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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

#401
post #365
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.

Yes if they do bad things like drunk, have sex and do drugs. I would start with banning cellphones.

My greatest fear for my future young adult children is that they're on their cell phone all day and never have time to get in trouble with their friends, so there's that. Yes, Let's start with banning the cell phones.

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

#402
post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is what my German electronic ID card does. The card connects to an app on my phone via NFC, a service can cryptographically verify a claim about my age, and no additional info is leaked to the service provider or the government.

But that doesn't verify that the person using the ID is the person that it was issued to.

Its better than what we have now. Maybe using the ID could require a PIN code if we wanted to enhance security.

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

#403
post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot,…

That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.

Plenty of porn exists for free, posted online by models or digital artists. It's archived in places that circumvent copyright, don't require payment or accounts, and are easily accessible.

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

#404

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.

To avoid your proposed punishment, they will implement things like ... ID verification.

Then ones who won't will become the preferred choice

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

#405

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.

>Then throw the executives who authorized such programs in jail.

Gee, I wonder if the executives who are suspected of doing such things haven't spent the last 100 years building the infrastructure necessary to avoid charges, let alone jail time? Large corporate legal departments, wink-wink-nudge-nudge command and control hierarchies where nothing incriminating is ever put into writing, voluminous intra-office communications that bury even the circumstantial evidence so deeply no jury could understand it even if the plaintiffs/state could uncover it, etc.

Anyone over the age of 12 that thinks corporate entities can be made to be accountable in a meaningful way is more than naive. They are cognitively defective. Or is it that you realize they can't be held accountable but you'd rather maintain the status quo than contemplate a country which abolished them and enforced that all business was the conducted by sole proprietorships and (small-n) partnerships?

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

#406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? Well, I can't speak for parents (as in all parents). I can, however, tell you what we did. When two of my kids were young we gave them iPods. The idea was to load a few fun educational applications (I had written and published around 10 at the time). Very soon they asked for Clash of Clans to play for a couple of hours on Saturdays. We said that wa…

> I explained that trust is one of the most delicate things in the world

> lies to own children about throwing their toys away

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

#407
All adults proof their identify multiple times per month: Every time they access digital health records, or when they use any electronic payment.

Just make Google/Apple reveal part of that data (age > x years) to websites and apps.

Boom, done. Privacy guarded. Easy.

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

#408

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…

its like the food industry blaming parents, sugar like apps/games are designed to be addictive to the point they are act like a drug, stop the drug dealer, not the consumer.

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

#409

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.

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…

No, it's about corporate and government control. Thankfully, the UK government is clueless about tech, which means these controls can be bypassed relatively easily by using your own DNS or a public DNS server like Quad9.

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

#410

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…

It's very easy to lock up alcohol/cigarettes, a child should never have access. Internet usage is more like broadcast media, a child should have regular access.

The positives and negatives of Internet usage are more extreme than broadcast media but less than alcohol/guns. The majority of people lack the skills to properly censor Internet without hovering over the child's shoulder full-time as you would with a gun. Best you can do is keep their PC near you, but it's not enough.

We agree that a creepy surveillance nanny state is not the solution, but training parents to do the censorship seems unattainable. As we do for guns/alcohol/cigarettes, mass education about the dangers is a good baseline.

EDIT: And some might disagree about never having access to alcohol!

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