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Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

mullvad.net

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Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#351

Post by nitwit005 »

9rx wrote: post #163
davkan wrote: post #154

Can someone help me understand? Why is it not enough to just be able to manually set an age on local OS user account. If unset assume adult. If set applications can use it to verify age. Require admin permissions to change. All responsibility on parents to restrict admin and set the age. No data collection. No responsibility for services beyond a simple check. It seems like an incredibly simple solution with very lit…

The compromise is that it is either really easy to work around, effectively defeating what it is trying to do, or it becomes tightly locked down to trusted devices only, destroying the free internet.

It'll be easy to work around no matter what. We don't succeed at keeping under age kids from getting alcohol. Adults give it to them.

These sorts of rules can only ever achieve "mildly difficult".

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#353

Post by cindyllm »

prolly97 wrote: post #345
bluegatty wrote: post #333

It's absolutely a slippery slope - but most parents know how this is a very real thing as well. There's no controversy in having drugs, guns, alcohol, porn and other things 'behind the counter' - the intellectual debate over freedom of information is clouded by ideology. Definitely the 'slippery slope' debate is worth having, but that's way more relevant than the 'should 10-year-olds be able to do whatever' (aka all…

At least half of the people in this thread survived growing up with access to social without age verification. And I'm pretty sure we've all had an encounter with some creep in some random chat room too. We talked about these things at school and at home. Don't share things with people you don't know etc. Idk if it's illegal to tell kids what to do these days. But when I grew up, we were occasionally also told to get…

[dead]

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#354

Post by luz666 »

worldsavior wrote: post #331

Isn't age verification actually a good thing? If you want a free internet, you don't let your kids browse these websites. Otherwise, it allows you to make sure they aren't watching "hurtful" content.

You should not enforce the people to identify themself, you should force the websites to label the content (e.g. 12+, 16+ or 18+).

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#355

Post by bluegatty »

prolly97 wrote: post #345
bluegatty wrote: post #333

It's absolutely a slippery slope - but most parents know how this is a very real thing as well. There's no controversy in having drugs, guns, alcohol, porn and other things 'behind the counter' - the intellectual debate over freedom of information is clouded by ideology. Definitely the 'slippery slope' debate is worth having, but that's way more relevant than the 'should 10-year-olds be able to do whatever' (aka all…

At least half of the people in this thread survived growing up with access to social without age verification. And I'm pretty sure we've all had an encounter with some creep in some random chat room too. We talked about these things at school and at home. Don't share things with people you don't know etc. Idk if it's illegal to tell kids what to do these days. But when I grew up, we were occasionally also told to get…

"we've all had an encounter with some creep in some random chat room to"

My parents generation survived lead in gasoline and they never wore seatbelts or helmets.

"I think I can do a better job than the government :)"

Is exactly what their parents said about the government telling them they have to get their kids to wear seat belts and helmets.

I don't think this argument works for two reasons:

1) It don't address the materiality of the concern.

If 'creeps in chat rooms' are causing material harm, it's an issue, then youre making the 'anti vaxxer' / 'anti seatbelt' / 'anti helmet' argument.

I'm not saying you are - if 'creeps in chatrooms' really is a 'lesser issue' - then you're not making a bad argument at all.

The real issue is the 'materiality' of these things.

'Creeps in chatrooms' is a harder thing to assess, but it's real, if it is real, we can't just dismiss it.

2) "I think I can do a better job than the government "

If someone wants to protest the governments current age restrictions cigarettes - and also not vaccinate their kids - that's a choice.

But this argument is usually made by people who don't have kids in their life and haven't yet realized that 'the all or nothing internet' is not really a choice, it's chaos.

Lack of very basic regulations means people aren't afforded the opportunity, in a way the government is dictating that 'kids will get guns and porn and that's it'.

The alternative argument - is that we can have age restrictions and parents can then be in a position to actually be parents, and make a choice.

'Slippery slope notwithstanding' ... because it's a complciated issue

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#356

Post by roenxi »

palata wrote: post #255
roenxi wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how this sentence can make any sense at all in the context of ZKPs. Can you elaborate? The reason people are getting called authoritarian is because ZKP proofs are a massive and obvious improvement on what is actually being implemented. Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs? The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do. I wouldn't be using an American IP right know if my local age…

> Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs? The EU initiative explicitly mentions ZKP: https://ageverification.dev/ . > The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do. It's technical, just like getting E2EE right. Doesn't mean it's hard to use, as proven by the fact that billions of people use E2EE in WhatsApp and Signal without even realising it. > I'm not an authoritarian. I'm not out to create a w…

You have misunderstood the article. It says, and I quote,

> Right now, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model.

So you have failed the test of pointing at somewhere that has implemented ZKP. You can try again if you like.

> I actually have. Have you? Seems like you haven't read the article. Mullvad is complaining about the fact that the app seems to support both ZKP and identity verification,

Again, this is factually wrong. And it is why people are getting labelled as "authoritarian" - they proposed a system that sounded decent, then they actually implemented something else that is a standard authoritarian ID system with a fig leaf for people to pretend they didn't. As was expected, given that this always looked like an ID card play with a false moustache.

> I tend to disagree with the slippery slope argument

They haven't made it up the hill yet, they're already down the slope. the EU implementation doesn't use ZKP. That's a big part of why they're being included as one of the authoritarian forces in this push that people are upset about.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#357

Post by ozim »

jonplackett wrote: post #336
bluegatty wrote: post #333

It's absolutely a slippery slope - but most parents know how this is a very real thing as well. There's no controversy in having drugs, guns, alcohol, porn and other things 'behind the counter' - the intellectual debate over freedom of information is clouded by ideology. Definitely the 'slippery slope' debate is worth having, but that's way more relevant than the 'should 10-year-olds be able to do whatever' (aka all…

The point is there are much better ways to enforce this - like just setting up proper parental controls on a device. Kids can’t buy their own phone. So parents can always enforce stuff at a hardware level if they set it up properly. It would be much better to just mandate that phones set up with a kid profile cannot access social media.

Problem now is bunches of parents don’t give a damn. So if your kid gets phone locked up others will make fun of him at school and kid might be outsider.

Other parents are the problem, not technical setups.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#358

Post by AuthAuth »

watwut wrote: post #144
AuthAuth wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should you be able to traverse the internet anonymously? You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations. Majority of the people traversing anonymously are doing so because they are routine troublemakers and do not want to bare consequences for their malicious actions. The ones fighting for this complete anonymity but not doing crime are naively just sweeping for bad actors.

> You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations. I actually can. For real. I can not get job or housing anonymously, but overwhelming majority of my real life interactions are anonymous.

Same goes for the internet though. Privacy controls would be at a government level. All that we need is a way to actually hold someone accountable for their actions on the internet. Websites dont need to see who the actual person is.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#360

Post by protocolture »

ozim wrote: post #357
jonplackett wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is there are much better ways to enforce this - like just setting up proper parental controls on a device. Kids can’t buy their own phone. So parents can always enforce stuff at a hardware level if they set it up properly. It would be much better to just mandate that phones set up with a kid profile cannot access social media.

Problem now is bunches of parents don’t give a damn. So if your kid gets phone locked up others will make fun of him at school and kid might be outsider. Other parents are the problem, not technical setups.

Ok but everyone suffering because some parents are bad seems like a shitty policy.
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