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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

#311

Post by tristor »

bluGill wrote: post #300
Bender wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good idea. There could be two headers, the existing RTA header that adult sites use today [1] and another static header that explicitly states there shall be no adult content. [1] - https://www.shodan.io/search?query=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-R... [THESE ARE ADULT SITES, NSFW]

What is adult content? I know parents who have no problem with their kids seeing porn. I know parents who give their kids a beer. I know parents who take their kids to violent movies. I used to know parents who will give their kids cigarettes. Most parents I know will disagree with their kids doing one of the above. I know songs that were played on the radio in 1960 that would not be allowed today, even though today…

> I know parents who have no problem with their kids seeing porn.

I don't agree with showing actual children porn, but I also totally expect teenagers to find some way to get access to it in the age of the Internet.

Part of the challenge with this is cultural. Different places in the world think about sex, sexuality, and even the concept of what is a child differently. In the US, showing a woman's bare breasts to a person under 18 is generally considered wrong, and in many cases is illegal. In most of Europe it wouldn't even raise an eyebrow, because bare breasts are on television, sometimes in commercials even.

Set aside for a moment the question of age verification and age limits, we cannot even agree in any sort of universal sense what even qualifies as porn or adult content, and at what age someone should be able to see it. There's a difference between a 7 year old and a 17 year old seeing the same type of content, and there's also a difference between a photographic nude and a video of people engaged in coitus.

The story is basically the same for everything else you listed.

These age verification laws in many ways are trying to use the most heavy-handed mechanism possible to enforce American cultural norms on the entire planet. That's clearly wrong to do. What the GP suggested using RTA headers though puts the control into the parent's hands, which is as it should be.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#312

Post by Bender »

filoleg wrote: post #288
Bender wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of fines if they do not pay the fine their country is at risk of sanctions or embargoes which is probably a bit heavy handed but may incentivize their government to also enforce the rules, collect fines keeping some for themselves and passing the original fine back to the countries implementing child safety controls.

This is extremely naive and short-sighted. There is a literal example of this happening rn, and hopefully you will see why your approach isn't that good. UK's OFCOM is currenly issuing legal threats to 4chan, for allegedly serving adult content and not willing to implement age verification. 4chan's lawyer tells them to pound sand[0], on the basis that 4chan is hosted in the US and has zero business presence in the UK…

4chan servers are in the US and the owner is in Japan. If the US wanted to they could seize all the servers but they will not because they have real time monitoring of all activity on the boards and have ever since Christopher testified before congress and the site was sold. If anything 5-eyes want that site to be unrestricted. 4chan has been a goldmine of people self reporting for wanting to shoot up or bomb places, as has Reddit leading to many body-cam videos of the site users and in some cases the moderators being busted.

The IP addresses are all captured by Cloudflare. It is literally next to impossible to post on 4chan without enabling javascript on Cloudflare or buying a 4chan-pass which leaves a money trail not perfect, nothing is but most mentally unstable people do not think these things through.

Should legislation be added to require the RTA header 4chan could and likely would add it in a heart-beat. They already have some decent security headers in place.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#313

Post by wmf »

goda90 wrote: post #41

Age verification can be achieved without destroying anonymity and privacy online using anonymous credential systems, but it has to be designed that way from the ground up, and no one pushing age verification is interested in preserving privacy.

Apple and Google have already implemented private age verification.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#314

Post by aqme28 »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
ronsor wrote: post #121

There's an angle everyone misses. Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet. And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.

Not so sure about that. Handing an ID to a bouncer at a bar or similar is not logging anything. Mainly it's some big man that you can see gears turning to see if the date is correct and a cursory glance to see if the photo matches. Sophisticated places might have a scanner that does what ever validation it does, but again, it's just another cursory check of the photo. Most of these people really don't care. A tech co…

Well then it’s a good thing my fake id is from a state or foreign government without a checkable database

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#315

Post by traderj0e »

bluGill wrote: post #300
Bender wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good idea. There could be two headers, the existing RTA header that adult sites use today [1] and another static header that explicitly states there shall be no adult content. [1] - https://www.shodan.io/search?query=RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-R... [THESE ARE ADULT SITES, NSFW]

What is adult content? I know parents who have no problem with their kids seeing porn. I know parents who give their kids a beer. I know parents who take their kids to violent movies. I used to know parents who will give their kids cigarettes. Most parents I know will disagree with their kids doing one of the above. I know songs that were played on the radio in 1960 that would not be allowed today, even though today…

There are already laws defining this. Had to draw the line somewhere, and they did.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#316

Post by traderj0e »

gslepak wrote: post #297
traderj0e wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, that already didn't work because corps are very good at creating network effects in children and will set up multi-billion-dollar businesses around them. And then the kids with protective parents become the weird ones in school. I'll die on the hill of curtailing this stuff in a privacy-preserving way.

> I'll die on the hill of curtailing this stuff in a privacy-preserving way. At some point you'll realize the contradiction in not trusting these "multi-billion-dollar businesses" to the point that you are risking enslaving humanity and "dying on this hill" and yet at the same time trusting those same businesses to implement this dystopian system in a privacy-preserving way. When that realization hits, it will be a l…

That's fine, say hi to the telepaths in advance for me

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#317

Post by atmavatar »

dpark wrote: post #250
dylan604 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure about that. Handing an ID to a bouncer at a bar or similar is not logging anything. Mainly it's some big man that you can see gears turning to see if the date is correct and a cursory glance to see if the photo matches. Sophisticated places might have a scanner that does what ever validation it does, but again, it's just another cursory check of the photo. Most of these people really don't care. A tech co…

How does a tech company calling into a government database to verify your identity maintain your anonymity?

It does the opposite: allowing the government to track your online activity as a side-effect of site owners' validating your ID every time you visit.

That's the point, and it's a big part of why opposing online age verification is a hill to die on.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#318

Post by traderj0e »

aqme28 wrote: post #310
bluGill wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is adult content? I know parents who have no problem with their kids seeing porn. I know parents who give their kids a beer. I know parents who take their kids to violent movies. I used to know parents who will give their kids cigarettes. Most parents I know will disagree with their kids doing one of the above. I know songs that were played on the radio in 1960 that would not be allowed today, even though today…

Then those parents can turn off their browser/client’s age protections. I think that’s actually a decent argument for the solution posed by this thread.

There is such a thing as making the "kid ok" header so rare or "18+" so eager that nobody takes it seriously, so that'd need to be kept in mind.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#319

Post by Forgeties79 »

dpark wrote: post #273
pseudalopex wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I did. Restricting children’s access to certain things is not ageism. We can argue the merits of restricting children’s access to the internet, or certain books, or alcohol, or pornography, or whatever else. We can debate the merits of those various restrictions based on the benefits and costs to both the children and society at large. But it is not ageism to attempt to protect children. It is not ageism even of the…

You jumped to children behind the wheel of vehicles and doing tequila shots. There is no way that was a serious effort at good faith discourse.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#320

Post by scotty79 »

ronsor wrote: post #121

There's an angle everyone misses. Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet. And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.

ID system should be based on commercial bank. If you need to prove your identity or whatever about yourself just tell them to ask your bank and bank will ask you which information about yourself you are willing to share with whoever requested to confirm something about you.

When ID is tied to your bank account you guard it like you guard your bank account. Because it is the same thing. This will drastically lower the incentives to "share" your identity with anyone.

What's more this system is already operational in many countries.

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