzzle to enact some insane regime is laughable. They could do that right now without the inter…

Social Media is not a thing at all. Social media is a website. Websites are not health or unhealthy. Food is healthy or unhealthy. Websites are light and potentially sound, not something with health effects.

Go look directly at the sun without any protection or go listen to sounds of 120dB if you want to test your hypothesis that light and sound can't be unhealthy.

Or maybe you aren't being litteral and are just saying that what children see and hear has no influence on their developmemt. Either way, total bullshit.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#177

Kids will always find ways around regulation. Look at cigarettes, vapes, alcohol, weed; they will just get it from their dealers. Pornography? I expect something like: download a Torrent, get it from a classmate, share HardDrives in school, get it through an older brother.

And bootleggers will always bootleg, and smugglers will always smuggle. For that matter, murderers will find ways to murder.

Shall we just abolish all laws? None of them have any effect whatsoever, if they are even slightly imperfect... by your rule.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#178
post #94
post #34

Age verification on Australian social media has loopholes. Underage influencers use an agency to manage their social media for them. So anyone with enough followers or money can continue using social media under the age of 16. If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well.

How could one protect the, call it one in 1 million… the speech of the (young) Greta Thunbergs, for example? I bet there is a 15 year-old much smarter than me making political videos and I wouldn’t necessarily want them to be forced to stop. What if they’re on my “team”! ;) (I kid) Recalling how we had lots of political debates in high school: if some of those kids made videos and got really popular, and the law made…

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Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#179
post #171
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it really can’t. Age verification requires identification. Even if you could anonymously verify age to issue a “confirmed adult” credential, the whole chain of trust breaks down if one bad actor shares their anonymous credential and suddenly everyone is verifiably an adult. The solution to that attack is naturally to have some kind of system for sites to report obviously-shared credentials. Which means tracking.

There's already authorities that know your age, so verifying age with them to get the credential isn't the part that needs to be anonymous. The issue is them knowing what you do with your credential, which anonymous credentials solves by making it impossible to track tokens back to the credential holder. As far as sharing, there are some possible mitigations.

Right. And the possible sharing mitigations generally amount to tracking.

This isn’t even getting to the issue that mandating government-issued credentials is the “foot in the door”. If you mandate the use of government creds for accessing websites, it’s an obvious step to turn around and demand that sites report credential use to “fight credential fraud”.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#180
post #126
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it's more than that. I _want_ to protect kids' right to be part of the human connectome. The "protect the kids" (by disallowing them their freedom of thought on the internet) is just naked ageism.

So do you want 5 year olds driving on the highway and 8 year olds doing shots of tequila or are you ageist? Or perhaps protecting kids isn’t really ageism at all.

Quit arguing as though the topic is binary. It's not.
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