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Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

mullvad.net

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Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#221

Post by Hugsbox »

phatfish wrote: post #217
Hugsbox wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe children should be on social media. Some other people might not share that belief. Should be up to parents to decide what's okay for their kids, not governments or companies. Age verification will always lead to more surveillance. People need to just be more mindful of what their children are doing online, maybe stop giving them smartphones, and just be parents .

We don't let kids turn up to school drunk because they went to the cornershop on the way to school. I guarantee that would be happening if alcohol sales were not age gated and enforced by the government. In the same way kids should not be infecting their minds with social media slop, or porn, or plenty of other internet content. The only way this is stopped is when a social norm is created which shames all but the mo…

So maybe there should be better education for parents. Maybe there's other solutions. I can't accept that the nanny state parenting our children for us is the way to go. If people are being negligent of keeping their children safe, maybe they should face consequences for that. The point is, the parents should be solely responsible for deciding what's appropriate for their children, and if they don't have the resources maybe that's something that should be addressed, or if they're not doing their job that should be addressed, but age verification just ain't it.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#222

Post by bluefirebrand »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #213
rockskon wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bank's security camera feed isn't likely to be sold to dozens of companies. It is all but guaranteed for Internet-based facial recognition services. Hacked facial recognition data already is reportedly being used by scammers to not only bypass bank security but also to impersonate people to target their loved ones. There is no lasting security gain by providing a selfie. There is a lasting security and privacy loss…

So that's the concern? But GDPR solved this, just don't consent to them selling your likeness for AI training purposes.

You have way more trust for these companies actually following laws than I do

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#223

Post by RiverCrochet »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #201
sunaookami wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, age-verification IS bad and is a slippery slope that will always lead to surveillance. If we don't stop this now everything will get worse. And trying to lump this in with other extreme rhetoric doesn't help. The answer is and always was "better parenting".

How is that the answer when even parents don't have the right tools for this. are parents supposed to surveil their kids 24/7 and monitor their internet traffic? Why is the internet special, do you also believe physical stores shouldn't check for ID for cigarettes and alcohol, because the solution is better parenting?

I think minors shouldn't be in any store period unless accompanied by their parent or guardian.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#224

Post by roysting »

lmz wrote: post #209
Hugsbox wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe children should be on social media. Some other people might not share that belief. Should be up to parents to decide what's okay for their kids, not governments or companies. Age verification will always lead to more surveillance. People need to just be more mindful of what their children are doing online, maybe stop giving them smartphones, and just be parents .

Somehow this "leave it to the parents" logic isn't followed when it comes to cigarettes or alcohol. Why is social media different?

I think you’re missing that this abdication of personal freedoms to the government in the form of government imposed restrictions on cigarette and alcohol sales is precisely how we’ve gotten to this point over time; arguably following a planned strategy. People who normalized prior subordination to government in the case like cigarettes, alcohol and other things; are now already even more primed to abdicate even more freedom to mommy and daddy government than the prior generation.

It seems clear to me that America is heading into an extremely repressive system where even the nominal use of America may just end up falling by the wayside within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Functionally speaking the, notional or spiritual death of America happened a very long time ago, probably 1840 but obviously no later than the outcome of the Civil War which turned a decentralized union of federated states that formed a republic, into a centralized dictatorial federal power and later the groundwork for becoming the empire we are only 55-80 years after the Civil War, depending on how you want to look at it.

I think people forget that there would have been people who experienced the Civil War that destroyed the central premise of the Constitution, that sovereign states join in a Union to cooperate, and the formation of the Empire of America by no later than the end of WWII.

Those things never happen abruptly, they happen in following a long strategic plan based on objectives not timelines. Part of such a plan is causing ever increasing dependence, deference, and subjugation to government, which is really just someone else’s control over you, the people who make up the “government”, instead of your own control over you. Part of that is giving the impression that money and daddy government will take care of the children, as a tool to psychologically manipulate people by hijacking their instinctual care and concern for protecting children.

It’s why and how they’re more pushing age verification, not ban for minors with similar criminal penalties for anyone who allows minors on the internet/social media. No, you as an adult need to confirm and tie your identity to the digital fingerprint that is tied to all the data that was and is collected about your activity over the last 20+ years … to protect the children of course.

It’s why some people refer to the majority of humans as cattle. You just have to herd them around and they moo and then start fattening up on corn instead of grass, just like the last generation did before they were harvested.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#225

Post by palata »

trashb wrote: post #193
palata wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Should I worry about having to verify my age/identity if I want to host a page on a vps in the future? Today I cannot get a VPS without verifying my identity. Can you? > I feel like most politicians and people don't understand privacy and the impact of breaking it. I feel like it doesn't start like this. Opponents to age verification assume "politicians are authoritarians, therefore politicians try to increase surv…

> Today I cannot get a VPS without verifying my identity. Can you? I think it is at least possible to do so in a identity opaque way if you wanted to using obfuscated payment provider, free email and possibly fake name/address (illegal). I meant more without scanning an actual ID or face. > I feel like it doesn't start like this. Of course the train of thought is not "how can we break privacy" usually the concerns/pr…

Yeah I agree with all of that.

I do believe that there exist ZKPs, but then it raises more questions, like:

- Do we ban VPNs? I don't think we should.

- What happens if the ZKP doesn't work? It's not okay to fall back to identity verification, but then does that mean that the services are blocked if the ZKP infrastructure doesn't work?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#226

Post by ian_holt »

p2detar wrote: post #207
ian_holt wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in addition to that, it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing. As far as I am concerned most governments stick their collective noses in where they are not required. And, yeah, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media. Having sid that, even some adults shouldn't be on social media...

> it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle. So yes, I do agree that parents must talk to their children and explain what soc…

Very true & having 6 kids of my own, I know that only too well. I still don't like the idea of Mr Government trying to tell me how to raise my family. Here in Australia the government seems to like that a lot...

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#227

Post by palata »

roenxi wrote: post #210
palata wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the comment, but I feel like you miss my point in a way that is (not purposely) manipulative, again. I don't think that we would call "authoritarian" someone who would ask for, say, guns control. Or at least we wouldn't call "authoritarian" someone who is in favour of having more than 0 law, would we? You are being manipulative by saying "If you want a law that I don't want, then you are an authoritarian…

What political philosophies do you think lay claim to these age verification laws? There are a couple that aren't against it, but to actually implement age controls in the way they are being bought in you basically need to be an authoritarian. Otherwise, you'd be persuaded by arguments like Mullvad's that the social media companies already know how old their users are and don't need a centralised authority to tell th…

> but to actually implement age controls in the way they are being bought in you basically need to be an authoritarian

I don't see how this sentence can make any sense at all in the context of ZKPs. Can you elaborate?

> you'd be persuaded by arguments like Mullvad's that the social media companies already know how old their users are and don't need a centralised authority to tell them

How do the social media companies already know? Because they track everything? But if they ban kids, they don't track them anymore, do they? Or are you saying that social media companies should be able to track everybody everywhere, such that they can profile them and ban them from accessing social media?

> I don't like it because, objectively, this is authoritarianism

You would have to explain that. The government provides a service that allows you to prove that you are old enough without the government learning anything from you and without the service learning anything other than the fact that you are old enough, and you call that "objectively authoritarianism"?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#228

Post by armchairhacker »

sunaookami wrote: post #185
armchairhacker wrote: post #146

Age verification is fine , at least in theory. It’s the implementations that are bad. More and more people agree that kids shouldn’t be on modern social media, including me. But most people also agree that mass surveillance is dangerous. The solution is to propose ways to block kids from modern social media (that actually works) without mass surveillance. Better parental controls, more parental education, and site-sp…

No, age-verification IS bad and is a slippery slope that will always lead to surveillance. If we don't stop this now everything will get worse. And trying to lump this in with other extreme rhetoric doesn't help. The answer is and always was "better parenting".

Everything good is a slippery slope: every step in the right direction is bad if you overshoot. Maybe age verification isn’t needed, and educating parents is important; but without more, they’d have to be ultra-helicopter parents to stop their kids from accessing social media.

At minimum, parents need other parents in their local community to be educated; and better parental controls, so they can give their kid a phone and computer (for good reasons like safety and education) that won’t let them access social media (even unintentionally, some parental controls are that bad). Both can be done without laws, only social pressure and at least the potential for new (locked-down) devices.

(In theory, kids should also be prevented from buying unlocked devices, like drugs and alcohol. And showing the local cashier your ID to buy a generic device (whose packaging is indistinguishable from other device packing, so it can’t be traced to you afterward) is technically a form of age verification. But in practice this may not be necessary, because hardware is too expensive for most kids.)

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#229

Post by QuadmasterXLII »

palata wrote: post #161
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents need to either control the internet, or control their children’s devices and screentime. The latter sounds like the obvious option, except that Google wants every second grader to have a school-mismanaged chromebook and Google wants to mediate control of the internet, and by pushing parents to the former they win on both fronts.

What about this: go ask parents why they allowed their kid to get a smartphone and access to social media, and only then decide whether they are morons, fascists or just bad parents? I have a simple example: when all the kids have a smartphone, it is very hard to tell your kid that they cannot have one. When all the kids have a shared culture built around social media, it is very hard to tell yours to not conform. "I…

In many school districts, unless you can afford private school or homeschooling its hard to tell a kid they can't have an iPhone, but impossible to tell them they can't have an iPad- at age six!

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#230

Post by megous »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #136
IAmGraydon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You find it to be a negative that banks require identity verification to drain an account? Personally, I would refuse to keep my money with a bank that doesn’t do this.

I'd consider it a negative that they trust a shitty webcam / selfie camera to cut the expenses of having an actual office with trained personnel. Who aren't flawless of course, but selfies have been easily circumvented with photos or video game cameras. Hell, at one point we had to implement age verification for a Japanese tobacco product website via a 3rd party vendor, I just used the wiki page's picture of a Japane…

Yeah, it's ridiculous in an age where you can have backgrounds replaced on the fly in video calls.
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