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Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

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Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#401

Post by marcosdumay »

xdennis wrote: post #74
mylifeandtimes wrote: post #19

EU law gives every citizen a right to a bank account. I wonder if EU law could give every citizen a right to a google or Apple account, including a forced recovery option if the account is 'deactivated'? If at some point such an account becomes essential to function in society, access to such an account becomes a legal mandate.

> EU law gives every citizen a right to a bank account. That directive regulates banks from denying the opening of a basic payment account. But there is no legislation preventing governments from freezing accounts, Canada-style. As far as I know, there's no protection against being de-banked.

Does the constitution of any EU country allow them to de-bank people? Or even freezing entire accounts instead of some fixed amount inside them?

That's a severe human-rights issue.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#402

Post by rockskon »

rockskon wrote: post #275
SiempreViernes wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's the concern? But GDPR solved this, just don't consent to them selling your likeness for AI training purposes.

Trusting untrustworthy companies aside, that doesn't resolve the issue of hacked facial recognition data. Even back in 2014, malware was coming out that steals facial recognition data directly from smart phones themselves. https://www.theregister.com/security/2024/02/15/stolen-ios-u... The GDPR isn't a silver bullet. Additionally - furtherance of facial recognition technology would impact travelling to foreign jurisd…

*2024, not 2014

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#403

Post by derektank »

bradford wrote: post #389
jonplackett wrote: post #336

Earlier 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.

I've been battling with locking down my kid's devices for much of my life. I haven't found a parental control feature that works: we've tried several, but, generally, nothing survives the 'Hey, I'll just factory reset the device and start with a clean out-of-box-experience' bypass. Kids can figure this stuff out. Even when we thought that things were under control, kids can easily procure new devices. Many families d…

It seems like it should be relatively easy to create a dead man’s switch that sends you a message after a factory reset, and then you just take away the phone for however long is appropriate. Do most parental control tools just not include that for some reason?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#404

Post by NewsaHackO »

zrn900 wrote: post #328
thefz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again American capitalism ruins everything for everyone.

Not only that. The Eu is also implementing 'age verification', at the same time with - surprise - digital id. It's just an attempt to reverse the free internet and implement total surveillance.

Yeah, I feel as though people have seen the error of creating a free internet and are trying as much as possible to reverse it. It's kind of like how Photoshop (and most software companies honestly) have seen how selling a license in perpetuity does not work and opt for the rent-seeking monthly subscription route.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#405

Post by Joe_Cool »

jonplackett wrote: post #336
bluegatty wrote: post #333

It'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…

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.

Wasn't there a (proposed) "standard" in 90s (eMediaMark, I remembered) that just added a Header to HTTP in order to have ancient browsers automatically filter adult content.

That would easily be enforceable by making a "kid mode" enabled and locked down by a parent with a password mandatory on devices. Then you could have something like this:

    Adult-Content: true
    Age-Threshold: 18
suggested here: https://digitalbiztalk.com/article/a-better-way-the-adult-co...

eMediaMark is now Internet Content Rating the stuff I was remembering can be seen here: https://icr.chit.eu/

You can just take that, it's been there for decades.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#406

Post by benoau »

txrx0000 wrote: post #388
bluegatty wrote: post #333

It'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…

> 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. The first three are physical things, not information. Porn can be debated, but the current age verification push is trying to impose blanket control on the entire information ecosystem. It's the digital equivalent of requiring ID to go anywhe…

> the parental authority over a child's information diet is being transferred away from parents to tech companies

These companies not only wanted that but they exploited the shit out of it for obscene profit! In many ways it was their unabated greed that has caused this situation: from addicting design of video feeds, grooming obscene spending habits, collectively doing as little as possible to keep predators and inappropriate content out of games for children.

And how could parents police effectively "the whole internet", it's like expecting them to police what their kids see and hear at school on lunch break x 1000 you cannot control all the things that can influence a child for better or worse. Maximum security prisons can't stop people from accessing the internet and making phone calls so what hope did parents ever have?

We could have avoided this if Google and Apple had enough decency to keep the bad stuff from becoming effortlessly, trivially accessible to children, but they made a fortune off Roblox instead of applying their policies and noticing the abundance of pornography and predators, they ignored Grok churning out CSAM as fast as people could request it, no response to court revelations that Zuckerburg's apps are teeming with sex traffickers, prostitutes and scammers, no response to apps excessively exploiting addiction other than making sure they get their cut.

So now we're caught between a rock and a hard place, a completely unsustainable system where everybody who should be accountable claims to have immunity, and parents are incapable of enforcing a healthy upbringing for their children in this mess.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#407

Post by Joe_Cool »

tifik wrote: post #344
jonplackett wrote: post #336

Earlier 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.

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.

They will just rediscover Bluetooth. Kids have always passed around stuff they weren't supposed to have.

Source: I was a kid once, we had no cell phones. Porn on 5.25" floppies was a thing.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#408

Post by matchbok3 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #367
drnick1 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without American capitalism you wouldn't have computers, the Internet, smartphones, AI, electric cars and countless other things. That, and the Costco hot dogs mentioned in another reply.

"Without American capitalism you wouldn't have computers, the internet, ..." In fact, the internet was born out of the American military, i.e., government, and American universities, not "American capitalism" The first time I used this internet, there were rules against using it for commerce

The American military would not exist without the economic freedoms we have.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#409

Post by matchbok3 »

loopback_device wrote: post #329
drnick1 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without American capitalism you wouldn't have computers, the Internet, smartphones, AI, electric cars and countless other things. That, and the Costco hot dogs mentioned in another reply.

Except that the www came out of Switzerland, the first electric vehicles out of Scotland and Germany, the earliest descriptions of neural networks - also Scotland, and countless other things, like Rockets and whatnot, also out of Europe. But, sure, congrats on that ARPANet thing.

Can you point to the stock markets and silicon valley, and tech leaders and military of those countries?

Oh, wait...

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#410

Post by matchbok3 »

thefz wrote: post #123
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #79

Back to the internet's peer-to-peer roots. Many protocols besides the www The www became infested with so-called "tech" companies acting as intermediaries (middlemen) Lots of folks making money from surveillance ad system on the www. Oversized, unmanageable websites calling themselves "platforms" The www is an ad network. Not a great place for non-commercial activity Fortunately, the internet is more than the www. Th…

Once again American capitalism ruins everything for everyone.

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