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California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

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Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#491

Post by JumpCrisscross »

saghm wrote: post #466
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but we're talking about every possible device that can connect to the internet here I agree these proposals are garbage. But if everyone who can credibly say that is busy trying to block any age gating, this is what we’re going to get.

> But if everyone who can credibly say that is busy trying to block any age gating, this is what we’re going to get. I'm certainly not busy trying to block a bunch of hypothetical policies that no one has proposed when there are garbage ones that are literally getting pushed right now. It sounds more like too many of the people who recognize the harm of this policy are too busy trying to claim that the burden for com…

> the burden for coming up with a non-garbage policy should be on the people who fundamentally disagree with that framing

Things a good way to put it. Yes. Regardless of whether you disagree with that framing, that is the frame that’s been set and is being run with. So you can make theoretical arguments against the framing. Or practical arguments against the policies within the frame.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#492

Post by KolmogorovComp »

BeetleB wrote: post #187
KolmogorovComp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe at 7 and 10 they shouldn't use device connected to the internet without your active supervision at all? What will they miss?

Maybe it's the parent's decision on whether they should or shouldn't?

There’s increasing consensus among doctors that at that age any non-physically supervised usage is detrimental to their health.

Would you say the same of eg: parents giving alcohol or smoking to their teenagers?

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#493

Post by daemin »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #400
daemin wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cookie banners exist because it is a dark pattern companies use to get you to opt into marketing cookies by making the easiest thing the worst choice. This could all be handled by settings in the browser, only if the sites themselves listened to the users' browser preferences.

If sites don’t listen to user preferences why would the cookie banner listen to my consent. Ultimately there’s no good excuse for the banner solution.

Because the site (or marketing agency in charge of the ads) has plausible deniability for the user opting into marketing and tracking when they show a banner, whereas if it's a browser setting automatically applied then there's no such chance.

Same sort of thing when you log into Wizzair and the check box below the password field is not "remember me" but "subscribe to our marketing emails".

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#494

Post by AnthonyMouse »

bsdetector wrote: post #460
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, the default should be, that if there is no header or it cannot be parsed, then the content is unsafe. That's something the client should be doing. You can configure your own device (or your kid's) to have whatever default you want. The actual problem is that classifying the entire firehose of user-generated content is precarious and uneconomical, so the default tag is going to be whatever minimizes liabili…

If the default wasn't "almost nothing" then you'd be sanctioning exposing some kids to content their parents didn't want them to see. If there's no economic incentive to tag content then it's not valuable content for kids. Ultimately the problem is the provider knows what category the content is and the parent knows what the content policy is. Providers can't say whether it's "safe" or "unsafe", only what standards i…

> If there's no economic incentive to tag content then it's not valuable content for kids.

Those two things are completely disjoint. In one case you're measuring the value of the content to the platform and in the other you're measuring the value of the content to the kids.

Suppose there is some content that the platform would get $10 in ad revenue to show to kids, would cost $100 to classify, and is worth $1000 to the kids.

In the land of spherical cows you could have the users pay the money, but that gets killed by transaction costs, privacy issues with payment systems, and that kids generally don't have money. So the kids lose access to valuable information because the platform isn't willing to spend $100 to make $10.

And it's still a problem even if the platform could make as much revenue from showing the content as the user receives value from it. Consider the entire firehose of social media posts on some unspecified site. Classifying it all would cost e.g. a billion dollars. So even if the value of kids having the content was half a billion dollars -- a huge sum equivalent to multiple human lifetimes of labor effort -- to the kids and the platform both, it's not happening because the cost of classifying the content is even larger yet.

> Ultimately the problem is the provider knows what category the content is

That's the problem though. The provider doesn't know what category the content is. There are Wikipedia pages that contain nudity etc. Who is going to pay someone to read the millions of articles and classify each one? But if they instead just mark the whole site as adult content, the amount of non-adult content kids lose access to is large.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#495

Post by feelamee »

71bw wrote: post #435
feelamee wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what can I do to keep them away from stuff 99% of people agree isn't for children to see, without something like this? > before they're ready to handle it You can restrict any access for the network to them. Extra bonus, this will save your child from addiction.

...unless they go and visit Mikey over the fence, whose parents are cool unlike you and let him – willingly or not – wank to hardcore porn at 11.

funny, but seriously.. Caring about child safety is not only about restricting network access, but also choosing the right (read as safe/predictable/stable) place for living.

I understand that this is not always possible, but... it's spectrum - try to reach maximum and do your best.

Also, consider that I don't have any experience in raising a little human, so, probably, I'm talking nonsense

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#496

Post by mentalgear »

lxe wrote: post #183
Bender wrote: post #3

The only device mandates that should be taking place is for the default installations of web clients should be checking to see if parental controls are enabled. This only impacts the major browsers. An intern at each browser company could add this check in minutes. If they are enabled and the person logged in is on a regular account (not admin or power user of sorts) then the base installation of web clients must che…

Bold of you to assume that lawmakers have any common sense when it comes to technology legislation. It could have taken 3 interns 3 hours at each browser company to implement a cookie consent standard 15 years ago, yet here we are in cookie banner hell.

There actually is/was a "Do not Track" header in browsers, but due to failing or toothless legislation, websites and ad-tech companies never honored it.

It's our duty as informed persons to educate the general population to exert pressure on policy makers to act in the common good - otherwise indeed nothing will change but increasing corruption.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#497

Post by tomhow »

Aerroon wrote: post #164
throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sick of these "government bad" takes. They lack constructive suggestions, like your "sink it" nugget, they lack decent problem descriptions, as if anything after the sinking (likely private governance, aka feudalism) is immune to the ills of big-gov, and on top perpetuate reductivist arguments as if any kind of restrictions of freedom is by definition bad. This broad rejection without good reasons is borderline…

[flagged]

Please don't fulminate on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#498

Post by tomhow »

forgetfreeman wrote: post #173
Aerroon wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Please don't engage in political/ideological battle on HN. The guidelines make it clear we're trying for something better here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#499

Post by croon »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #343
codedokode wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the header/metatag is designed poorly. The RTA proposal is that every operator of every site must verify the content and add the header to mark the site as "safe" or "unsafe". This is unnecessary burden that they have to bear if this proposal is given a green light and this is wrong. Instead, the default should be, that if there is no header or it cannot be parsed, then the content is unsafe. And if there is…

> Instead, the default should be, that if there is no header or it cannot be parsed, then the content is unsafe. That's something the client should be doing. You can configure your own device (or your kid's) to have whatever default you want. The actual problem is that classifying the entire firehose of user-generated content is precarious and uneconomical, so the default tag is going to be whatever minimizes liabili…

> But either way if you disable "unsafe content" you'll end up disabling almost everything, specifically including the huge amount of "safe" content which isn't tagged as safe because accurately classifying it is uneconomical.

I think that's okay. The need for regulation is incentivizing capitalism in its amoralism to favor your regulated morality.

Corporations very much like targetting impressionable kids with content to sell stuff. If that adds a liability cost to moderate and make sure that content is "safe" (whatever that means in your jurisdiction), then isn't that what you would want?

I've never let my kids out on youtube, or the internet without either of us parents (yet at least). I hear you can now whitelist channels on youtube premium for child accounts, which sounds exactly like I want, but of course that doesn't scale. While I'd want to curate the entire internet for them until we've instilled enough judgment/their brains have developed enough to do it themselves, it's obviously impossible. Adding a liability risk or moderation cost to target kids seems like a fairly aligned incentive.

Re: California moves to exempt Linux from its age-verification law after backlash

#500

Post by soraminazuki »

tardedmeme wrote: post #487
soraminazuki wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how exactly do you validate your age? Government-issued IDs. Attaching government-issued IDs to every digital activity is the surveillance apparatus's wet dream, and it's not like these motives are hidden. So between this and equating opponents of this policy with cryptobros in your other comment, I have a hard time believing your accusation of bad faith as anything other than good old DARVO. It's also the tired…

... You don't. Did you actually read the law you're complaining about? It says the OS shall ask the person who creates an account what is the age bracket for that account. No verification is required. In fact the same law makes it illegal to verify this.

Even if true, that's an obvious farce. There's zero chance that these people will be satisfied at just asking for personal information and not checking. Next time, the rhetoric will be "we've already agreed to mandate age verification, why aren't we actually verifying?"

Furthermore, age verification is being pushed at multiple jurisdictions across the globe. They're trying multiple approaches to get this through and seeing what sticks.

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