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

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

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 1001 posts

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

#471

Post by nefarious_ends »

techblueberry wrote: post #432
JohnMakin wrote: post #261

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…

> There is almost literally documented examples of…

lol

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

#472

Post by Wobbles42 »

ipaddr wrote: post #362
2duct wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A monitoring solution might have worked for my case if my parents had monitored my Internet history, if they always made sure to check in on what I thought/felt from what I watched and made sure I felt secure in relying on them to back me up in the worst cases. But I didn't have emotionally mature parents, and I'm sure so many children growing up now don't either. They're going to read arguments like these and say th…

Should the state have force your parents to give you up for adoption? That's the social support the state can offer.

This is the real point that needs to be made.

You can argue that many parents are less than ideal parents, but that is not sufficient to justify having the state step in. You also have to show that the state is less bad.

Decades of data on the foster system strongly suggests otherwise. The state, by any objective measure, is terrible at raising children.

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

#473

Post by subscribed »

coffeefirst wrote: post #94
bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

There’s some nuance here. Realizing that much of the internet is totally toxic to children now and should have a means of keeping them out is distinct from agreeing to upload ID to everything. A better implementation would be to have a device/login level parental control setting that passed age restriction signals via browsers and App Stores. This is both a simpler design and privacy friendly.

This also means the only operating systems allowing access to the internet will be these with the immense surveillance and ad-infested.

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

#474

Post by nye2k »

I worked for a decade in what I would consider the highest level of our kids' privacy ever designed, at PBS KIDS. This was coming off a startup that attempted to do the same for grownups, but failed because of dirty money.

Every security attempt becomes a facade or veil in time, unless it's nothing. Capture nothing, keep nothing, say nothing. Kids are smart AF and will outlearn you faster than you can think. Don't even try to capture PII ever. Watch the waves and follow their flow, make things for them to learn from but be extremely careful how you let the grownups in, and do it in pairs, never alone.

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

#475

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

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…

parents can be held liable for buying their kids cigarettes but, similarly, tobacco companies are (at least nominally) not supposed to target children in their advertising campaigns and in the design of their products.

It's obviously not a 1/1 comparison here, because providing ID to access the internet is not analogous to providing ID to purchase a pack of Cowboy Killers but we can extrapolate to a certain extent.

(inb4 DAE REGULATING FOR-PROFIT CORPORATIONS == NANNY STATE?!?!?!?!?)

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

#476

Post by Wobbles42 »

Fervicus wrote: post #431
JohnMakin wrote: post #261

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…

> We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. The mistake in this reasoning is assuming that they are actually interested in protecting the children.

This.

The world is becoming increasingly more uncertain geopolitically. We have incipient (and actual) wars coming, and near term potential for societal disruption from technological unemployment. Meanwhile social media has all but completely undermined broadcast media as a means of social control.

This isn't about protecting children. It's about preventing a repeated of the Arab Spring in western countries later this decade.

"Think of the children" is the oldest trick in the book, and should always be met with skepticism.

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

#477

Post by whaleidk »

jmye wrote: post #356
Salgat wrote: 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.

Sorry, I know it's a hard line for parents to tread and it's really easy to criticize parenting decisions other people are making, but the "everyone else is doing it so I have to" always seems as lazy to me today, as it probably did to my parents when I said it to them as a teenager. Is it more important to prevent your son from being weaponized and turned into a little ball of hate and anger, and your daughter from…

We used to teach kids to be themselves and stand up for what they believe in and their own authenticity and uniqueness even in the face of bullying. That having less or other doesn’t mean your value is lesser or that you should be left out. Now we teach them… conform at all costs so you never have to risk being bullied or lonely?

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

#478

Post by subscribed »

otterley wrote: post #75
bondarchuk wrote: post #34

It's kind of weird to me how every article on this topic here has people rushing to comment within a couple minutes with some generic "yes I too support ID checks for internet use!". Has the vibe really shifted so much among tech-literate people?

When you’re young, the overwhelming and irrepressible desire to overcome society's proscriptions to satisfy your intellectual and sexual curiosity is natural and understandable. The open Internet made that easier than ever, and I enjoyed that freedom when I was younger—though I can’t say it was totally harmless. When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because…

The only thing this is going to achieve is to bar unverified users form the vaguely reputable and mainstream places into the small, completely unregulated spaces, sites and networks.

I presume you prefer hard requirement of IDs.

I'm saying this will make kids go to i2p, tor, to the obscure fora in countries not giving a f* about western laws.

As a parent to the teens and teens, THIS makes me concerned. The best vpns are very hard to detect (I know, I try it myself).

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

#479

Post by tinfoilhatter »

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

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…

We should stop pretending these age-verification rollouts are about protecting children, because they aren't and never have been.

Even if the world was full of responsible parents, there are still people and groups that want to establish a surveillance state. These systems are focused on monitoring and tracking online activity / limiting access to those who are willing to sacrifice their own personal sovereignty for access to services.

There is most definitely a cult that is obsessed with the book of revelation and seeing Biblical prophecy fulfilled, and if that isn't readily obvious to folks at this juncture in time, I'm not sure what it will take. I guess they'll have to roll out the mark of the beast before people will be willing to admit it.

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

#480

Post by agentultra »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #405
agentultra wrote: post #101

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 communi…

For a while it was thought that we could never bring back anti-trust.

Sure, there's a lot of corruption right now. Doesn't have to stay that way.

Post reply on HN