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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

#31
post #6

> If you love your family, you must stop online age verification. > If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification. > Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives. Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual poi…

Responding to tone but not to content is what a dog does.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#32
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "cashier standard" you advocate for has already crept toward centralized state tracking in places like Utah. When you go to a restaurant and order a drink, the staff are required to take it to the back and scan it for verification. The scanned data is also compared with a state database of DUI offenders. It's not clear whether the database is stored on site, or if that data goes out on the wire for the check; pre…

This is not the case in most of the country. Utah is largely influenced by a Mormon / LDS culture that expresses heavy opposition to drinking. I am clearly not proposing that the cards be scanned Utah style, I am proposing that they be glanced at by a cashier, everywhere else style.

More and more places I go in other states besides Utah, try to scan IDs when purchasing alcohol.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#33
post #16
post #5

It's worth pointing out that full digital identity verification ("doxxing" yourself to an untrustworthy, unauditable, legally unconstrained private company) is NOT the only way to verify adulthood. We have had a system in place which enables adulthood validation without enabling digital surveillance infrastructure, with a degree of false negative risk that society has deemed acceptable for nearly 100 years now. This…

How does this prevent a second market for one time codes? I as an adult can just get a code and sell it someone else.

It doesn't prevent it, it just disincentivizes it. As an adult, you can also go buy a beer and sell it to a minor. That said, mandatory age verification with photo ID upload and facial scans doesn't prevent workarounds either - kids use their parents' photo ID and pass facial scans with a variety of techniques, too.

Nobody who understands how adversarial systems like this work is seriously expecting a 100% flawless performance of blocking every single minor and accepting every single adult, the question is how much risk is acceptable, and the risks posed by this system are acceptable for alcohol, cigarettes, and other adult items that can arguably pose much more acute risk of serious injury or bodily harm to kids.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#34
Age verification on Australian social media has loopholes. Underage influencers use an agency to manage their social media for them. So anyone with enough followers or money can continue using social media under the age of 16.

If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#35
post #6

> If you love your family, you must stop online age verification. > If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification. > Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives. Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual poi…

Ironic that he's relying on the same ridiculous "think of the children" rhetoric that's being used to promote age verification. Really says a thing or two about online discourse in our day and age.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#36
post #29

An attestation-like system to detect humanity at time of post is absolutely for useful online spaces in the era of AI slop. The writing style of the author is very annoying.

It could be done with anonymous credentials though. No tracing to who the human is.

Anonymous in terms of it not being possible to derive the real world identity of the human from the value, sure. Anonymous in terms of providing no durable way to ban that human from the platform? No.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#37
post #5

It's worth pointing out that full digital identity verification ("doxxing" yourself to an untrustworthy, unauditable, legally unconstrained private company) is NOT the only way to verify adulthood. We have had a system in place which enables adulthood validation without enabling digital surveillance infrastructure, with a degree of false negative risk that society has deemed acceptable for nearly 100 years now. This…

This type of system is a horrible idea for the following reasons: 1) the cards can just be re-sold which creates a black market and defeats the "cashier physically saw the person buying the card" angle 2) nickle and dimes people for simply browsing the internet (verification can dystopia anyone?) 3) related to #2, it creates winners in the private sector since presumably you need central authorities handing out these…

Is it even theoretically possible to have bearer anonymity and no reselling option at the same time?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#38
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…

Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal to have sites voluntarily set an age header, so parents/employers/etc could use to block the site if they wish. People said it would never work, because adult sites had a financial incentive not to opt in to reduce their own traffic.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#39
post #5

It's worth pointing out that full digital identity verification ("doxxing" yourself to an untrustworthy, unauditable, legally unconstrained private company) is NOT the only way to verify adulthood. We have had a system in place which enables adulthood validation without enabling digital surveillance infrastructure, with a degree of false negative risk that society has deemed acceptable for nearly 100 years now. This…

This type of system is a horrible idea for the following reasons: 1) the cards can just be re-sold which creates a black market and defeats the "cashier physically saw the person buying the card" angle 2) nickle and dimes people for simply browsing the internet (verification can dystopia anyone?) 3) related to #2, it creates winners in the private sector since presumably you need central authorities handing out these…

First - Alcohol and cigarettes can just be resold too. The black market for them is effectively zero because the consequences for giving them to kids are severe and the room for meaningful profit is close to zero, same applies here.

Second - The codes would be priced on the order of magnitude of pennies per verification - think 10 cents or less, accessible even to low / fixed income folks without really making a dent in their budget.

Third - the proposal explicitly mentions a nonprofit running it as an option, and the idea would be that law codifies the method to be approved, not a specific vendor, so competitive markets could emerge, too. Would you argue that restrictions on the sale of alcohol are creating artificial winners in the private sector of alcohol manufacturing?

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