None of this age verification is about children. The end of the free internet is the point.
Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
371–380 of 561 posts
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#372It'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…
Soon enough you will realize that kids spend more time with their friends than with their parents. Most parents want their kids to be curious, build autonomy, and feel free. For this to work, they need a safe space. There are to place to enforce a policy: client side (parental control) or server side (age verification). Personally I don't want to transform my kids general purpose computer into a locked down infotainment machine. I think it would be a worst society if the norm becomes "this is not your device".
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't an individual kids phone. It's their peers devices, or other ways they can explore the internet that isn't under their guardians control. This is a systemic issue that requires systemic approach. I am not making any claims about the qualities of currently discussed systemic solutions, but I do want to point out that the 'parents can just' argument is missing the mark.
This assumes that it will actually solve the problem anyway. Kids just get a fake account or a VPN anyway. Addiction is the worst part and that is only going to happen on your own device.
All of the kids will get a fake account and a VPN? Putting barriers in place will likely have some effect in the intended direction.
> This assumes that it will actually solve the problem anyway
I wouldn't expect any policy to _solve_ a problem in such a way that the problem completely disappears from the world, much like theft being illegal doesn't eliminate theft, but it sure distinctiveness it for a lot of people.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#374IMO it's the end of the end of a free Internet. Toxic social media traffic, spam bots, hackers, and AI have taken over the majority of internet traffic a long time ago, thus the beginning of the end passed by as we slept.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#375It'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…
> It's absolutely a slippery slope
The slope has already slipped.
This is IDENTITY verification, not “age verification.”
You cannot verify your age without uploading your ID.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not how any other thing that is banned for children is enforced. It makes no sense. The person selling the age gated item needs to take lawful measures to ensure they arent selling it to a minor. Their parents have nothing to do with it. Your solution would be that if a 14 year old walks into a liquor store and doesnt have a note from their parents saying that they arent allowed to drink alcohol, then the sto…
The proposed solution though is that all adults going into the store have to provide their full name and address and have it recorded by the store to buy alcohol - or any other +18 product they want to buy. These things are not equal.
And that is where details matter. You can implement age verification in such a way that no data gets transmitted anywhere. Ofc I wouldn't expect Meta to not take a chance of collecting even more user data and blame a law for doing it, but if the law is written well enough, it won't mandate a specific method. If it does, definitely oppose it imo.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#377Earlier 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.
This is not how any other thing that is banned for children is enforced. It makes no sense. The person selling the age gated item needs to take lawful measures to ensure they arent selling it to a minor. Their parents have nothing to do with it. Your solution would be that if a 14 year old walks into a liquor store and doesnt have a note from their parents saying that they arent allowed to drink alcohol, then the sto…
mandating devices provide a `NoAdult` setting, so so browsers could check it and then send something like a `x-NoAdult` header would give websites a reasonable method for distinguishing minors (or people that just don't want adult content).
it's the old 80s/90s bead curtain separating the adult movies area from the rest of the video store. it keeps kids reasonably separated, and leans on parents making their kids mind. I think that's a reasonable target.
it would work without forcing every internet user that wants to use a given service from having to submit government identification, go through interviews, or sign up to massive centralized identification systems that will inevitably track every movement people make online.
if history is any indicator, those things will lead to breaches and abuse, and people's privacy will be violated.
if there's a legally mandated way for parents to stop their kids from peeking through the internet's bead curtain, that should be sufficient for most purposes.
if the argument is that bad or foreign websites might not implement it, it's not wrong, but that same problem exists with the mass-surveillance methods as well.
if you keep going down the path of forcing everything, eventually you end up with a national firewall, vpns are illegal, anything that can provide anonymity or pseudo-anonymity online is illegal, no one has privacy, and busybodies will spend all their time hunting folks for liking things they don't want them to like when the inevitable breaches come.
to your last point, sure, a 14 year old shouldn't be able to just wonder into a liquor store, but a 40 year old should.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem isn't an individual kids phone. It's their peers devices, or other ways they can explore the internet that isn't under their guardians control. This is a systemic issue that requires systemic approach. I am not making any claims about the qualities of currently discussed systemic solutions, but I do want to point out that the 'parents can just' argument is missing the mark.
This assumes that it will actually solve the problem anyway. Kids just get a fake account or a VPN anyway. Addiction is the worst part and that is only going to happen on your own device.
You do know that many sites don’t work with a vpn. Like this one. You can’t create an account on HN with a vpn. Also, countries are starting to ban vpn ip blocks entirely. In fact, turkey was monitoring tor entry nodes and disappearing whomever provided them. Banned tor pretty damn fast. Vpns can be turned off in a snap.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ah the smartphone, the only device with which children could possibly view porn. I remember our famous pornless desktop computers at LAN parties in high school.
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Hi 30 minute old account. Whats crazy is that you think you just made some sort of point.
Like what I was driving at here was that Smartphones are not the only possible platform you would need to withhold from kids to get the desired outcome.
And its also silly to think that these controls aren't serving the interests of the very degenerates you claim to hate. Why are you in complete thrall to them, making burner accounts to stick up for them, I do not know.
Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Soon enough you will realize that kids spend more time with their friends than with their parents. Most parents want their kids to be curious, build autonomy, and feel free. For this to work, they need a safe space. There are to place to enforce a policy: client side (parental control) or server side (age verification). Personally I don't want to transform my kids general purpose computer into a locked down infotainm…
How are kids supposed to have a safe space "to be curious, build autonomy, and feel free" if they can't get out from the authoritarian hands of their parents or their government?