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Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

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Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#301

Post by abandonliberty »

mr_toad wrote: post #80
Scapeghost wrote: post #62

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…

> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? Slowly, and then suddenly. The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.

Democracy had enemies before the founding of the Republic. Our founders warned us that it would require constant maintenance: "a republic, if you can keep it," warned Franklin.

Washington cautioned us that political parties would allow unprincipled men to subvert the power of the people.

Jefferson highlighted the criticality of public education: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

For Adams, it was the willingness of citizens to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community. He cautioned against purely self-interested rugged individualism, now a fake American ideal.

All of these have eroded from a combination of assault and neglect. This problem is asymmetric: those who assault democracy have more to gain than those who defend it (e.g. by looting it, or getting compensated by a foreign power, etc.)

In 1971, 2 months after Lewis Powell argued businesses use their political power to aggressively influence the law, Regan brought him on as a Supreme Court Justice. It was much more efficient to buy a justice for life. He helped set the stage for First Amendment protection of corporate speech, and Citizens United; ultimately legalizing the ability to secretly give a political candidate money.

The rot is really, really deep.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#302

Post by conductr »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #113
conductr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the problem, the greatest generation were sort of a moral compass in the US (like it or not, they obv had their own problems - eg. racism). Without them to scold us, it seems we're all too infantile/selfish/greedy and can't even show each other basic respect or do something as simple as stop at a red light. Sure, the internet and social media accelerate it but I think there's also a fundamental loss of…

The greatest generation and the silent generation spent their entire adult lives vesting power in institutions and they passed this on to the boomers. Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.

It’s the stewardship that’s the problem not the institutions or existence of.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#303

Post by tsoukase »

All actors already know your age with 99% accuracy: tech giants (Google/Meta etc through your searches/choices) and government though your... birth. The same holds for your gender, job, spouse and more. And they share all of it to many other endpoints. They just want age verification to cover the rest 1% and to transfer the responsibility to the user.

The problem with any online age verification system is not only that many other info is leaked (personal, IP address etc) but even the fact that YOU apply for such a service and might use it for nasty things.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#304

Post by wrs »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #268
xp84 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I regret that I have but one vote to give to this comment. It seems like at least half of what everyone consumes in all of 'social media' is 'politicized' but no one is interested in debating. Debating would have to mean we're talking to those gross people from the opposite 'team,' asking them to justify the policy they are advocating for, listening to them, and trying to convince them of our own positions. When was…

It's pointless. Very few people will be convinced by arguments. Refuting someone's entire belief system will not lead them to reevaluate their lives and follow us as though we were Jesus. This just doesn't happen. The reason for this is people believe things without actually thinking about them. People manage to believe in things that are mutually exclusive. Debating them will just make them hate you for your air of…

What a depressing take. The whole reason we put 435 people in the same room (well, plus 100 people in another room) to run the lawmaking process was for them to convince each other with arguments. If we're going to make decisions based exclusively on who can yell generalized slurs the loudest, we're completely doomed.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#305

Post by iamnothere »

righthand wrote: post #143
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Age verification will make software development impossible or be impossible to implement without huge investment. Not really, you'll just be forced to use services from eg google or meta. And pay for them. And share user data.

And if my foss software doesnt implement those systems? Or someone downloads my foss software and removes those restrictions?

We will go back to the days of underground networks, offline if needed. NNCP, UUCP, and FIDO.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#306

Post by chimeracoder »

tmaly wrote: post #41
john_strinlai wrote: post #6

> An FTC spokesperson told CNBC that companies must limit how collected information is used. [...] The agency pointed to existing rules requiring firms to retain personal information only as long as reasonably necessary and to safeguard its confidentiality and integrity. the very same rules that have allowed literally every single piece of my data to be leaked several separate times, and now i have free credit monito…

I have gotten several notices of medical data being leaked over the last two years. I thought HIPPA law had very harsh fines for this, but I guess they just look the other way.

> I thought HIPPA law had very harsh fines for this

Not at all. The maximum fine a company has to pay is capped at $2 million per calendar year for a violation, and that's assuming it's even eligible for the highest tier of penalty.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#307

Post by nomel »

bilekas wrote: post #7

The fact that these tools are 'active' centric, i.e : You must perform an action to validate you're NOT a child, these will never protect children. A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people. I'm not saying the inverse is the answer either, just that if anyone without an agenda of surveillance looked at this for a second, the penny would have…

> A predator simply needs not to verify anything and appear benign and ironically more anonymous than law abiding people.

Roblox takes the sane approach with this: communication features are completely disabled for "unverified" users.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#308

Post by abalone »

Here's a good interview with the director of the Free Speech Coalition on the consequences of these "protect the kids" moral panic laws, which include widespread surveillance, banning VPNs and raising the cost of running an independent website to unsustainable levels.

Remember it's not just about pornography. It's anything deemed "harmful to minors" including platforms like Reddit, Bluesky or stuff conservative lawmakers think is harmful like discussion forums for LGBTQ people, sexual health information or dissident political opinions.

They also examine how these laws, which are often backed by the religious Right, are getting support more broadly from people who see it as a way to rein in Big Tech who are creating "social media addiction" and so forth.

And even within our industry there is a lot of money to be made by creating and selling compliance products, so even on forums like this you will find people advocating for them.

"Another Internet Law That Punishes Everyone" - Power User Podcast 1/9/26: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bnp3nmpK9g

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#309

Post by lapcat »

mullingitover wrote: post #284
lapcat wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what alternative do you propose? Your question is ambigious. Are you asking what a different system would look like, or how we would get there? As for the first question, there are many obvious ways to improve the system. Here are some suggestions: abolish the electoral college, abolish the Presidential veto and pardon, abolish the Senate, abolish lifetime Supreme Court terms, add term limits for Congress, publicly…

> As for the second question: "The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years." Be careful what you wish for. We're arguably in the middle of one right now, and the good guys are not winning.

An Orwellian dystopia has grown unabated, regardless of who is in power. Remember that the Snowden revelations came out in the Obama administration. The pervasive surveillance that has invaded every aspect of our lives is not even a political issue that leaders debate. The political duopoly has been bought off. I'm not sure exactly who you think "the good guys" are.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#310

Post by matheusmoreira »

wrs wrote: post #304
matheusmoreira wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pointless. Very few people will be convinced by arguments. Refuting someone's entire belief system will not lead them to reevaluate their lives and follow us as though we were Jesus. This just doesn't happen. The reason for this is people believe things without actually thinking about them. People manage to believe in things that are mutually exclusive. Debating them will just make them hate you for your air of…

What a depressing take. The whole reason we put 435 people in the same room (well, plus 100 people in another room) to run the lawmaking process was for them to convince each other with arguments. If we're going to make decisions based exclusively on who can yell generalized slurs the loudest, we're completely doomed.

Politicians don't convince each other via logical arguments, they convince each other with leverage, favors and all sorts of secret underhanded backroom deals. That's how power works.

I know it's a depressing take. It's a depressing world. And it's only getting worse. We're in an age where truth is essentially irrelevant if not actively detrimental to whatever cause any given person believes in.

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