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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

#241

"But age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs." Um, no? iOS is doing age verification just by your credit card. I never saw people all that upset about giving their credit card info to their phone wallet app or even to a bunch of websites.

Are you going to give your cc number to every website in the world? Also, is that really an ID?

It's not necessary to give it to every website. Verification to the website can be a true/false from the OS. In fact that's how it already works now.

I would say it's not really an ID no, which is the point. The post is claiming that a digital ID is necessary for age verification, but clearly it isn't.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#242
Im completely OK with verifying someone's age before distributing age-restricted services to them. That's what an age restricted service is, and obviously we shouldnt let porn companies distribute porn to minors (its already illegal most place). Just dont use porn, facebook, online gambling etc. if you dont want to share your identity.

I can see why it's unfortunate but the idea posited that that it's somehow illegal in the US is ridiculous. You have no right to watch porn anonymously at the expense of holding porn companies liable for distributing porn to minors.

Internet 1.0 was largely read only, ephemeral, or decentralized. Chat rooms, IRC, personal webpages, etc. There was anonymity and there were not age restricted services.

Internet 2.0 introduced age restricted services and the enforcement lagged. The enforcement is now catching up. You can still do all the Internet 1.0 things anonymously but you can no longer gamble online as a 14 year old and hopefully soon you wont be able to watch porn either.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#243
post #138

>age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak... Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course). Really th…

Now Persona has your picture and PII. Pray they never have a breach.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#244
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.

Compelled to disclaim facts is good compelled speech, though.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#245
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

That's true. But leaking an age threshold is not the same as private companies being able to link all your online activities to a single legal person.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#246
post #138

>age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak... Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course). Really th…

Does it not sound insane to you that you need to expose your biometrics to a corporation just to make anonymous posts on a forum?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#247
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is literally a “think of the children[‘s freedom]” appeal. You’re not arguing for or against the restriction on its merits.

In the US at least there’s also no such thing legally as age discrimination against minors so far as I’m aware.

Edit:

Let me frame this differently. “Ageism” is basically by definition bad, so applying the term “ageism” to a restriction is a an attempt to label the restriction bad without establishing that on its own merits.

If you try to provide a consistent definition of “ageism” that applies to restricting access to the internet but not restricting access to alcohol, you will most certainly have to resort to phrases like “reasonable restrictions” (if not, I’m very interested in your definition), which means that there’s still a need to establish what is reasonable. Applying the label “ageism” without establishing reasonableness is then a circular argument.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#249

Why is it always “think of the children” used to abrogate the rights of adults?

I think it's because, without further context, it's so hard to argue against. Pretty much every person in every culture cares deeply about their children. So if you can successfully hitch your position to that idea, it too becomes hard to argue against. It's the same with tough on crime. "What, you want criminals to keep getting away with it?!"

> Pretty much every person in every culture cares deeply about their children.

I would substitute "deeply" for "superficially". Like, if my parents found some way to prohibit porn when I was an adolescent, I wouldn't say they cared deeply about me. I would say they were misguided and authoritary. The "care deeply" idea you are putting forward is just trying to distil whatever societal norm currently is into the youngs.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#250
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…

How does a tech company calling into a government database to verify your identity maintain your anonymity?
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