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

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

#371

Post by aleph_minus_one »

duped wrote: post #315
numbsafari wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except companies provide wholly inadequate safeguards and tools. They are buggy, inconsistent, easily circumvented, and even at time malicious. Consumers should be better able to hold providers accountable, before we start going after parents. The only real solution is to keep children off of the internet and any internet connected device until they are older. The problem there is that everything is done on-line now…

Step 0 is physical device access. Kids shouldn't have tablets or smartphones or personal laptops before age 16.

> Kids shouldn't have tablets or smartphones or personal laptops before age 16.

If you make such a restriction, they'll secretly buy some cheap "unrestricted" device like some Raspberry Pi (just like earlier generations bought their secret "boob magazines").

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

#372

Post by maccard »

honkycat wrote: post #339
belorn wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

ISPs and OSs should be the ones providing these tools and make is stupid easy to set up a child's account and have a walled garden for kids to use.

I live in the UK. By default your ISP will block "mature" content and you have to contact them to opt out. iOS, Android, Playstation, Xbox, Switch all have parental controls that are enforced at an account level.

A child with an iPhone, Xbox, and a Windows Laptop won't be able to install discord unless the parent explicitly lets them, or opts out of all the parental controls those platforms have to offer.

The tech is here already, this is not about keeping children safe.

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

#373

Post by ipaddr »

runarberg wrote: post #306
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…

Blaming parents is a bit unwarranted, when on the other end we have business interests driven by perverse incentives of predating on children’s gullibility for their own profit. When you say “ We‘ll try everything ” that is simply not true, in particular what we do not try is strict consumer protection laws which prohibits targeting children. Europe used to have such laws in the 1980s and the 1990s, but by the mid-19…

It is literally the parents responsibility. You want to blame someone else. Raising a kid doesn't mean letting society raise them you have to make tough choices.

If parents can't handle that they can give them up to the state.

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

#374

Post by ipaddr »

lenerdenator wrote: post #270
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 thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? You find out some creep has been talking to Junior; do you talk to your local police department, state agency, or to the feds? We've never properly acted upon reports of predators grooming children by investigating them, charging them, holding trials, and handing down sentences on any sort of large scale. There's a patchwork of LEOs that have to hand…

Back in the day you would beat up that person.

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

#375

Post by cgriswald »

jmye wrote: post #356
Salgat wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sorry, I know it's a hard line for parents to tread and it's really easy to criticize parenting decisions other people are making, but the "everyone else is doing it so I have to" always seems as lazy to me today, as it probably did to my parents when I said it to them as a teenager. Is it more important to prevent your son from being weaponized and turned into a little ball of hate and anger, and your daughter from…

The number of times I objected to my parents rules because my friends didn’t have those rules and the response was: “I’m not their parent.”

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

#376

Post by Seattle3503 »

> Some observers present privacy-preserving age proofs involving a third party, such as the government, as a solution, but they inherit the same structural flaw: many users who are legally old enough to use a platform do not have government ID. In countries where the minimum age for social media is lower than the age at which ID is issued, platforms face a choice between excluding lawful users and monitoring everyone. Right now, companies are making that choice quietly, after building systems and normalizing behavior that protects them from the greater legal risks. Age-restriction laws are not just about kids and screens. They are reshaping how identity, privacy, and access work on the Internet for everyone.

This rebuttal to privacy preserving approaches isn't compelling. Websites can split the difference and use privacy preserving techniques when available, and fall back to other methods when the user doesn't have an ID. I'd go further and say websites should be required to prioritize privacy preserving techniques where available.

There is a separate issue of improving access to government ID. I think that is important for reasons outside of age verification. Increasingly voting, banking, etc... already relies on having an ID.

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

#377

Post by friendzis »

blindriver wrote: post #342
honkycat wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs and OSs should be the ones providing these tools and make is stupid easy to set up a child's account and have a walled garden for kids to use.

You must not have kids if you think it's easy to keep children off things that are bad for them.

[Any] task is much easier if you have the tools. Do/did you have a baby monitor? A technological tool, that allows you to "monitor" the baby while not being within an arms reach.

Do you have an A+++++ oven with three panes of glass? It's [relatively] safe to touch and instead of monitoring if a child is somewhere near the oven you have to monitor if the child does not actively open the oven. That's much easier.

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

#378

Post by ghaff »

stuffn wrote: post #183
bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

The average tech “literate” person uses discord, social media, a GitHub with their real name, a verified LinkedIn, and Amazon Echo. These are not the same people from 30 years ago. The new generation has come to love big brother. All it took to sell their soul was karma points.

Many of the things you mention are also tools that many people use in a professional context which mostly doesn't work if you try to be anonymous. Yes, some people choose to be pseudonymous but that mostly doesn't work if your real-life and virtual identities intersect, such as attending conferences or company policies that things you write for company publications be under your real name.

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

#379

Post by trashb »

I would like to take the discussion in the other direction. How about we offer safe spaces instead of banning the unsafe spaces for kids.

Similar to how there is specific channels for children on the TV. Perhaps the government can even incentivize such channels. It would also make it easier for parents to monitor and set boundaries. Parents would only need to monitor if the tv is still tuned to disney channel or similar instead of some adult channels.

Similarly this kind of method could be applied to online spaces. Ofcourse there will be some kids that will find ways around it but they will most likely be outliers.

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