251–260 of 561 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was 2018 China. Oh jeah add id verification to that as well.
Fun fact: America invented the social credit score, long before China, and they still have it. The only difference, is the lack of the word "social" in the system's name, but it's the same system.
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> It would be an excellent case for zero-knowledge cryptography: The last ~third of the article is about the EU's zero-knowledge approach
You mean the EU's fake snake oil zero-knowledge approach. They've standardized two systems under the banner of "zero knowledge". One is actually zero knowledge. The other is trust-me snake oil. Guess which one is getting deployment.
on which major social media networks can you post anonymously today? HN is a rare bird in that regard.
None of the social media networks my teens are bugging me to sign up for (IG, TT, Snapchat, etc.) have anonymous registration.
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There is a solution, it is regulating social media companies to stop abusing their users, and by extension, children. strict laws around adtech and tracking tech. more consumer rights, in other words - that’s why this solution comes off as authoritarian, because there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one.
> there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one. If you think that privacy-preserving age verification is the most authoritarian way to tackle this problem, then you really, really don't understand authoritarianism. Now if you have tons of better and practical solutions to tackle this problem, I would suggest you start writing about them. I haven't read a lot about tho…
I did. the burden isn’t on me to explain it to you, comrade. maybe you could start by actually addressing what I wrote. Or are you now expecting me to draft up a legislation draft before you’ll address my post? These types are always the same.
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> 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 companie…
> I don't see how this sentence can make any sense at all in the context of ZKPs. Can you elaborate? The reason people are getting called authoritarian is because ZKP proofs are a massive and obvious improvement on what is actually being implemented. Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs? The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do. I wouldn't be using an American IP right know if my local age…
The EU initiative explicitly mentions ZKP: https://ageverification.dev/.
> The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do.
It's technical, just like getting E2EE right. Doesn't mean it's hard to use, as proven by the fact that billions of people use E2EE in WhatsApp and Signal without even realising it.
> I'm not an authoritarian. I'm not out to create a watertight way to stop people communicating if they want to.
You seem to have a Manichaean view of the world. There is room for nuance between "let kids lie by clicking 'yes'" and identity verification.
> You should consider reading the linked article
Did you read it? There is a whole section that is titled "The Zero-Knowledge Proof alternative and the EU".
> The reason you don't see any authoritarianism is you haven't actually looked at how the schemes are being implemented.
I actually have. Have you? Seems like you haven't read the article. Mullvad is complaining about the fact that the app seems to support both ZKP and identity verification, and they criticise the infrastructure enabling identity verification. And then some more "slippery slope" arguments that are worth what they are worth (with the same kind of reasoning, we shouldn't have gun control, because the next step is to control everything, right?).
> Mullvad isn't writing this blog post because
Mullvad sells some kind of privacy (as much as a VPN can offer), and here they share their opinion about age verification. With which I mostly agree: the only viable age verification implementation is through ZKP. I tend to disagree with the slippery slope argument, and that "the government abuses everything they can". If you think like that, doesn't that make you an anarchist?
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".
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…
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 .
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one. If you think that privacy-preserving age verification is the most authoritarian way to tackle this problem, then you really, really don't understand authoritarianism. Now if you have tons of better and practical solutions to tackle this problem, I would suggest you start writing about them. I haven't read a lot about tho…
> I would suggest you start writing about them. I did. the burden isn’t on me to explain it to you, comrade. maybe you could start by actually addressing what I wrote. Or are you now expecting me to draft up a legislation draft before you’ll address my post? These types are always the same.
I am confused. Did you? Do you mean this:
> [the solution] is regulating social media companies to stop abusing their users, and by extension, children. strict laws around adtech and tracking tech
Pretty sure it has been tried in some countries, and the solution that those companies were happy to implement was... identity verification. There was a drama about Discord doing this, recently.
> Or are you now expecting me to draft up a legislation draft
Not at all. Just give me the name of a viable solution, so that I can search for it. It doesn't take a full day to write something like "privacy-preserving age verification", does it? I can't easily search for "JohnMakin says there are many good solutions, which ones are they?".
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…
age verification is a cover for universal internet IDs. you'll never be able to go online and do anything anonymously again.
The problem is kids on social media. This doesn't need to be a problem for anyone except social media companies and social media users. Sloppy policymaking is making it a broader problem, but I don't think this is some nefarious scheme (at least in the U.S., it looks sketchier in Europe). It's just policymakers pulling the first proposal off the shelf to respond to intense demand for a policy from voters.
I don't think we have to accept that "kids on social media" is inherently a problem. I don't think kids on a 2005-era-myspace social media would be a problem. As I see it, "social media" is now defined as the highly addictive and exploitative products from Meta et. al., and we shouldn't have to destroy any semblance of free or private internet so that they can't be hindered in any way from making the maximum amount o…
If you're below 18, you deserve protection. Above 18? Good luck, babe.
I think one of the unintended consequences of age verification is going to be a whole host of unprepared 18 year olds getting full access to social media and getting absolutely one-shot by it. Think credit card sign ups on college campuses or predatory car dealerships near boot camps. There are going to be a lot more 18 year old boys gambling away their student loans and 18 year old girls signing up for OF, but it'll be fine, because they're 18! Not to mention they're going to be scam targets on the level of the elderly. And if you're exploited/scammed as an adult, it's your own fault.
Age verification/restriction without an educational component of some sort is just creating a future cohort of extremely vulnerable young adults for companies and bad actors to sink their teeth into.