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Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#501

Post by danparsonson »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #145
danparsonson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because raising children is unequivocally the parents' responsibility. It's, like, their main job.

Viewing the continuance of our race as only the responsibility of parents is pathological. Moreover, children are all of our [mid-term] futures too. If education fails, there are no doctors for anyone not ultra-wealthy. You have to look from the other direction too - children have natural rights and deserve to be extending dignity as humans too.

> Viewing the continuance of our race as only the responsibility of parents is pathological.

That's not what I said.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#502

Post by antonvs »

codedokode wrote: post #416
giantg2 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might those be? Everything I've seen is ineffective or can be compromised. I think letting parents parent is probably the best option, but will require better/easier/free tools and education to help lock down different categories of harm.

1) When buying a device, store employee could program user's age range. 2) When configuring a device, parent may toggle "child mode" checkbox to switch the device into "child mode", protected with a password or fingerprint. 3) The tokens, containing a private key (same for all tokens) can be sold in liquor stores to adults only. This token could confirm the age without a passport. It is interesting that is US (unless…

> When buying a device, store employee could program user's age range.

Big Brother would like to hire you. This is the kind of idea I only expect to hear from a politician or a grandparent that has difficulty unlocking their iphone.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#503

Post by antonvs »

wongarsu wrote: post #387
giantg2 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might those be? Everything I've seen is ineffective or can be compromised. I think letting parents parent is probably the best option, but will require better/easier/free tools and education to help lock down different categories of harm.

Website generates a random nounce, the government offers to sign the json { over_18: true, nounce: [inserted_here] }. That signing is coupled to you being signed in, or scanning your passport via nfc or whatever That significantly reduces the leaked information: the service doesn't receive any information who you are, and the government doesn't know what service you use. They can collude, but that does not reveal mor…

> or scanning your passport

You’re not helping.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#504

Post by antonvs »

DSMan195276 wrote: post #431
1dom wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I'm in my mid 30's. When I was very young I remember my Dad semi-regularly having to email or even fax off permission sl…

> I might be being overly cynical here, but I think part of the problem is parents expect to give their kids the internet so they don't have to spend so much time/attention with them. > I think this means any solution which involves active parent participation is going to get shunned by a vocal subset. I don't think that's a fair assessment personally, rather you've missed a key detail that things are significantly m…

Everything you describe is an argument for not trying to bake age verification in at a lower level - because all of those issues will become everyone’s problem, whether or not they’re parents, except they won’t be able to “turn off age ratings” any more, instead people will be fighting with systems that don’t recognize their ID document upload or whatever.

That, in the end, will hopefully kill these idiotic attempts at dystopia enhancement, because when people discover that “think of the children” makes their day to day life more difficult, it’ll lose support.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#505

Post by antonvs »

dredmorbius wrote: post #324
tyre wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won’t because KYC is a legal process and you don’t want to prophets that across the entire system with bypasses for it. That’s legal trouble waiting to happen. Yes, Google also wants to tie back to legal identities to sell ads. I’m not saying they’re doing this in good faith, but proxies like this get messy and dangerous for legal/compliance.

"you don’t want to prophets that across the entire system"? Typo? But it's hard to tell what.

Propagate?

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#506

Post by antonvs »

annzabelle wrote: post #429
skybrian wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attempting to prevent websites from learning about their audience is difficult. For example, Lego has a "play zone" and it has other pages geared towards adults. You get an immediate popup asking if you want to go to the play zone or not. If a user clicks on play zone, that's a good signal (but not guaranteed) that they're probably a child. Preventing this would be difficult. If there are any behavioral differences b…

I went to Australia recently, which is famous for requiring age verification on websites. When I first landed, Discord blocked a few channels I was in, but within a couple hours it was all unblocked with no action from me. Both Reddit and Discord worked with full functionality. My best guess is they have some sort of behavioral information that suggests I am extremely unlikely to be a minor.

It’s much more likely to be based on your advertising-based profile. Advertisers all already know your age range. That’s part of what makes it clear that the measures they’re trying to introduce are intended for other purposes.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#507

Post by onel »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #219
K0nserv wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps. I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of ra…

You're seriously proposing letting governments decide which of their citizens are allowed unrestricted access to the internet? Of all the 3rd parties who could be responsible for this, I trust the government the least . But really the best solution here is no third party. The device owner (e.g. parents) should be responsible for setting the user's age when setting up the device. Anything that tries to take that respo…

Out of all the 3rd parties, I think the government is the one that we can more cleanly hold accountable. Not only through voting but also requiring transparency. Is it the perfect system? Hell no, but the incentives for a traditional LLC not aligned with what this kind of service should offer

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#508

Post by onel »

K0nserv wrote: post #24
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #16

I find myself stuck on the fence with age checks. Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause. And market forces are not working to correct things. It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter. This is where regulation is supposed to come in. At the same time, c…

I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps. I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of ra…

It is a scary thought but I kind of like this idea. Having a yubi key that is issued by the government that is unique to you and has your age saved on it, it's by far the most private and secure way to verify your age.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#509

Post by roblabla »

inigyou wrote: post #257
palata wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, but it would be difficult to justify why you need to access 1000 porn sites every day, I guess? The point is that if you build a service that sells age verification tokens, you are doing something illegal. And if you start doing something illegal by gathering said tokens with your own identity , maybe it's not the most clever way to do something illegal?

So the government would limit me to accessing only 999 porn sites a day? Is it going to be like structuring law, where it's illegal to access 1000 or more but it's also illegal to avoid accessing 1000 or more by accessing a lower number?

The government won't limit you - they can't really know what you use those proofs for anyways, that's the zero knowledge part, and supposedly they'll be necessary for social media at some point, so a ZK proof won't necessarily mean porn use. The only thing the govt knows is how many proofs are being downloaded. And you can bet politicians wouldn't do anything to prevent voting-age you from accessing social media - how else are they supposed to get you to vote for them (or hate their opponents).

Now, a scenario I can see happening is, the ZKP-issuing agency may find a single client downloading several orders of magnitude more proofs than the average citizen, find that suspicious, refer them to the police, who'd get a warrant to investigate said person. Then, the police may manage to connect said person with a proof distribution service. Something along those lines.

Again, I'm personally not a huge fan of the whole age gating, but if we're going to go about it, this is the least worse option. Which is really saying something.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#510

Post by sensanaty »

Noaidi wrote: post #248
RandomGerm4n wrote: post #154

I'm fundamentally opposed to age verification because it usually leads to mandatory account creation no matter how privacy friendly the age verification process itself may be. It's already extremely annoying that, for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. Furthermore, the whole thing also reinforces monopolies. Once you've verified your age on one platform, the barrier to switch…

> for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. I do not like this argument. Does an adult theater let anyone in without an ID? Do movie theaters let kids under 18 into an R rated movie without ID? Why do we think this should be different on the internet? IMHO, they should have Youtube 18+ (Adult book store) where you need an ID and YouTube I think it is evil that YouTube enables ki…

> Do movie theaters let kids under 18 into an R rated movie without ID?

I mean, yes? At least in the Netherlands they do, I just went to see new the Jackass movie last week and half the theater was kids without parents present.

Also this is a bad comparison because a theater (or bar or whatever other venue checks IDs) doesn't store those IDs forever in perpetuity, and they definitely don't share it with one of their 9000 "legitimate interest" partners who do lord knows what with the IDs.

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