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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

#661

Post by trueno »

txrx0000 wrote: post #643
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…

It's much easier to give individual users control over their own device than to give a centralized authority control over what happens on everyone's device over the Internet. Local user-controlled toggles are just easier to implement. All parental moderation mechanisms can and should be implemented as opt-in on-device settings. What governments need to do is pressure companies to implement those on-device settings. A…

Am I the only one that is repeatedly amused at how many smart people are just caving to making this about parents/children at all?

We've literally watched things unfold in real time out in the open in the last year I don't know how much more obvious it could be that child-protections are the bad-faith excuse the powers that be are using here. Combined with their control of broadcasting/social media, it's the very thing they're pushing narratives in lockstep over. All this to effectively tie online identities to real people. Quick and easy digital profiles/analytics on anyone, full reads on chat history assessments of idealogies/political affiliations/online activities at scale, that's all this ever was and I _know_ hackernews is smart enough to see that writing on the wall. Ofc porn sites were targeted first with legislation like this, pornography has always been a low-hanging fruit to run a smear campaign on political/idealogical dissidents. It wasn't enough, they want all platform activity in the datasets.

I can't help but feel like the longer we debate the merits of good parenting, the faster we're just going to speedrun losing the plot entirely. I think it goes without saying that no shit good parenting should be at play, but this is hardly even about that and I don't know why people take the time of day. It's become reddit-caliber discussion and everyone's just chasing the high of talking about how _they_ would parent in any given scenario, and such discussion does literally nothing to assess/respond to the realities in front of us. In case I'm not being clear, talking about how correct-parenting should be used in lieu of online verification laws is going to do literally nothing to stop this type of legislation from continually taking over. It's not like these discussions and ideas are going to get distilled into the dissent on the congressional floors that vote on these laws. It is in it's own way a slice of culture war that has permeated into the nerd-sphere.

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

#662

Post by almosthere »

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #503
almosthere wrote: post #468

I think this should work like OpenID connect but with just a true/false. PS = pr0n site AV = age verification site (conforming to age-1 spec and certified) PS: Send user to AV with generated token AV: Browser arrives with POST data from PS with generated token AV: AV specific flow to verify age - may capturing images/token in a database. May be instant or take days AV: Confirms age, provides link back to original PS…

That solution still violates user privacy. A better solution would be a simple "minor" flag that is only included on the devices of minors. No third party verification required for adults.

That works until minor-removing-flag proxys start popping up.

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

#663

Post by bigfishrunning »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #640
honkycat wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs and OSs should be the ones providing these tools and make is stupid easy to set up a child's account and have a walled garden for kids to use.

There's a law going through in some state that want's to do this, but also put the onus on the OS developers to detect age aligned behavior. How do you do this with Linux? It would kill the open computer and kill ownership over computing.

Why would it be a problem to do this sort of thing with linux? Linux allows for oauth, proxied networking, what have you -- unless they're using some super-secret-unpublished-protocol, linux will be fine

I'm against these age-verification laws, but to say it's impossible to comply with open-source software isn't really true.

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

#664

Post by ndriscoll »

unethical_ban wrote: post #507
briffle wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when I was a kid in the early 90's, my state (and many others) banned cigarette vending machines since there was no way to prevent them being used by minors, unless they were inside a bar, where minors were already not allowed.

The problem is, doing the analogous action with the entire internet is a privacy nightmare. You didn't have to tell 7-11 every item you bought at every store in the past 2 years and opt-in to telling them what other stores you go to for the next 5. There is no digital equivalent of "flash an ID card and be done with it" in the surveillance state era of the internet. Using a CC is the closest we have and even then you…

The analogous action is to only require age-restricted sites (or parts of sites) to check ID, not the entire Internet. e.g. no one is calling for mathisfun.com to check ID. I'd expect most parts of the web are child-friendly and would not be affected. Just like how almost all locations in physical space don't need to check ID.

Additionally, the laws I've read mandate that no data be retained, so you have stronger legal protections than typical credit card use, or even giving your ID to a store clerk for age restricted purchases (many stores will scan it without asking, and in some states scanning is required).

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

#665

Post by malfist »

pembrook wrote: post #648
malfist wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US really cared about child safety they'd go after people in the epstien files.

As we can see from this user who has fallen ill with Epstein Brain, the real victims of social media algorithms are actually adults. He is currently prepping to overthrow his local Pizzeria while the rest of us argue as if social media even exists anymore (it doesn't, it's just algorithmic TV now).

Judging by your recent posting history, you spend an awful lot of time telling people to stop trying to hold pedophiles accountable. I wonder why that is.

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

#666

Post by nazgul17 »

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…

The difference with guns, tobacco and alcohol is huge: all negatives aside, giving kids what they want makes the life of a parent so much easier. Take it away and many parents will fight. Sugar is in the same game.

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

#667

Post by alecco »

The purpose is to control the Internet. They've been trying this for ages. They tried with terrorism and other things. Now the excuse is protecting children.

Not exactly a good moment for this caste of politicians to pretend they care about children's well-being, though.

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

#668

Post by bigfishrunning »

fluoridation wrote: post #175
coffeefirst wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't sound simple. Now there needs to be some kind of pipeline that can route a new kind of information from the OS (perhaps from a physical device) to the process, through the network, to the remote process. Every part of the system needs to be updated in order to support this new functionality.

It's not simple, but it's also not new. mTLS has allowed for mutual authentication on the web for years. If a central authority was signing keys for adults, none of the protocol that we currently use would need to change (although servers would need to be configured to check signatures)

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

#669

Post by fuzzfactor »

knallfrosch wrote: post #407

All adults proof their identify multiple times per month: Every time they access digital health records, or when they use any electronic payment. Just make Google/Apple reveal part of that data (age > x years) to websites and apps. Boom, done. Privacy guarded. Easy.

>Every time they access digital health records, or when they use any electronic payment.

This is the internet.

Among those who were very familiar with it, the smartest money never started doing things like that.

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

#670

Post by ajam1507 »

trueno wrote: post #661
txrx0000 wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much easier to give individual users control over their own device than to give a centralized authority control over what happens on everyone's device over the Internet. Local user-controlled toggles are just easier to implement. All parental moderation mechanisms can and should be implemented as opt-in on-device settings. What governments need to do is pressure companies to implement those on-device settings. A…

Am I the only one that is repeatedly amused at how many smart people are just caving to making this about parents/children at all? We've literally watched things unfold in real time out in the open in the last year I don't know how much more obvious it could be that child-protections are the bad-faith excuse the powers that be are using here. Combined with their control of broadcasting/social media, it's the very thi…

> It's not like these discussions and ideas are going to get distilled into the dissent on the congressional floors that vote on these laws.

You think the idea of parents, not governments, being responsible for parenting doesn't translate well to voters? In the country founded on the idea of freedom from overreaching governance and personal responsibility?

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