211–220 of 371 posts
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> If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are That is untrue
Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)
Besides Porn, what sites are doing this? It's odd to me that the EFF page does not mention "porn" or "adult content" at all.
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Parental control software has existed for decades. It hasn't worked. Over 70% of teenagers Yes, there were other ways of trying to solve the problem. Governments could've mandated explicit websites (which includes a lot of mainstream social media these days) include the RTA rating tag instead of it being a voluntary thing, which social media companies still would've fought; and governments could've also mandated all…
Is porn the biggest problem here? What I've seen points the finger at social media as the worst offender for youth mental health. Also, access to porn isn't new with the internet. When we cleared out my grandpa's house we had to pry open a desk that was chock full of hustlers.
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Parental control software has existed for decades. It hasn't worked. Over 70% of teenagers Yes, there were other ways of trying to solve the problem. Governments could've mandated explicit websites (which includes a lot of mainstream social media these days) include the RTA rating tag instead of it being a voluntary thing, which social media companies still would've fought; and governments could've also mandated all…
Is porn the biggest problem here? What I've seen points the finger at social media as the worst offender for youth mental health. Also, access to porn isn't new with the internet. When we cleared out my grandpa's house we had to pry open a desk that was chock full of hustlers.
“Ease of access” and “easy access to the most depraved shit you can think of that’s out there” is what changed. That is what is wrong and why many people feel we need to find some way to control that access.
The Internet didn’t come along until I was well into adulthood. Think about what porn access looked like in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. As a teen we were “lucky” if by some rare miracle a friend stole their dad’s Playboy, Penthouse, or Hustler and stashed it in the woods (couldn’t risk your parents finding it under your mattress) for us dudes to learn the finer points of female anatomy. In a week it would be washed out from the elements with nary a nipple to be seen. Those magazines (even hustler) was soft compared to what a few clicks can find today. Basically you got degrees of nudity back then, but we appreciated it.
Hardcore video was very rare to see as a horny teen kid in the ‘80s. Most porn movies was still pretty well confined to theaters, but advent of VHS meant (again by sheer luck) you had to have a friend whose parents happened to be in to it, who had rented or bought a video, it was in the house and accessible, all the adults had to be gone from the house so you could hurry up and watch a few minutes on the family’s one TV with a VCR. You needed to build in viewing time along with rewind time to hide your tracks.
Now…parents just leave the room for a few minutes and a willing kid with a couple of clicks could be watching something far beyond the most hardcore thing I saw as a teen.
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Is porn the biggest problem here? What I've seen points the finger at social media as the worst offender for youth mental health. Also, access to porn isn't new with the internet. When we cleared out my grandpa's house we had to pry open a desk that was chock full of hustlers.
But it's been illegal to peddle porn to minors for much longer than it's been illegal to peddle social media, so it's a good proxy for how effective our current efforts are.
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> Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance We know this because, instead of putting easy-to-use parental controls on new devices sold (and making it easy to install on old ones) with good defaults [1], they didn't even try that, and went directly for the most privacy-hostile solution. [1] So lazy parents with whatever censorship the government thinks is appropriate for kids, while invo…
Parental control software has existed for decades. It hasn't worked. Over 70% of teenagers Yes, there were other ways of trying to solve the problem. Governments could've mandated explicit websites (which includes a lot of mainstream social media these days) include the RTA rating tag instead of it being a voluntary thing, which social media companies still would've fought; and governments could've also mandated all…
How would you know whether it has worked or not? Wouldn't the relevant criteria be up to parents themselves?
Generally speaking, I share the HN consensus on age verification laws. But, there is a real problem with kid's unfettered internet access. Just think about all the adults who are hopelessly addicted to social media. The negative affects are amplified when it comes to developing minds. My SO has been teaching for nearly 20 years now, and mental health in kids has fallen off a cliff in the last two decades. I could fil…
I would argue it must be part of the answer, if it isn't literally the answer. You even kind of hit the nail on the head later in that paragraph:
> Parents on HN are hyper-aware of this sort of thing, but that's definitely the minority.
I would start there. Spreading awareness and social pressure is a tractable problem.
I'd be OK with an "I am a child" header mandated by law to be respected by service providers (eg. "adult sites" must not permit a client setting the header to proceed). On the client side, mandate that consumer devices that might reasonably be expected to be used by children (every smartphone, tablet, smart TV, etc) have parental controls that set the header. Leave it to parents to set the controls. Perhaps even hold…
My only gripe here is the idea of "perhaps hold the parents culpable." I'm not opposed to the idea, but what sucks is we are ultimately all paying the cost of it going wrong. The idea that we can shunt that away to a few irresponsible people is just demonstrably not the case. Worse, it leads to situations where society seems to want to flat out be kid free in many ways. With families reportedly afraid to let their ki…
What content is appropriate for children is properly up to their parents themselves, not to the government or to some nebulous concept of "society". If parent's choose not to set such a flag on their children's devices, then that means that they're choosing to allow their children to access content without restriction, and that's what defines what is OK for their children to access.
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Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)
Cool trick to tie in the libertarian idea of protecting yourself from legally sanctioned government actions.
Some of these are getting batted down by judges, so right now the category of "legal" is especially vague. That's why I phrased it like that.
But also, we see cops just straight up stalking people using government tools. So that's another reason to be concerned about "legal" government actions.
Nothing to do with libertarianism.
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Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)
Like many mention in other comments on this post, it's possible to implement using ZKPs. There are likely other methods that would be effective without compromising privacy. None of them are part of the Age Verification discussion because kids are not the actual point of Age Verification. When I say "if we have to know you're not a kid, we have to know who you are" I'm not stating an actual truth , but the argument a…
Because if there aren't, then it matters substantially less whether they're possible.