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The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

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Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#491
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Meta get out of enacting mass surveillance of the entire Western world (not even for their personal benefit)? That they can avoid spending 6 months implementing ID checks like porn sites have done? Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant

Meta reads the writing on the wall, and is committing to the position that age verification is inevitable and will come down eventually no matter what. Meta, understanding that it will likely be the poster child for social media, knows that the laws will be likely written to make Meta enforce age verification on their platforms. This is expensive and ridden with liability traps, lawsuits, and government investigation…

> Meta is simply playing a strategy game to make everything shittier for everyone else (everyone uses an OS) in order to protect themselves (not everyone uses Meta).

You just summed up regulatory capture.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#492
post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.

Yes, but do you have any specifics? No one seems to have any specifics. I don't mean "plausible explanations of what the government might wish to to" -- I mean "specific actors pushing specific agendas."

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#493
post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.

In Australia, the government has certified OAuth2 Identity Providers which act as a broker between social media sites and a provider that can verify your age, such as a bank. This allows age to be verified by a provider, with the social media provider having no access to your identity. If the social media companies chose to support this, they would be complying with the legislation. It's not the government forcing yo…

Are these providers private owned?

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#494

In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups. An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.

It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it.

It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#495
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are plenty of alternatives if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process (and probably retain) personally identifiable information.. significantly safer too. But that wouldn't come with baked…

> if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process It really wouldn't be. Do that at OSI layer 3, every routed packet would have to have an "was this sent by a kid's device" flag. Higher levels aren't…

> Lower levels, you'd need duplicate hardware specifically for kids, which couldn't connect to the adult's internet.

This would also breed more interest in hardware modifications and thus leading more kids into the technical field. Sounds like a win win situation.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#497
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it weird? Social media has existed for around the same amount of time for all western countries, and people have noticed the harm at around the same time everywhere. Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check thei…

I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up. > So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it? I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.

A majority of the parents I know are extremely concerned about the internet and social media and want tech companies to provide them with better parental controls. True, no one I know has lobbied for age verification specifically, but given how much politicians and tech companies want it, it's unsurprising that they're working hard redirect this parental concern towards their preferred solutions.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#498
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the classic question of when the state should step in to correct bad parenting, and when it should leave well enough alone. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is one of the "step in" times, but I think the negatives for doing so seem far too costly. At any rate, with age verification, un-concerned parent will likely just want their kid to shut up, and will verify using their own details to give the kid the…

What are the negatives for doing so?

- at a minimum, your id will be stored on random servers where it can be stolen

- at a medium, you will have annoying and intrusive identity checks required to use many common websites

- at a high medium, you will not be able to use a non trusted computer and identity stack: get on a windows, apple, or google device and use their identity services in their browsers, or else you cannot use the internet

- at a maximum, all activity you and everyone takes online will be monitored and faithfully tied to your or their verified identity. This total loss of privacy will result in a total loss of freedom of speech and assembly online.

That last point is the direct aim of the people driving these laws.

Re: The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

#500
post #225

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.

Of course, but why now?
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