Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Online age verification is the hill to die on

x.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 750 posts

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#701

Post by 6031769 »

ryandrake wrote: post #470
Bender wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's between parents and their local governments. Yes when I was a kid my mom let me watch whatever and go wherever. The parent in my example ultimately decides what a kid may or may not do which is in alignment with existing laws. If the parent is endangering their kid that is up to them and their government to sort out. Point being, put the controls entirely into the hands of the device owner. Options can be to d…

> - Block only sites that state they are adult. This is the problem. What is an "adult" web site? Websites that show porn? Websites that show gore? Websites that show violence? Websites that show non-porn naked people? Websites that have curse words? Websites that promote cults and alternate religions? Why is it the site's responsibility to "state" that they are adult, given whatever parameters they dream up? Why is…

> Websites that promote cults and alternate religions?

Websites that promote any religions. No way should under-18s be exposed to that.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#702

Post by Bender »

traderj0e wrote: post #699
bdangubic wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> without overwhelming support like that. this is 1,000,000% not accurate. there are things that vast majority of people support that are never going to happen (e.g. universal background check for gun purchases) and there are things that ruling party easily gets through that are wildly unpopular.

I said it's hard to ban something without support, not that it's easy to ban with support. Not to mention, gun background checks are more controversial than you're making them out to be, in fact this is an example I would use. Even if more than 50% like the idea of a background check, not so many will trust the implementation, and not everyone will vote.

Just for completeness sake and just for fun about 40 or so states allow private sales of firearms without a background check. Of course it is on the seller to know they are not selling to a felon and they may be on the hook if the buyer does something bad though I am straying a bit off topic from age/ID verification and tracking.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#703

Post by [deleted] »

DangitBobby wrote: post #490
k33n wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wouldn’t make a political statement in a town hall setting where you’re going to show ID, then you probably shouldn’t say it on the internet. But keep in mind that these laws don’t result in your identity being public. They will ultimately result in the sites you’re posting on know that you’re an enumerated individual. The ultimate benefit as I see it is removing outsized leverage over public opinion by bottin…

I disagree. I won't repeat my comment, but it carries all the information you need to know.

[deleted]

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#704

Post by denkmoon »

bdangubic wrote: post #631
denkmoon wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely true in Australia. The parents I know are either rich enough to outsource it or basically fighting for their life managing work and childrearing. And to add salt to the wound, it's the people on the positive side of the economic bell curve that have strong familial support networks where grandparents and uncles and aunts can contribute to childrearing, while those on the other side of the curve can't alway…

what’s the maternity leave situation in Australia?

Better than the US, but that does not make it true that only parents in the US are struggling.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#705

Post by Bender »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #402
traderj0e wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or could have a header saying this is not adult-only content, and a parentally-controlled device will block things that don't participate.

Yes, the RTA header was primarily a solution specific to porn sites. The broader problem is that parental controls don't have reliable standardized signals to filter on which has led to the current nonfunctional mess. So ideally you want a standardized header that can be used to self classify content into any number of arbitrary and potentially overlapping categories. The presence of that header should then be legall…

Just an opinion which I know is not super valuable but categories won't help with most sites. Anything that permits user contributed content can become any rating at any minute unless all content would require approval by a moderator before anyone could see it. A few forums support that concept but it requires a proportionate number of moderators or I suppose a very accurate and reliable AI moderator if that is even a thing. I think it's easier and probably legally safer to just tag anything that is not guaranteed to be 100% child safe at all times as adult and let parents decide if they with to approve-list the site in parental controls.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#706

Post by thin_carapace »

jenadine wrote: post #559
thin_carapace wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i can make arguments as to potential merits of kids having a beer/cigarette, listening to swear words, or witnessing casual violence. i cant make an argument for letting kids see hardcore pornography in any capacity.

I have hard time imagining what is that argument, that apply to the thing you mention but that doesn't apply to hardcore pornography. Or do you also think we should forbid hardcore pornography also for adults?

there may be valid use cases in certain demographics eg the disabled. to me it is evidently advantageous teaching a teenager how to have a smoke or have a drink properly , so that they don't go overboard with self directed learning for a valid activity (loosening social inhibition). we could totally teach teenagers the generation and consumption of dispassionate violent relationship simulacra. may I ask what would be advantageous about this ?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#707

Post by k33n »

DangitBobby wrote: post #490
k33n wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wouldn’t make a political statement in a town hall setting where you’re going to show ID, then you probably shouldn’t say it on the internet. But keep in mind that these laws don’t result in your identity being public. They will ultimately result in the sites you’re posting on know that you’re an enumerated individual. The ultimate benefit as I see it is removing outsized leverage over public opinion by bottin…

I disagree. I won't repeat my comment, but it carries all the information you need to know.

Thank you for not repeating your comment. Have an excellent day!

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#708

Post by stephen_g »

kbelder wrote: post #689
stephen_g wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the legal loophole that I'm sure a tiny number of people are using. In the real world, reportedly around 3/4 of kids under 16 that were using social media still are by either having changed their age during the window and using a sibling or older friend to do face scans for age recognition, or by creating new accounts and again using an older friend/sibling/relative etc. for the age verification. I heard about…

The number of times I've had to lie to websites on my kid's behalf is horrendous. I resent governments and companies for putting me in that situation. But it's a good lesson, I suppose. It changed the lesson to my kids about lying from "lying is bad", to a more sophisticated "lying is bad for these reasons, and so these lies are bad, but those lies are not."

Yeah, I think it's overall bad for society, but on an individual I'd definitely do it too (within reason) for certain services if I had kids that age.

But it feels like by making silly laws like this that aren't likely to be respected by much of the population is bad for the rule of law, which is bad for society. But fair enough, the rule of law is only a good thing as long as the laws are (on the whole) good.

We have a lot of this problem in Australia because as much as we pretend not to be, we're pretty authoritarian in regulating personal behaviour. For example in my state they're currently criminalising riding EN15194 compliant e-bikes above 10 km/h (literally 6 mph, slower than a jog) in my state on 90% of the bicycle path network (90% of the network are 'shared paths' so you'd only be allowed to ride at the bike's full 25 km/h (15 mph) motor limit on the small amount of dedicated bicycle paths). That and requiring anyone with any e-bike to have a drivers license - which cuts out people who can't have a license due to disability, medical issues but who could still ride a bike, or anyone under-16.

It's very silly, almost completely unenforceable and again just going to create huge non-compliance and further teach people that laws are silly things to be ignored... I really don't think that is good for society, and I've observed that the more Government has tried to regulate our behaviour, the less responsibility people seem to take, and the more the Government tries to further regulate.

So I think a big criteria of evaluating any new bill is "are most people actually going to respect this law", but all my experience with politicians is that they prefer magical thinking of believing that anything you make a law will immediately be fixed, even if it's impossible to adequately enforce or even technologically impossible to implement. Every time I've been involved in public consultation processes I'm constantly arguing practicality of the actual bill and they're arguing about the ideals that drove the poorly thought out laws...

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#709

Post by slg »

trinsic2 wrote: post #700
slg wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can support any effort that puts the responsibility into the hands of the parent without a mechanism that advances identity verification to protect their children. Which brings us right back to what I said here[1]. We don't have to agree on the motivations behind this push. Even if you believe this is all an authoritarian conspiracy, that conspiracy could be undermined by proposals like OP's, but instead people ma…

Im happy to have dialog with anyone that wants to protect children under the circumstances I already described. But if these initiatives push forward IDing people to have protection, then Im sorry you are on the wrong side of life and are involved in making the future of our society worse. I don't see you as an enemy, more misguided then anything. Im sure people are going to turn this into friends and enemies, but I…

>Im happy to have dialog with anyone that wants to protect children under the circumstances I already described.

But you're ignoring my point that your dialog is actively counterproductive when you don't engage with the root of the problem.

Nowhere in here did I advocate for "taking away freedoms" or for the age verification policies as discussed in this article. The only aspect of this issue that I have argued is that there is a real organic demand from people who want help in preventing children from having unfettered access to the internet.

The reason you see me as "misguided" is because you are refusing to actually listen to what I'm saying. And then you magnify the divide with your rhetoric implying I'm out to take away your freedom. Maybe you don't look at me as an enemy, but your rhetoric and behavior is actively repellent when it could instead be welcoming as you claim to sympathetic to the only issue I have actually advocated for here.

Post reply on HN