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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

#311

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #22
kristopolous wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sob stories about children are always weaponized for oppression. It was used to bash interracial marriage, gay rights, suppress dissent, attack the first amendment, and now this. Whenever you hear some dramatic story involving kids about how you have to live a little less free, know the tactic.

whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it. ___ said hamas beaheaded 40 babies and that turned out to be a complete fabrication. That fake info was used in part to justify killing thousands of kids in ____ meanwhile the recent strike on Iran resulted in 80 little girls getting killed (with plenty of evidence) and its swept under the rug while we get blasted about the 7 soldiers that…

>whats incredible to me are how many useful idiots out there STILL fall for it.

That's about 99% of the population.

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

#312

Post by matheusmoreira »

galangalalgol wrote: post #286
matheusmoreira wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes. > The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be authoritarian. What are you basing this on? Where can I read more about this?

Montesquieu, Wittfogel, and Sachs are the old ones. Modern writers acknowledge geography isn't destiny, but it would definitely be fighting uphill for Russia to maintain democracy. Mobile middle class seems to be the real driver of democracy, and coastal trade is what created that in most modern democracies. Seems like maybe technology could change that. But big regions make mobility harder. If you have to move half…

Interesting.

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

#313

Post by chimeracoder »

antonyh wrote: post #48

My default reaction to the introduction of any age-verification for any service is the closing account. Goodbye Discord, account closed out of protest. The second option is ignoring the verification request. Goodbye online-gaming-with-strangers on Xbox. (I see this as a positive). Same goes for Ubisoft who aggressively wanted my secret papers to verify my identity. I've yet to come across anything I want or need outs…

> I've yet to come across anything I want or need outside banking or government use where age verification benefits me, or is so useful/important that I would willingly hand over critical secret documents

So far. As these laws proliferate (and companies continue complying in advance), at this rate, it won't be long before you can't meaningfully do anything on the Internet otherwise.

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

#314

Post by eikenberry »

array_key_first wrote: post #295
eikenberry wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prepaid cards can't masquerade as credit cards as there are easy ways to differentiate them (the numbers have meaning) and a minor getting access to the family credit card is the parents giving them permission. I'm not convinced credit card for age verification is a good solution for all cases but for cases where you've already used a credit card to access the service it would be perfect.

I agree, we shouldn't be optimizing for the case where a child steals a credit card. That's just not in the threat model. I mean, they could steal IDs too, and children can already steal credit cards and buy, like, vbucks or whatever. Which probably causes more tangible real-world harm than seeing a pair of boobies or whatever we're trying to protect against. However, I still think credit cards are overkill. They rev…

I agree that CCs are overkill for every case except those where you have already given them a CC. There is no risk of revealing to much information for age verification when you already are giving them all that information.

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

#315

Post by alansaber »

abalone wrote: post #308

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 lawma…

It's thinly veiled authoritarianism, just the state pushing for more control

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

#316

Post by galangalalgol »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #258
galangalalgol wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think pointing to a single puppet master is reductive. Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes. Protesting and civil disobedience can obviously tip matters, but the authoritarianism taking the us has been a long time coming just based on the centralization of federal power that started almost as soon as the ink was dry. The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be aut…

> Ditching first past the poles and mitigating gerrymandering would also obviously help. Mitigating gerrymandering is a lost cause with first past the post because someone has to draw the lines and whoever is in the majority at the time is going to find a way to benefit themselves. It's especially hard because in a state which is e.g. 60% for one party, drawing the lines in a "normal" way can pretty easily result in…

With scoring isn't the logical play to score your favorite the highest and zero out everyone else? Then it just devolves to fptp.

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

#317

Post by anonymous908213 »

asdff wrote: post #291

I am sympathetic to the privacy concerns. But to be honest I don't understand where they come from. Seems people are upset about being de anonymized on the internet. It was my understanding that it is trivial for the government to deanonymize you directly through their own tooling and trivial for private industry to deanonymize you through statistical analysis. So in that sense, what new thing are we fearing that wil…

We are not in a post-anonymous world. People who care can absolutely still remain anonymous, for the time being, with enough effort. However, the number of services we can use is being increasingly cut off by these measures. If the trend continues, then we will soon be in such a world, but we are not there yet.

I hate comments like yours beyond belief. "Oh, I'm so smart. It's too much effort to stay private, so I've accepted that a dystopian surveillance state where every action anyone ever takes is recorded permanently and accessible to anyone is inevitable. Look at these fucking idiots worrying about this issue. Can't they just accept it will happen and shut up?"

It is also worth noting that there is a distinction to be made between government and corporate surveillance. Even if it were possible for state actors to de-anonymize specific targets with reliability (it's not, with sufficient opsec), that is very different from a corporation being able to do it. Once a corporation has your data, they will sell it to anyone and everyone, making your entire life public record for anyone to find with a bit of digging. That is a threat model that is much more likely for Average Joe than being targeted by the government, but it is also a threat which is easier to defeat than that of a state actor. This cynical defeatism is baseless.

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

#318

Post by abustamam »

SoftTalker wrote: post #49
tmaly wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seems like if you just disclose and make assurances that "you take security seriously" then it's fine.

I once worked with both PCI and HIPAA at a consulting firm. Neither had very high bars. PCI compliance was just a yes/no questionnaire that said something like "I do not store unencrypted CC numbers in my DB." No one validates the questionnaire. I just submit it and I got a shiny badge to put on my clients site.

HIPAA compliance was just a half hour webinar.

To be fair, I think HIPAA works in offline contexts (employers can't ask your doctor about your health) but as far as how easy it was for me to get access to customer CCs and medical information... Let's just say the barrier was basically nonexistent.

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

#319

Post by limagnolia »

washadjeffmad wrote: post #123
PaulKeeble wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the accounts being blocked from certain access are themselves 18! You would think Reddit would consider that, but nope it doesn't.

Age of account was sufficient for Google and third-party services for verification until recently. My gmail account is almost 22 years old, in continuous use. I have a credit card on file with Google Pay. Why would I need to submit a photo to engage with a private service, outside of volunteering to help train a surveillance apparatus? Is there any forum short of a senate subcommittee that the public can ask companie…

Contact your senator and ask them. Call your senator's offices and ask to meet with them or a representative in person, they can schedule an appointment, and most maintain offices in major population centers in their states.

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

#320

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #294
CamperBob2 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... says "asdff."

Lack of creativity for that username really. Slapped home row and called it a day. But still I'm sure FBI knows exactly who I am. Same for European and middle eastern intelligence orgs. I'm sure ad networks all over the world have me fingerprinted, especially considering I run firefox and block ads, like that alone narrows me down to probably less than a million people globally, maybe substantially less than that. An…

[deleted]
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