Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

neilzone.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 645 posts

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#451

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

bpt3 wrote: post #431
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right and you’re going to analyze every single line of code and verify it?

What exactly is your issue? Once again, I'm not the one who said they would like to design a new browser extension framework, but I have created custom versions of Firefox that have all ability to phone home removed and modified extension support. So not verifying every single line of code, but making fairly substantial changes in the direction the parent poster wanted to go in. I'm interested in a conversation about…

That the geeks solution to “I don’t trust $companyX” is that “I am going to compile an alternate solution without looking at the source code”. Is kind of meaningless.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#452

Post by medi8r »

jrm4 wrote: post #442

Again, this must be framed ecologically , not individually. We've moved past the point where "individual choices" matter a whole lot, a lot of this is not much of an individual choice at all. So, it's good to remember the leanings of people like the author, but it's perhaps more important to remember the extent to which this is a collective issue. I never trusted 23 and me. But my Dad did, so now I potentially have a…

https://xkcd.com/1105/

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#453

Post by cubefox »

renjimen wrote: post #371
uyzstvqs wrote: post #195

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: The standard should be that devices ask whether the user is a minor during setup, and make that available as an is_minor boolean to all apps and websites. Children's devices are almost always set up by parents, and the setting can be protected by a parental PIN code. This method is effective while being completely private and local. Though I can't take credit for the idea.…

It's only effective if "Children's devices are almost always set up by parents", which is a big assumption. My parents were about as tech savvy as you could reasonably expect but I still got away with buying R-rated video games and such. Kids are persistent and the dangers aren't always obvious.

The question is whether parents should bear this responsibility or the state.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#454

Post by ang_cire »

keerthiko wrote: post #353
cortesoft wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, this still doesn't do anything to show me that I should opt out. I, as an individual, am not going to have any effect on a business if I opt out or not. No business decision is going to be made because I opt out. You might argue that it will matter if enough of us do it. Sure, that is true... but again, it won't matter if I do it or not. If N number of people opting out is enough to ruin the business model, th…

This is the exact same logic as opting to not go through the hassle of registering to and casting your vote in your national elections (unless that physically isn't an option where you live) -- yes, your government isn't going to make a decision one way or another based on your vote alone. But will you affect the sociopolitical trends by whatever fraction of societal opinion you represent? It may be you don't believe…

> consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions

I mean, insomuch as any action I take is a consumer action, because I am a consumer, this is true. That's why Luigi'ing is a consumer action.

But 'vote with your wallet' is an illusion; you have no way of informing an entity why you are rejecting their service if you simply don't patronize them. On a ballot you're actively choosing another over them. As a consumer, you're otherwise 'invisible' to them.

Walking past Target out of rejection of their politics, for example, is no different to them than the person next to you walking by because they don't need anything from them at that moment (and realistically, they would probably prefer to just switch you for said politically/privacy-un-conscious person). It's still good to stick to your morals, but that alone isn't actually 'consumer action' in the way you mean it.

It requires a coordinated, public messaging campaign that a group is boycotting actively to have any impact on a business. Your individual action of not clicking on Accept Cookies does nothing to influence businesses.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#455

Post by inkysigma »

malfist wrote: post #347
marmarama wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is those self-same authoritarian strongmen are very successfully using sockpuppeting to change national discourses in ways that benefit them and are detrimental to the targeted countries. Hybrid war is real and has been ongoing for more than a decade. LLMs make it way more cost effective. Being able to limit the influence of external bad actors is the main goal of ID verification. Age verification is a us…

> Being able to limit the influence of external bad actors is the main goal of ID verification. Age verification is a useful side effect that makes it easier to sell to the general public. How? People already sell their accounts to spammers. Why would that change?

Depending on the implementation, I could see that having rate limiting effects. There're only finitely many IDs so scaling sockpuppeting will saturate these IDs quickly but it's quite easy to spin up a new anonymous account. For example, I think the EU ID system has an upcoming way to create pseudo anonymous identifiers that can identify a user per website.

This presents the problem of governments being able to gatekeep speech which I am quite uncomfortable with but maybe there's some safeguard within the eIDAS proposal that makes this idea incorrect?

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#456

Post by cubefox »

warkdarrior wrote: post #446
cubefox wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stop making your kids my problem! This is an interesting point: there is a trade-off between kids being denied access to inappropriate websites and adults not being forced to verify their age. We can't have both, so we must weigh which is more important. One could argue that protecting kids is clearly more important; on the other hand, there are way more adults in the world than kids, so more people are impacted wi…

> there are way more adults in the world than kids How can that be? The world population has been growing for decades.

Yeah but kids that are online are perhaps ~5 to 17, while adults go from 18 to 80, 90 or more. Moreover, social media is usually also allowed for older teenagers, so it's not necessarily all people up to 18 that need filtering out.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#457

Post by arewethereyeta »

d--b wrote: post #177
arewethereyeta wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you should NOT need any face ID to pay taxes.

whatever man. Everyone in France has an ID. It's no big deal, really.

great argument, the "if you have nothing to hide what's the problem in sharing all your data" type

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#458

Post by pmontra »

a456463 wrote: post #434
barbazoo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is likely not a coincidence that so many different countries simultaneously started pushing for age verification. I thought in many places it was related to the upcoming minimum age for social media. To verify age you need an ID. That's how we make it so most kids can't buy cigarettes, alcohol, thc, etc. You could argue social media shouldn't have a minimum age but that'll be the reality it looks like. How do we…

How about you parent better and prevent your kids by educating them against the dangers of said things?Limit their time online and what they can do? Why should democracy be at stake and people's freedoms, just so you can get away with not parenting.

Yes, in theory that's correct but show me a kid that never did something against the will of their parents. If something is forbidden it's something worth investigating. Furthermore there will always be another kid with a phone to share watching anything online. The traditional solution has been forbidding with punishments when the kids get caught breaking the rules.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#459

Post by Izkata »

bpt3 wrote: post #413
mothballed wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find extraordinary is y'alls bullshit theory that it is extraordinary to claim the CPS apparatus wasn't used more before when it didn't even exist until like ~1974, and before then as a much different process. As usual, just blame the victim, then complain they don't provide evidence knowing full damn well child and family welfare services complaints are sealed and hidden from public oversight. This is how vam…

> What I find extraordinary is y'alls bullshit theory that it is extraordinary to claim the CPS apparatus wasn't used more before when it didn't even exist until like ~1974, and before then as a much different process. You seem to have replied to the wrong post. > As usual, just blame the victim, then complain they don't provide evidence knowing full damn well child and family welfare services complaints are sealed a…

But it's not rare at all. It really just sounds like you haven't had reason to pay attention to this before and now don't want to accept it's become a thing. A google search for "cops called on kids playing alone" results in a never-ending series of stories like this. I think most of them are from people with your perspective being caught by surprise.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#460

Post by [deleted] »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #249
autoexec wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I click “accept the cookies” almost every time. I just personally don’t feel it’s worth the effort and cost to try to avoid it. the effort and cost to download an ad-blocker that automatically removes the prompt to accept/deny entirely is practically zero and the amount of clicks you'd save yourself would quickly exceed the clicks it took to install the blocker. > I just don’t think it is something that is worth st…

this is definitely happening and for some reason, no one has any clear evidence on it. Conspiracy theories are gossip for men.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN