(thats the point)
The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
241–250 of 1001 posts
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
Although there is some organic support, there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. It’s apparent if you watch the discussions across platforms, there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves. Governments (and a few companies) really want this.
> there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. Interesting. Are you saying all the concerns raised by the proponents of ID verification are invalid and meritless? For example, 1. Foreign influence campaigns 2. Domestic influence campaigns 3. Filtering age-appropriate content I’m sure there are many other points with various degree of validity.
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Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#243There is missing a solution. Give our personal devices have the ability to verify our age and identity securely and store on device like they do our fingerprint or face data. Services that need access only verify it cryptographically. So my iPhone can confirm I’m over 21 for my DoorDash app in the same way it stores my biometric data. The challenge here is the adoption of these encryption services and whether compani…
The solution has always been there: Assume everybody is an adult.
The only reasonable way to deal with children on the Internet is to treat Internet access like access to alcohol/drugs. There is no need for children to access the Internet full stop.
Internet is a network in which everything can connect to everything, and every connected machine can run clients, servers, p2p nodes and what not. Controlling every possible endpoint your child might connect to is not feasible. Shutting the entire network down because "won't somebody please think of the children" is not acceptable.
And, don't let them trick you. This is the endgoal. An unprecedented level of control over the flow of information.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#244It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?
This is a VC site, when the revenue generating model of the Internet has strongly shifted into surveillance capitalism overdrive.
Cui bono?
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#245>Some observers present privacy-preserving age proofs involving a third party, such as the government, as a solution, but they inherit the same structural flaw: many users who are legally old enough to use a platform do not have government ID. So there is absolutely no way to change that and give out IDs from the age of 14? You can already get an ID for children in Germany https://www.germany.info/us-de/service/reise…
I'm not convinced age restrictions like this are a good idea. But yeah, the non-availability of IDs in the US is a self-inflicted problem. Another example where this plays a role are voter registration and ID requirements for voting in the US. It is entirely bizarre to me how these discussions just accept it as a law of nature that it's expensive and a lot of effort to get an ID. This is something that could be chang…
When one of the only two political parties does not want everyone to vote (cause they’d lose every election) you get what we got…
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#246Big Tech refused to work together to implement a age flag that parents would setup on the children device, now we get each European and each USA state with their own special rules.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#247Most of this debate makes more sense if the actual goal is liability reduction, not child safety. If it were genuinely about protecting kids, you'd regulate infinite scroll and algorithmic engagement optimization, not who can log in.
Interestingly, regulating these would be good for adults as well. A lot of these very large online companies enjoy an asymmetric power advantage. We should aim to protect ourselves against them, in addition to our children.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#248Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually don't hate this??? As long as parents can set up their own whitelists and it's not up to the government to have the final say on any particular block.
Parents can do this today if they wanted to The problem of "kids accessing the Internet" is a purposeful distraction from the intent of these laws, which is population-level surveillance and Verified Ad Impressions.
Today, in practice it's not a choice, because even the most attentive parents fail to block internet access. Parental controls are ineffective, and all the kid's friends have access so they become alienated. https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-pare...
But laws alone won't fix this, and laws aren't necessary (except maybe a law that prevents kids from buying phones). In the article, the child's devices had parental controls, but they were ineffective. There's demand for a phone with better parental controls, so it will come, and more parents are denying access, so their kids will become less alienated.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#249It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?
Although there is some organic support, there is a lot of coordinated astroturfing. It’s apparent if you watch the discussions across platforms, there are obvious shared talking points that come in waves. Governments (and a few companies) really want this.
What are some links to HN comments that you (or anyone else) feel is "coordinated astroturfing"?
The site guidelines ask users to send those to us at hn@ycombinator.com rather than post about it in the threads, but we always look into such cases when people send them.
It almost invariably turns out to simply be that the community is divided on a topic, and this is usually demonstrable even from the public data (such as comment histories). However, we're not welded to that position—if the data change, we can too.
Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection
#250Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift. If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an eas…
I don't understand how this is any better. It's my job as a parent (and I have several kids...) to monitor the things they consume and talk with them about it. I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate", because I don't approve that content being banned. (honestly - the idea of "age appropriate" is insulting in the first place) Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't se…
> Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't see why it's appropriate to enforce what content I allow them to see.
In the USA it depends on the state. Federal guidelines for alcohol law does suggest exemptions for children drinking under the supervision of their parents, but that's not uniformly adopted. 19 states have no such exceptions, and in many of the remaining 31, restaurants may be banned from allowing alcohol consumption by minors even when their parents are there.