Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 1001 posts

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

#361

Post by moffkalast »

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?

Well the parents entrust their kids to the school, so they would be the ones responsible for what goes on on their premises. In turn, school computers are famously locked down to the point of being absolutely useless.

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

#362

Post by ipaddr »

2duct wrote: post #351
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…

A monitoring solution might have worked for my case if my parents had monitored my Internet history, if they always made sure to check in on what I thought/felt from what I watched and made sure I felt secure in relying on them to back me up in the worst cases. But I didn't have emotionally mature parents, and I'm sure so many children growing up now don't either. They're going to read arguments like these and say th…

Should the state have force your parents to give you up for adoption? That's the social support the state can offer.

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

#363

Post by croes »

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…

> then give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools and empower them to protect their children.

Because parents don’t abuse massive surveillance tools.

Given that most abuse happens in the family and by parents maybe it’s a bad idea to give them so much power

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

#364

Post by simoncion »

Devasta wrote: post #209

I can understand the need to restrict some stuff kids can see, like when I was a teen it me hours and hours to download one 2 minute porn clip from kazaa, but these days you could download a lifetime worth in one weekend. That can't be healthy. That being said nothing about these laws is about protecting children; their primary purpose is to crack down on the next Just Stop Oil or Palestine Action so for that reason…

> ...but these days you could download a lifetime worth in one weekend.

Uh. I could check in the back of my parents' closet (hidden under some fabric) for at least a decade's worth of dirty magazines. It's true that that's less than a lifetime's worth of pictures and articles, but I'd say that that's effectively equivalent.

> That can't be healthy.

The only thing that's unhealthy is not being able to talk frankly and honestly about sex and sexuality with your peers, parents, and other important adults in your life. Well, that and never being told that sex leads to pregnancy, or how to recognize common STDs... but you're likely to get that "for free" if you're able to talk frankly and honestly about sex and sexuality.

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

#365

Post by ipaddr »

Salgat wrote: post #318
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…

This only works if I ban my child from having any friends since they all have unlimited mobile access to the internet.

Yes if they do bad things like drunk, have sex and do drugs.

I would start with banning cellphones.

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

#366

Post by cloverich »

varenc wrote: post #166
agentultra wrote: post #101

There are alternatives to ID verification if the goal is protecting children. You could, for example, make it illegal to target children with targeted advertising campaigns and addictive content. Then throw the executives who authorized such programs in jail. Punish the people causing the harm.

If targeting children with advertising got corporate execs thrown in jail, wouldn't the companies just roll out age verification for users like they do now? How would this rule change their behavior? They have to know who the children are to not target them. Stronger punishment creates more of an incentive to age verify. Which is basically why it's happening now.

> They have to know who the children are to not target them.

There is a difference between identifying specific children, and running programs that target children more generally; and / or having research that shows how your product harms children, and failing to do anything to stop it. We can tackle both of those issues without requiring age verification. We're headed down the path of age verification because we know now that not only is social media harmful, it's especially harmful to kids, and has been specifically targeted to them. Those are things that can be fixed, regardless of how you feel about age verification. Its not different than tobacco being not allowed to create advertisements for kids; its the same type of people doing the same types of things in the end.

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

#367

Post by fyredge »

kristopolous wrote: post #158
edgyquant wrote: post #7

Everything is a trade off in the world. I think that people who are anti-id ignore this but for me personally it’s harder and harder to accept the trade offs of an internet without id. AI has only accelerated this, I don’t want to live in a world where the average person unknowingly interacts with bots more than other individuals and where black market actors can sway public opinion with armies of bots. I think most…

No the argument is bad actors will reliably find a way to bypass these systems at an industrial scale while you'll instead snag honest people instead. Look at the facebook real name policy.

This sounds a lot like the pro-gun rhetoric of bogging down the "good" gun owners but not doing enough to the "bad" gun owners.

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

#368

Post by watwut »

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…

The expectations on parents in USA are at their historical high. What are you talking on about in here. The expectation that parents will perfectly supervise them at every moment of their life till their adulthood is a.) new b.) at its historical max.

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

#369

Post by cloverich »

enjoykaz wrote: post #36

Most of this debate makes more sense if the actual goal is liability reduction, not child safety. If it were genuinely about protecting kids, you'd regulate infinite scroll and algorithmic engagement optimization, not who can log in.

Most people have only a light grasp of what infinite scroll and algorithmic engagement optimization means. They know they like the scrolling apps more, but it takes a bit of research and education to really understand the specific mechanics and alternatives. We get this well as tech literate but many people using these apps today, are neither tech literate, nor even remember a world before infinite scrolling media was a thing. It seems incredibly obvious mechanism but I've explained it to people, and it takes a few times for it to really sink in and become a specific mental model for how they see the world.

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

#370

Post by armchairhacker »

kmijyiyxfbklao wrote: post #352
armchairhacker wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The older sibling should be old enough to know better. Or if they're still a kid, they can have their privileges temporarily revoked. This problem probably can't be solved entirely technologically, but technology can definitely be a part of solving it. I'm sure it's possible to make parental controls that most kids can't bypass, because companies can make DRM that most adults can't bypass.

>Or if they're still a kid, they can have their privileges temporarily revoked. Since people are already talking about using the law instead of parenting this needs clarification. Are the parents the one that would revoke their privileges or the government?

The parents. They're the ones who configure the parental controls. e.g. if their 15-year old gets caught sharing his device with their 7-year old, they can temporarily give him 7-year old permissions as punishment.
Post reply on HN