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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

#371

We need a truly distributed point-to-point internet asap. Politicians going to do everything to limit free speech and free ideas in the name of protecting children while they already got all the powers to investigate and stop child abuse. https://meshtastic.org/

Did you intend to link to Meshtastic as an example of how not to achieve your goals? Because it definitely isn't capable of scaling up to anything like the whole internet, and the project struggles to agree on any goals they want to reliably achieve.

It is something, at least you can chat with your friends freely.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course Chuck Schumer won't let me contact him using this helpful tool. Perhaps we NYers should organize a rally outside his office in Manhattan like we did for PIPA/SOPA?

Dumb- BUT immediate links to sites of the right legislators! Adam B. Schiff Sorry, this legislator cannot be contacted with our tool. To message them, visit their website instead. Alex Padilla Sorry, this legislator cannot be contacted with our tool. To message them, visit their website instead.

Yeah I have the same senators. Emailed them directly from their website. There should be links right above those messages.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#373
post #34

Age verification on Australian social media has loopholes. Underage influencers use an agency to manage their social media for them. So anyone with enough followers or money can continue using social media under the age of 16. If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well.

[deleted]

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#374
Since it is so harmful to let children use social media, why aren't parents being put in prison for abuse and neglect when they let their children use social media? Why should everyone else have to suffer when it's parents that should be punished?

(it's because it's not about protecting children)

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#375

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…

> 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 p…

I considered many of the same points you mentioned.

Though, one area I am still struggling to grasp is the harm that governments are trying to mitigate. If a child were to see inappropriate material, then what harm can truly arise? Also, why do governments need to enact such laws when the onus of protecting children should be on their parents?

I am not trying to start any kind of flame war, but I really cannot see any other basis for all this prohibition that is not somehow traceable back to Western religious beliefs and the societies born and molded from such beliefs.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#376
post #8

The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…

Interesting, I've never heard of this. I see an example that involves an HTTP response header "Rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA". But does this actually still get used by parental controls? I didn't run into a lot of documentation about this, including on the very badly designed RTA web site https://www.rtalabel.org/ For anyone curious about the value, the numbering on the value is just a fixed number everybody de…

But does this actually still get used by parental controls?

Some parental control applications will look for it but it is not yet legislated to be mandatory on a majority of user-agents.

All I am suggesting is we legislate the header to be added to URL's that may contain material not appropriate for small children and mandate the majority of user-agents the ones that are default installed on tablets and operating systems look for said header to trigger optional parental controls. Child accounts created by parents on the device should not be able to install alternate user-agents or bypass the controls (at least not easily). Parents should be guided through this on device setup.

Indeed their site is old and rarely touched. The ideas and concepts have not changed. It really could just be a static text site formatted in ways that law makers are used to or someone could modernize it.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you intend to link to Meshtastic as an example of how not to achieve your goals? Because it definitely isn't capable of scaling up to anything like the whole internet, and the project struggles to agree on any goals they want to reliably achieve.

It is something, at least you can chat with your friends freely.

There are so many caveats and limitations that bringing it up in this context is downright dishonest. The most you could fairly say is that some of the philosophy driving some of the meshtastic developers is what you want to see applied to the development of an internet-scale network (which in reality would have less technology in common with meshtastic than with the current internet).

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#378

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…

> I know parents who have no problem with their kids seeing porn. Surely you mean at least teenagers, and not literally children, right? Consider the prevalence of violence, racial stereotyping, and escalation of fetishism into degeneracy that clearly exists within this medium; what's the line that these parents draw? Are they making sure it's only something vanilla? Or is there no line whatsoever?

They don't care. The kids won't think to ask until they are teens, and they are not showing it until then, but it is technically available.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#379
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am only interesting in protected the majority of children which I believe my proposal more than covers. There will always be exceptions. Today teens share porn, warez, pirated movies and music with small children in rated-G video games. I am not proposing anything for that. It is up to businesses to detect and block such things. Point being, there will be a myriad of exceptions. I am not looking to address the exce…

Look, please don't sideline/marginalize people by using the "whataboutism" term. Thats being used more and more to silence dialog from people that see problems outside the focus of a specific area. Its important that we see ALL sides of the problem.

Fair enough. Even though I do not perceive it that way I removed it in the event a majority of others have come to this conclusion.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#380
post #363
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am only interesting in protected the majority of children which I believe my proposal more than covers. There will always be exceptions. Today teens share porn, warez, pirated movies and music with small children in rated-G video games. I am not proposing anything for that. It is up to businesses to detect and block such things. Point being, there will be a myriad of exceptions. I am not looking to address the exce…

These aren't exceptions or whataboutism. It's the debate being had on the floors of state legislatures. > It is up to businesses to detect and block such things. Which is exactly why age verification legislation is hitting the books. No one (serious) cares about whether kids can download porn and R rated movies. Parental controls already exist if the threat model is preventing access to specific content that is able…

Your proposal also doesn't address the other domain that these legislators are targeting, which is addictive content.

That sounds simple to me. If a type of content is addictive then require the RTA header.

- Adult content, or possible adult content.

- User contributed or generated content (this covers most of social media)

- Site psychological profiles that are deemed addictive (TikTok and their ilk)

Overall we are describing things that are harmful to the development of the minds of small children. If adults wish to avoid such content they can create a child account on their device for themselves to be excluded from this behavior as well. I use a child account in a couple of popular video games to avoid most of the trash talking and spam. I'm not hiding my age as the games have my debit card information but rather I opt-in to parental controls.

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