Online age verification is the hill to die on • Hacker News Board

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#181

Post by midtake » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

I agree, doxxing yourself to some shady gray-market adjacent data broker is not acceptable as age verification, and age verification was safer using the honor system as before. But for some communities, especially social media communities, some kind of verification is better than none, otherwise what's to stop them from being overwhelmed with alt accounts that are used simply for harassment or other targeted objectives?

People should not be able to misrepresent themselves on the internet, it may have been safe in low volumes but it is scary now and will be outright dangerous as a modality in the hands of AI agents. If you think teen mental health is bad now, wait until social media campaign capabilities previously only available to nation states fall into the hands of ordinary school bullies.

Maybe age verification isn't the way to mitigate this obvious risk, but there has to be something that can be done to stop rampant sockpuppeting.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#182

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

Bender wrote: post #84

Lammy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal This one: https://www.w3.org/PICS/

PICS was very complicated and attenpted to cover all possible "categories" of adult content. It was confusing, incomplete and only a handful of sites voluntarily labelled their sites with it. RTA is one simple static header that any site operator could add in seconds unless they get more complicated with it by dynamically adding it to individual videos say, on Youtube which means in that case the server application w…

> unless they get more complicated with it by dynamically adding it to individual videos say, on Youtube

YT already does this. I never watch YT signed in, and I often see videos that require you to be logged in as the video is age restricted.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#183

Post by ilovecake1984 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

I’d wager most people want more censorship of the internet.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#184

Post by arduanika » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

kelseyfrog wrote: post #147

WarmWash wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should add an AI clause to that license agreement in your profile.

How would it read?

Holy crap, I only just saw your license agreement. Oh no. We've argued on here before, although this time we're in agreement. Please don't use this hidden license to dox me!

(It's an unenforceable joke, right? There's no way I'm bound by anything here other than maybe the site ToS.)

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#185

Post by ilovecake1984 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

retired wrote: 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.

That’s not really a loophole though. We have child actors in Harry Potter.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#186

Post by snackbroken » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #118

goda90 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Make it a duplication resistant hardware token that you can get for free then. The stakes just aren't high enough to worry about these kinds of edge cases.

Yeah, right. So the government is going to spend billions on “porn tokens”. That’s going to get through the legislature. I’m sure there wouldn’t be a brisk illicit trade in these tokens either. Certainly no one would be incentivized to sell these tokens to teenagers for easy profit.

Further, "porn tokens" are the pointy end of the wedge, because it's easy to misconstrue any opposition as advocating for "kids should have access to porn, actually". The broad end that is being hammered towards is "kids aren't allowed on social media because it's harmful to them" AKA "free speech tokens".

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#187

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

streetfighter64 wrote: post #80

therobots927 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

looks like you ruffled some feathers with this one

Yeah, calling people "dogs" for pointing out that TFA is a hyperbolic (AI-written) screed without substance would ruffle some feathers. Edit: yes it is hyperbolic and ridiculous to suggest people will be "enslaved" because they don't have access to the internet. Do you realize that makes everybody who grew up in the 90s or earlier a "slave"?

[deleted]

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#188

Post by dylan604 » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

ronsor wrote: post #121

There's an angle everyone misses. Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet. And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.

Not so sure about that. Handing an ID to a bouncer at a bar or similar is not logging anything. Mainly it's some big man that you can see gears turning to see if the date is correct and a cursory glance to see if the photo matches. Sophisticated places might have a scanner that does what ever validation it does, but again, it's just another cursory check of the photo. Most of these people really don't care.

A tech company doing scans for validation could actually connect to a state database to verify the ID is legit and is not already being used for a different account. It would then be saved. I don't think real world vs tech world usage of fake IDs are the same at all.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#189

Post by mwigdahl » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

noident wrote: post #85

bee_rider wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically every article on this site has a comment complaining that the article is AI. Who knows. Maybe “complaining about AI” is the new AI way of fitting in.

No, it's because authentic writing on HN has been drowned out in an ocean of slop, in such quantities that calling it out is becoming an exercise in futility

There was an article yesterday where people were complaining about "AI smell", the author showed up in comments to state clearly and unequivocally that he didn't use AI to write it, and people wouldn't believe him.

AI didn't get its tropes and tics ex nihilo. Some people just write in a way that "smells" like AI to others.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#190

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Apr 29, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

retired wrote: post #55

logicchains wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well. That just makes it even worse, why deprive the younger generation of one of the few remaining methods they have to make a decent income? We should be encouraging youth entrepreneurship, not making them spend even longer in classrooms learning things that LLMs will do better than them.

People under the age of 16 shouldn't be worried about "making a decent income". They should focus on school. In the weekends they can stock shelves, deliver pizza, deliver newspapers, wash dishes, babysitting, feed animals or other typical jobs for children in the age range of 12 to 16.

>They should focus on school.

Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? The direction we give kids coming up always seems to lag behind reality by 10 or 20 years. Perhaps we shouldn't stand in the way of the new generation figuring things out for themselves in this brave new world. The old playbooks to a solid middle class life are increasingly outdated.