Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults • Hacker News Board

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#201

Post by bigyabai » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

bengale wrote: post #184

Frieren wrote: post #173

[flagged]

Ideological is the best way to describe the reaction by most people on here I think, counterproductive is another one. The reality is most normal people want children protected, unless we can come to the table with good options we are going to end up with a terrible one thrust upon us. Slippery slope arguments and things like it are not going to convince people, "just parent your kids" is not going to convince people…

> there will need to be trust at some point in the system

This is why you don't have a technologically effective solution, here. "Trust" in this situation is a weasel word for surveillance, just like the pinkie promise that Client Side Scanning would never be abused by the government. Trust would not stop child abuse, or meaningfully prevent access to online pornography. Trust is not a technical solution, it's a political goal.

If you have a productive suggestion, now is the time to voice it. All of the non-technical hand wringing is not helpful either, and feeds into the slippery slope logic that HN should be avoiding.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#202

Post by jimz » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #92

graemep wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complacency. The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger. That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.

China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects. We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines. 19 century illnesses are making a resurgence. Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.

HAHAHAHAHA my goodness. You actually believe that?

Everyone in China is constantly violating laws, the difference is that black letter law is essentially meaningless and the country is run by an administrative state that is controlled by the party.

You can't really get things done without breaking the law. China doesn't properly tabulate, and therefore cannot release, anything like accurate crime data. But the crime rate is certainly higher since it's pretty much impossible to even go online and do just about anything without breaking some law. What is written is so vague and nearly any conduct can fall under it.

The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.

Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#203

Post by thesquandered » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

tt24 wrote: post #77

kristopolous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression. It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this. Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.

Don’t forget the second amendment.

[dead]

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#204

Post by code4life » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

Scapeghost wrote: post #134

code4life wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is both scary to watch and yet fun to be alive to see it come to fruition. It is occurring in every dimension, including the ability to track who buys and sells with crypto currencies along with the ability to punish or reward people based on ai hardware software infrastructure deployments.

Reddit bans users based on what they upvoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warni... "We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."

Are you talking to someone else?

This seems like an unnecessary threat based in your bias.

Chatgpt seems to concur.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#205

Post by Tuna-Fish » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

jimz wrote: post #197

teekert wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hé man I thought us Europeans were kings of dreadful regulations!

Eh private prosecutions and third party standing are generally disfavored to such an extent that sure, attention-whoring legislators will propose it, but whether it even passes constitutional muster on the state level is an open question, and open in every state.

The standing is provided by your child seeing naughty things on the internet.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#206

Post by jimz » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:58 PM UTC

pear01 wrote: post #185

graemep wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is also an ancient civilization. So is Europe, and we are talking about the west in general, not just the US. > Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars. > The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example…

Europe is not an ancient civilization. It is a continent and politically, an amalgamation. Most of the "Western" civilizations old enough to attempt comparison with China were not European in the modern sense at all. The classic example is usually Rome, which treated most of Europe as barbarians to colonize and enslave. The engine and wealth of the empire was along the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome was thus really a Me…

Except Chinese hegemony is illusory beyond what it considers its immediate sphere of influence which also means it really cannot project force in any way but economically. It can barely take care of business at home. It's puzzling to many as to why America sees China as somehow equal in threat and in capability since in reality neither is remotely true. China doesn't even have a policy that is truly expansionary since Taiwan is an irredentist claim. Its armed forces have not seen combat since 1979 and that was largely a ground war. Without connections or having acquired one previously it's becoming difficult to obtain a passport to leave, although, it's also not all that easy to find a place for you to settle as a Chinese citizen without some sort of skills that allow you to pretend like society under you is unstable.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#207

Post by GeoAtreides » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

seanw444 wrote: post #137

warmjets222 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, how much longer do you think VPNs will remain legal in the US?

They're used for more than just anonymization. You know, their original purpose.

and? they will not ban vpn, they will ban free vpn providers and require KYC for the other vpn providers.

Self-hosted vpns and b2b vpns will remain unaffected but that doesn't matter, they don't look for 100% coverage, 70%-80% is good enough

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#208

Post by jimz » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

dwroberts wrote: post #166

999900000999 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is, luckily we’re catching up! > For Indigenous Americans it’s unthinkable, but true. ICE is arresting, detaining Native Americans. https://idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/10/for-indigenous-americ... Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.

I’m not in the US but yeah the country has always had a strange relationship with law and order, at least from an outside PoV. The Kent State massacre is always one that sticks with me as particularly messed up. I don’t think the USA is necessarily changing at all, this is what it has always been the whole time

It used to want to keep up appearances, it no longer does.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#209

Post by peyton » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:00 PM UTC

caconym_ wrote: post #85

Scapeghost wrote: post #62

Man... 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…

It's almost as if there's nothing special or unspecial about any of these populations. Just transient cultural factors that (in addition to generally being understood in limited hindsight and through rose-tinted glasses) will inevitably erode and dissolve under sustained attack. > lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper. People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be…

Let’s not get carried away. Real people fought and died for things we have.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#210

Post by jimz » Tue, Mar 10, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

tmaly wrote: post #41

john_strinlai wrote: post #6

> An FTC spokesperson told CNBC that companies must limit how collected information is used. [...] The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity. the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monito…

I have gotten several notices of medical data being leaked over the last two years. I thought HIPPA law had very harsh fines for this, but I guess they just look the other way.

HIPAA doesn't have a private cause of action so if a violation happens, it's a wealth transfer to the government, it doesn't mean anything to you or any individual.

And most companies can simply price it in as cost of doing business at this point.