Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control • Hacker News Board

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#231

Post by SilverElfin » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #200

For almost three decades authorities have been wondering how to put this 'free communications' genie back into the bottle without taking the GFW approach. It looks like this time they just might get it. If you really believe that this is about child protection then you are much too gullible, that was never the main reason. If the authorities really wanted to do something about child protection online they'd spend a f…

It is all about advertising profits. See what I said at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47471747

But what do we do about it? Look at social media comments on this topic. There’s huge support for these age verification laws. Parents chime in about how their kids were affected by social media and how badly this is needed, instead of taking responsibility for raising their kids properly. That article by the Pinterest CEO calling for these laws is naively seen as some sort of sacrifice of profits for the good of everyone’s kids. And no one talks about privacy or the effects on speech.

And all these well funded nonprofits pushing these dishonest bills onto legislators have time and resources. Feels like the privacy friendly people are losing the battle.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#232

Post by poly2it » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:07 AM UTC

signalfour wrote: post #187

poly2it wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gender dysphoria can be medically studied, is not an ideology and is not a disorder. Hope this clears things up.

It stopped being centered around gender dysphoria quite a while ago. Gender identity is where it's at now, and the idea that one does not need to be dysphoric to be trans is currently the most mainstream one.

Yes, you do not need to be dysphoric to be transgender, however. It is actually quite difficult to compare rates of gendery dysphoria to transgender identity, as transgender identity is inherently self-reported, but studies on gender dysphoria focus on diagnosed cases, not undiagnosed estimates. Therefore it is also not possible to assert that non-dysphoria is dominant among current transitioning people as you do.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#233

Post by tzs » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

txrx0000 wrote: post #151

We have to separate child protection from Internet control so that the "protect the kids" narrative loses its potency. So here's a counter-narrative: we can implement digital child protection without Internet-wide access control, and it requires just 3 simple features that can be implemented in less than a week. There's no need to introduce new laws at all. This could just be done tomorrow if there is genuine will to…

(This is a reply to the dead comment, which was not dead when I start writing this)

I don't know how long their specific proposal would take, but on a Unix or Unix-like system the California bill could be done in a week.

0. Make a directory somewhere, say /etc/age_check, and in that directory create four files: 0-13, 13-16, 16-18, 18+, owned by some system account with permissions 000.

1. This would be the hardest part. Modify whatever is used to interactively create new user accounts to ask for the user age if the account is a child's account, and than add an ACL entry for the appropriate /etc/age_check file that allows the child's account to read that file.

The California bill says you have to ask for and age or birthdate but the API you provide for apps to ask for age information just requires giving an age bracket, so I'm taking that as meaning I am not required to actually store the age. I only have to make the API work.

2. The API for checking age is to try to open the files in /etc/age_check. Whichever open succeeds gives you the user's age bracket.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#234

Post by AvAn12 » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:08 AM UTC

You can’t determine age from a face scan. And it’s trivial to hold up a photo of an older person. Seriously if a website wants an image of your government ID or facial image, maybe ask yourself if you really need to access that site.

There WILL be breaches and those drivers license scans will get loose in the world sooner or later. Fully agree that this is all about access control. No thank you.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#235

Post by theshackleford » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:10 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #131

theshackleford wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You conveniently omit the fact that they broke up 5 years before he was first convicted. And? It doesn’t change the reality of the original statement. The president of the United States was friends with the alleged ring leader of a large pedophile network.

>The president of the United States was friends with the alleged ring leader of a large pedophile network. You're making some leaps logic here here. If someone's outed as a pedophile, everyone who's friends with him should be assumed to be a pedophile? Surely not, given that pedophilia is considered taboo, we'd expect them to hide it, and therefore at least some friends might not be in the know. That's not to say the…

> You're making some leaps logic here here.

No, you’re just shifting the goalposts.

The original claim was “The president of the United States was friends with the supposed leader of a pedophile ring.”

Your response to that was to imply that over time, they had a falling out. To which my point was, so what? It doesn’t materially change the original claim you challenged.

A falling out in NO way changes that the original statement was correct, the current president of the United States, Donald J Trump, was good friends with the alleged leader of a large scale pedophile network.

> If someone's outed as a pedophile, everyone who's friends with him should be assumed to be a pedophile?

If a given friend had their own history of acting like a creepy sex pest when it comes to young women, had a known and close relationship with the alleged leader of a pedophile network AND knew about “the girls”, would I assume them also to be a pedophile? At a minimum, I may in fact conclude that the odds they are also a pedophile are significantly higher than that of the average individual. Birds of a feather and all…

It’s not to say they are of course and it may in fact be as simple as they are nothing more than a creepy sex pest with a bad taste in friends, but NOT a pedophile. I gotta be honest but, me personally, I’d rather be neither.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#236

Post by simonask » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:12 AM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #203

simonask wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly share your concerns, especially as someone belonging to a minority. At the same time, we have to be real: Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. I don't think it's reasonable to keep dreaming of the 90s or 00s when the internet was a comparatively innocent place. As society is more and more digitized, the stakes become much, much higher. An information leak 30 years ago was bad, but it had a…

> An information leak 30 years ago was bad, but it had a fairly limited impact radius. Today it can lose you your house, your savings, your relationships, and even your life ("swatting" comes to mind). So you are afraid of minor information leaks getting you killed, but you’re also trying to tell us that online anonymity is a bad thing? Come on. This argument isn’t even coherent from paragraph to paragraph. > I don't…

[flagged]

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#237

Post by skybrian » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

gzread wrote: post #229

skybrian wrote: post #197

Devices with child locks turned on really shouldn't have access to everything on the Internet. A simple protocol could let cooperating websites know when child locks are on, so they don't show inappropriate content. Whitelisting or blacklisting could handle the rest. This doesn't mean every device needs to implement child locks. It also shouldn't affect anyone using unlocked devices at all.

> a simple protocol could let cooperating websites know when child locks are on, so they don't show inappropriate content. Isn't that literally the California law?

Not which law you mean, but I think there's a distinction between "disallows children under 16 from creating an account" (which apparently requires age verification) and "disallows creating or logging into a social media account from a device with a child lock on." (Which doesn't.)

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#238

Post by txrx0000 » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:13 AM UTC

gzread wrote: post #220

txrx0000 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The California bill gets it backwards. Rather than Internet services taking the user's age and deciding what content to serve, the Internet service or app should broadcast the age rating of its content to the OS (if convenience is desired), like how movie ratings work. The responsibility to decide what content is suitable for a child should rest in the hands of that child's parent, not the state or the corporation. e…

Would the content rating be per HTML element and the browser would delete the elements with bad ratings from the DOM, or how would it work?

I'd imagine it works like movie ratings. You don't filter movies from scene to scene. There's just one rating for an entire site or app.

But yeah I get the point, API based solutions are complicated and brittle because they require all services to implement it properly. In contrast a user-set app installation password in the OS settings is more effective and easier to implement.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#239

Post by simonask » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:14 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #168

simonask wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly share your concerns, especially as someone belonging to a minority. At the same time, we have to be real: Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. I don't think it's reasonable to keep dreaming of the 90s or 00s when the internet was a comparatively innocent place. As society is more and more digitized, the stakes become much, much higher. An information leak 30 years ago was bad, but it had a…

> Sticking our head in the sand crying "git gud" while millions get scammed out of their life savings... The solution is called a durable power of attorney and then moving significant assets to different financial institutions with e-statements. Or the heavyweight option is a living trust. Mandatory identity verification or locking down software really have no bearing on this problem. Scammers leverage generic apps i…

Perhaps the first step is to actually listen to the frustrated people. Maybe at least some of their problems are real.

Re: Do Not Turn Child Protection into Internet Access Control

#240

Post by _moof » Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 1:15 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #156

tangotaylor wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their real goals are even worse than that. Some of these groups have admitted they're also about suppressing LGBT+ content. As the Heritage Foundation admitted: > Keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids. No child should be conditioned to think that permanently damaging their healthy bodies to try to become something they can never be is even remotely a good idea. https://arstechnica.com/tech-polic…

>they're also about suppressing LGBT+ content >> Keeping trans content away [...] Isn't it a stretch to round off "trans content" to "LGBT+ content"? I mean, from a pure logical point of view the statement is correct, because "trans content" is a subset of "LGBT+ content", and therefore "suppressing LGBT+ content" is technically correct, but it's at least misleading. The left's version of this would be something like…

Hi, I've been openly queer for over 20 years. Using trans people as a wedge to pry apart the entire LGBTQ community is a tale as old as time. This isn't theoretical or a slippery slope argument; it's recent history. It's effective because it sounds "reasonable" on its face, but it's a ploy.

Just one of the many, many, many reasons that trans rights are human rights.