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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

#221

Post by schnitzelstoat »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
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 co…

The tech companies care even less than the bouncers do.

They just want a plausible defence should it ever end up in court.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#222

Post by Bender »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #213
Bender wrote: post #8

The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…

> fine sites not participating into oblivion. That would also amount to compelled speech.

That would also amount to compelled speech.

I disagree. The legal requirement to apply a warning label is a well known, understood and accepted process that is applied to a myriad of hazards to children and adults. As just one example businesses in some states, most notably California are compelled to add warning labels to foods and other products that could cause cancer.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#223

Post by armchairhacker »

dpark wrote: post #113
goda90 wrote: 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.

But likewise, someone can share (or have stolen) their ID

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47951372

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#224

Post by gslepak »

Good: some commenters here realize it's an attack on privacy

Bad: some still entertain the idea that we should do age verification using some sort of crypto primitives

There is no reason for age verification at all.

I am from the goatse generation. Rotten.com. steakandcheese. Horrific stuff tbh, I mostly stayed away from it, and I didn't need a helicopter government to protect me from it.

The moment you accept the narrative that kids need to be protected from the Internet you have already lost.

You've already condemned those kids to a life of slavery. So much for protecting them.

What we need is not online verification, but a competent government that does its existing job well.

Who's been arrested over the Epstein files? Who is protecting those kids?

No one.

That same government wants to "protect" your kids by KYCing everyone.

Give me a break.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#225

Post by htek »

shevy-java wrote: post #208
breezybottom wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but the government doesn't police corporations in the US anymore. The Hayes code was before neoliberalism.

Quite true. The US corporations act like a giant global rabid dog. Fake legislation appears in the USA - lo and behold, it is copy/pasted into the EU. At the least lobbyists are getting rich right now.

At least the EU has GDPR. In the US, our personal data is collected by every app and website and company and packaged, sold and sifted through by a vast collection of private data brokers which the government already ingests.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#227

Post by dpark »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #159
dpark wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It depends on what you're depriving them of too. Those are very extreme examples with little to no upside.

Disagree. We can discuss what restrictions are appropriate or reasonable without calling it ageism.

Calling it ageism is an emotional appeal, not a principled stance.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#228

Post by Bender »

hooverlabs wrote: post #210
Bender wrote: post #8

The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…

Servers can then infer user’s ages by whether or not the client renders pages given those headers or not no? See if secondary page requests (e.g images, scripts) are made or not from a client? A bad actor could use this to glean age information from the client and see whether the person viewing the page is a small child. That should be scary

I disagree. The ability to render a page could simply mean that parental controls were not enabled on the device. Some parents have assessed the situation and trust their children to be psychologically ready for adult situations. The client could be literally any age.

Today devices do not default to accounts being child accounts. Some day this may change and may require an initial administrator password or something to that affect but this can evolve over time.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#229

Post by Forgeties79 »

dpark wrote: post #227
Forgeties79 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what you're depriving them of too. Those are very extreme examples with little to no upside.

Disagree. We can discuss what restrictions are appropriate or reasonable without calling it ageism. Calling it ageism is an emotional appeal, not a principled stance.

Ageism is a legally defined form of discrimination as well as the subject of ethical discussions. It's a real, defined thing. Just because we disagree on what qualifies as ageism doesn't mean you get to call foul and say it's irrational/emotional.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#230

Post by Ekaros »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #213
Bender wrote: post #8

The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…

> fine sites not participating into oblivion. That would also amount to compelled speech.

Clients could refuse to show content that does not have headers set.

On other hand servers might choose to lie. After all that is their free speech right.

So maybe you need some third party vetting list. Ofc, that one should be fully liable for any damages misclassification can cause... But someone would step up.

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