The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection • Hacker News Board

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#301

Post by gmueckl » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:55 PM UTC

aidenn0 wrote: post #250

horsawlarway wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

You're assuming that this person is in the US. Alcohol is treated far more liberally in other places. For example, in some places it is legal for restaurants to serve alcohol to minors who are accompanied by a parent...

Another thing: I fundamentally disagree with certain age rarings for kids content. Some explicit violence is rated OK for young audiences, but insert a swear word or a some skin and the age rating is bumped up? This rating system is nonhelp at all. I have to review each bit of content anyway before I can be certain.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#302

Post by armchairhacker » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

hawk_ wrote: post #223

armchairhacker wrote: post #55

Age 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…

> If there's a fundamental culture shift, You mean this culture shift is needed for the masses but I don't think that's the case. In my widest social circle I am not aware of anyone giving alcohol to young kids (yes by the time they are 16ish yes but even that's rare). Most guardians would willingly do similar with locked devices. The real problem is that the governments/companies won't get to spy on you if locked de…

The kids in your social circle are used to not having access to alcohol, but they're not used to not having access to social media.

Hypothetically, if every kid in your social circle had their device "locked", the adults would probably have a very hard time the kids away from their devices, or just relent, because the kids would be very unhappy. Although maybe with today's knowledge, most people will naturally restrict new kids who've never had unrestricted access, causing a slow culture shift.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#303

Post by 9dev » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #161

everdrive wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. The internet works differently than how people want it to, and filtering services are notoriously easy to bypass. Even if these age-verification laws passed with resounding scope and support, what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws. The leads to run down would be legion. I think you could seriously degrade the porn in…

> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot,…

That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#304

Post by bacchusracine » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It'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?

I think the word you're missing is fatigue.

The average tech literate person keep seeing their data breached over and over again. Not because THEY did anything wrong, but because these Corpos can't help themselves. No matter how well the tech literate person secures their privacy it has become clear that some Corpo will eventually release everything in an "accident" that causes their efforts to become meaningless.

After a while it's only human for fatigue to build up. You can't stop your information from getting out there. And once it's out there it's out there forever.

Meanwhile every Corpo out there in tech is deliberately creating ways to track you and extract your personal information. Taking steps to secure your information ironically just makes you stand out more and narrows the pool you're in to make it easier to find you and your information. And again you're always just one "bug" from having it all be for nothing.

I still take some steps to secure my privacy, I'm not out there shouting my social security information or real name. But that's habit. I no longer believe that privacy exists.

To the extent we ever had it in the past was simply the insurmountable restrictions on tracking and pooling the information into some kind of organization and easy lookup. Now that it is easier and easier to build profiles on mass numbers of people and to organize those and rank them the illusion is gone. Privacy is dead. Murdered.

And people are tired of pretending otherwise.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#305

Post by gleenn » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #290

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

I am a bit confused by that comment. Are parents social responsible to prevent companies from selling alcohol/guns/cigarettes to minors? If a company set up shop in a school and sold those things to minors during school breaks, who has the social responsibility to stop that?

Not responsible for selling to all minors, just theirs.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#306

Post by runarberg » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

Blaming parents is a bit unwarranted, when on the other end we have business interests driven by perverse incentives of predating on children’s gullibility for their own profit.

When you say “We‘ll try everything” that is simply not true, in particular what we do not try is strict consumer protection laws which prohibits targeting children. Europe used to have such laws in the 1980s and the 1990s, but by the mid-1990s authorities had all but stopped enforcing them.

We have tried consumer protection, and we know it works, but we are not trying it now. And I think there is exactly one reason for that, the tech lobby has an outsized influence on western legislators and regulators, and the tech industry does not want to be regulated.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#307

Post by regularfry » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

belorn wrote: post #290

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

I am a bit confused by that comment. Are parents social responsible to prevent companies from selling alcohol/guns/cigarettes to minors? If a company set up shop in a school and sold those things to minors during school breaks, who has the social responsibility to stop that?

The school, in loco parentis.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#308

Post by 9dev » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:57 PM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #69

armchairhacker wrote: post #55

Age 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…

And we need a standard where websites can self-rate their own content. Then locked devices can just block all content that isn't rated "G" or whatever.

Wrong incentive. If you don’t give a shit about exposing children to snuff or porn, but do give a shit about page views and ad revenue, you obviously don’t rate your content or rate it as G to increase that revenue.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#309

Post by brisky » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

armchairhacker wrote: post #55

Age 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…

Just a personal anecdote from my life - I have set up Youtube account for my kid with correct age restrictions (he is 11). Also this account is under family plan so there are no ads.

My kid logs out of this account so he can watch restricted content. I wonder - what is PG rating for logged out experience?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#310

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 4:58 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #268

armchairhacker wrote: post #55

Age 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…

> Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account More simply: If ID checks are fully anonymous (as many here propose when the topic comes up) then every kid will just have their friends’ older sibling ID verify their account one afternoon. Or they’ll steal their parents’ ID when they’re not looking. Discussions ab…

Circumventing controls as a kid is what taught me enough about computers to get the job that made college affordable (in those days you could just boot windows to a livecd Linux distro and have your way with the filesystem, first you feel like a hacker, later the adults are paying you to recover data).

If we must have controls, I hope the process of circumventing them continues to teach skills that are useful for other things.