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

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

#551

Post by MaKey »

worldsayshi wrote: post #204
MaKey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I was wondering too. It doesn't seem genuine. Most people in tech I know will strongly oppose ID checks for internet use, rightfully so.

I think that not doing partial-identity checks invite bot noise into conversations. We could have id checks that only check exactly what needs to be checked. Are you human? Are you an adult? And then nothing else is known.

Identity checks do not prevent bot noise. They just increase the difficulty for bot operators a bit (steal / buy identities or verified accounts). Added bonus for them: Their bot comments now appear more authentic.

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

#552

Post by fhub »

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…

If you are interested in learning about the other perspective, you can watch some parents’ congressional testimony here https://youtu.be/y8ddg4460xc?si=-yYduYDppF4TQWqD.

The character.ai one is gut wrenching.

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

#553

Post by donmcronald »

antitoxic wrote: post #390

I work at a European identity wallet system that uses a zero knowledge proof age identification system. It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth. As long as you trust the government that gave out the ID, you can trust the attribute, and anonymously verify somebodies age. I think there are many pros and cons to be said about…

> It derives an age attribute such as "over 18" from a passport or ID, without disclosing any other information such as the date of birth.

How? If it’s analyzes my ID 100% client side I can fake any info I want. If my ID goes to a server, it’s compromised IMO.

I think the zero proof systems being touted are like ephemeral messaging in Snapchat. That is, we’re being sold something that’s impossible and it only “works” because most people don’t understand enough to know it’s an embellishment of capabilities. The bad actors will abuse it.

Zero proof only works with some kind of attestation, maybe from the government, and there needs to be some amount of tracking or statistics or rate limiting to make sure everyone in a city isn’t sharing the same ID.

Some tracking turns into tracking everything, probably with an opaque system, and the justification that the “bad guys” can’t know how it works. We’ve seen it over and over with big tech. Accounts get banned or something breaks and you can’t get any info because you might be a bad guy.

Does your system work without sending my ID to a server and without relying on another party for attestation?

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

#554

Post by thorio »

aqme28 wrote: post #148

If we're going to do this at all, it should be on the device, not the website/app. Parents flag their child's device or browser as under 18, and websites/apps follow suit. Parents get the control they're looking for, while service providers don't have to verify or store IDs. I guess it's just more difficult to pressure big dogs like google/apple/mozilla for this than pornhub and discord.

This sounds pretty reasonable to me. What am I missing?

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

#555

Post by butterbomb »

thorio wrote: post #554
aqme28 wrote: post #148

If we're going to do this at all, it should be on the device, not the website/app. Parents flag their child's device or browser as under 18, and websites/apps follow suit. Parents get the control they're looking for, while service providers don't have to verify or store IDs. I guess it's just more difficult to pressure big dogs like google/apple/mozilla for this than pornhub and discord.

This sounds pretty reasonable to me. What am I missing?

It doesn’t come with a ton of PII you can sell to data brokers.

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

#556

Post by Altern4tiveAcc »

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?

It does feel like a shift, and sometimes coordinated signaling. This post was at the top of this thread not long ago. Now it's all pro-age verification posts.

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

#557

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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…

> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that.

The solution would then be to break them up or do things like require adversarial interoperability, rather than ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone.

The perverse incentive comes from a single company sitting on a network effect. You have to use Facebook because other people use Facebook, so if the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait you can't unilaterally decide to leave without abandoning everyone still there, and the Facebook company gets to show ads to everyone who uses it and therefore wants to maximize everyone's time wasted on Facebook, so the algorithm shows you trash and rage bait.

Now suppose they're not allowed to restrict third party user agents. You get a messaging app and it can send messages to people on Facebook, Twitter, SMS, etc. all in the same interface. It can download the things in "your feed" and then put it in a different order, or filter things out, and again show content from multiple services in the same interface, including RSS. And then that user agent can do things like filter out adult content, if you want it to.

We need to fix the actual problem, which is that the hosting service shouldn't be in control of the user interface to the service.

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

#558

Post by EmbarrassedHelp »

SecretDreams wrote: post #434
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…

ITT are a lot* of tech workers who made their money as a cog in the system poisoning the internet that future generations would have to swim in. I wonder if toxic waste companies also tell the parents it's strictly on them to keep their kids out of the lakes that are poisoned, but once flowed cleanly? We live in a shared world with shared responsibilities. If you are working on a product, or ever did work on a produc…

Age verification tech companies are lobbying heavily for governments to legally require their services. The proposed "solutions" are about funneling money into the hands of other tech companies and shady groups, while violating user privacy.

If anything, we should be banning the collection of any age related information to access social media and more mature content. We need companies to respect privacy, rather than legislation even more privacy violations.

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

#559

Post by Almondsetat »

Squarex wrote: post #400
snvzz wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution has always been there: Assume everybody is an adult. The only reasonable way to deal with children on the Internet is to treat Internet access like access to alcohol/drugs. There is no need for children to access the Internet full stop. Internet is a network in which everything can connect to everything, and every connected machine can run clients, servers, p2p nodes and what not. Controlling every possi…

So you would deny children the greatest source of knowledge in the history? I have learned math and programming thanks to unlimited access to the web and would not be where I am without it.

>I would not be where I am without it

First of all, you cannot know that, since plenty of people before you learnt that stuff from libraries.

>So you would deny children the greatest source of knowledge in the history?

Yes, because other sources of knowledge exist and are much more appropriate for children. It is also the greatest source of despicable stuff in history. When you turn 18, have fun exploring the world wide web.

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