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

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441–450 of 1001 posts

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

#441

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…

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I thi…

Screw over Meta then. Not everybody else.

Meta is the bozo in a panel van with no windows. All The legit porn sites put up Big Blinking Neon Signs.

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

#442

parents: won't somebody else put some rules and safeguards in place to protect my children?

Most of them probably don't even have kids of their own, they just hate social media for exposing children to conservative ideas and want to ban it to prevent that.

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

#443
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?

I think the argument is more around it being illegal so as to not be forced into playing "the bad guy". It's hard to prevent a level of entitlement and resentment if those less well parented have full access. If nobody is allowed then there's no parental friction at all. Its unfortunate that the application of this rule is being performed at the software level via ad-hoc age verification as opposed to the device leve…

But it's not playing the bad guy. It's playing the good guy.

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

#444

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…

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I thi…

> ... start with fuck these companies. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck.

I'm not sure how those two positions connect.

Execs bad, so laws requiring giving those execs everyone's IDs, instead of laws against twirled mustaches?

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

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No the argument is bad actors will reliably find a way to bypass these systems at an industrial scale while you'll instead snag honest people instead. Look at the facebook real name policy.

This sounds a lot like the pro-gun rhetoric of bogging down the "good" gun owners but not doing enough to the "bad" gun owners.

It's not really the same. The good guy/bad guy gun rhetoric has deeply racist roots.

But beyond that we can look at places similar things have been rolled out.

Facebook has a real name policy and is overflowing with fraudsters and ai slop

Although I can't figure out how to sign up for a second telegram account with their phone number restriction that hasn't stopped multiple scammers hitting me up every day on the service.

On YouTube, their demographics has ladies in their 30s watching nursery rhyme videos by the millions because mothers give their children their phone.

On social media, scammers tend to take over the accounts of dead people because the deceased don't update their passwords after a data breach. Your ID card policy, however strict, isn't going to stop the most common attack vector

So I don't know what you're trying to solve with id checks: parents hand their logged in devices to their children, scammers raid the accounts of the verified dead, existing systems clearly aren't working and strictly enforcing ineffective security theater isn't going to change this

I'm all for empathizing with the concerns but doing something that doesn't work isn't a solution

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

#446

Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift. If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an eas…

So kids can drive at 16. But can’t get access to an unlocked phone until their 18? Who gets to decide the whitelist? The government?

I never specified age.

The whitelist would be decided by the market: the parents have the unlocked device, there are multiple solutions to lock it and they choose one. Which means that in theory, the dominant whitelist would be one that most parents agree is effective and reasonable; but seeing today's dominant products and vendor lock-in...

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

#447

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

Not only EU -- Digital ID on iPhone does this today, and is accepted by many USA airports for travel, etc., with rollout for DLs.

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

#448
post #322

I have no idea where this idea that Internet is toxic to children is coming from. Is that some type of moral panic? Weren't most of you guys children/adolescents during the 2000's?

Are you saying that social media isn't harmful to children?

This is like rhetorically asking, "Are you saying that doom and marylin manson aren't harmful to children?"

The problem with social media isn't the inherent mixing of children and technology, as if web browsers and phones have some action-at-a-distance force that undermines society; it's the 20 years or so they spent weaponizing their products into an infinite Skinner box. Duck walk Zuckerburg.

This is all assuming good faith interest in "the children," which we cannot assume when what government will gain from this is a total, global surveillance state.

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

#449
Well there are technical solutions for this: blind signatures.

I could generate my own key, have the government blind sign it upon verifying my identity, and then use my key to prove I'm an adult citizen, without anyone (even the signing government) know which key is mine.

Any veryfying entity just need to know the government public key and check it signed my key.

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

#450
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove of adulthood should be provided by the bank after logging into a bank account. I'm sure parents just would let their bank details be stolen and such. Of course no personal details should be provided to the site that requests age confirmation. Just "barer of this token" is an adult.

So we trust a bank more than the government that they won’t extend this to earn more money by disclosing more information? Bad idea. You need a neutral broker.

AFAIK today if you buy a device, the bank doesn't get the device-unique identifier, at best it sees the model number.
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