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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

#721
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.

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

Absolutely.

This is much better than destroying "the greatest source of knowledge in the history" to make it safe for kids.

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

#722

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…

Should we allow kids to get cigarettes? Cocaine? Should all parents "just" be better parents and problem solved?

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

#723

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…

You can expect the individual to compensate for a poorly structured society all you want.

> you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using

You can only expect so much from individual responsibility. At some point you need to structure society to compensate for the inevitable failures that occur.

> They are in a much better and informed position to do so than a creepy surveillance nanny state.

I'd rather live in a nanny state than ever trust american parenting. We've demonstrated a million times over that that doesn't work and produces even more fucked up people and abused children.

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

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools The problem is that it's bloody hard to actually do this. I'm in a war with my 7yo about youtube; the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. Well, after many successful months of DNS block, he discovered proxies. After blocking enough of those to dissuade him, he discovered Firefox…

As a parent of young children, this is your entire problem: > the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. You're treating this as a technical problem, not a parental rules problem. Your own rules say he's allowed to watch! You have to set the expectations and enforce it as a parent.

Depends on what the goal is. But yeah I agree if you really don't want them on YouTube (or whatever) and really do want them to tinker with their devices then you're likely going to have to eschew technical measures for more overt ones.

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

#725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted If you genuinely believe that this is about those moustache twirling executives, then I have a bridge to sell you. Have you ever wondered why and how these systems are being implemented? Have you ever gone why Discord / Twitch / what have you and why now? Have you ever thought that this might be happeni…

yep, the ol four horseman of internet censorship lol

if folks actually wanted to protect minors they would age restrict internet ACCESS instead of letting adults personal details get spewed all over the world for bad actors to take advantage of.

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

#726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. The mistake in this reasoning is assuming that they are actually interested in protecting the children.

This. The world is becoming increasingly more uncertain geopolitically. We have incipient (and actual) wars coming, and near term potential for societal disruption from technological unemployment. Meanwhile social media has all but completely undermined broadcast media as a means of social control. This isn't about protecting children. It's about preventing a repeated of the Arab Spring in western countries later thi…

The Arab Spring was caused by a tripling of food prices. I somehow doubt something similar will happen in the west. As for the rest, ignoring the population's concerns (by suppressing social media) is the best way to cause political violence. So I see blocking the governments desires to shape political discourse as saving the politicians from themselves.

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

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could your child not just call or text their friends? Or is the real expectation to not have to intervene at all about their preferred platform?

Only if all the other kids are not on social media. When I was in school, birthday parties and such were organised on facebook. If you were not on facebook, you weren't invited. If everyone was banned from facebook we would have organised them via text messages or email. That's the main point of social media age restrictions, individually banning kids is too punishing on those kids so parents and teachers don't try.…

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

#728
good breakdown of the tradeoffs but it kinda stops at critique. explains why age verification becomes invasive but doesnt really propose what a workable alternative looks like. feels like we need concrete models or architectures not just pointing out the trap.

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

#729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 don't get your point, at least not in relation to the GP post. I agree with GP, parents need to be more accountable. We as parents, and We should all be concerned about future children/generations , should be demanding more regulation to help force the change we need on this topic. We as a society need to treat SM like those other addictive product classes. The fact SM is addicting and execs try to juice it more, i…

not social media, treat the entire internet as fundamentally hazardous to kids because it is, just like cigarettes alcohol and porn. check IDs once when signing the contract that is required for internet access and all these problems go away.

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

#730

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…

> give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools The problem is that it's bloody hard to actually do this. I'm in a war with my 7yo about youtube; the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. Well, after many successful months of DNS block, he discovered proxies. After blocking enough of those to dissuade him, he discovered Firefox…

The obvious solution would be TLS interception and protocol whitelisting. Same as corporate IT. Stick the kids' devices on a separate vLAN if you don't want to catch all the other devices in the crossfire.

Still, there's an awful lot of excellent educational content on YouTube. It seems unfortunate to block access to that. Have you considered self hosting an alternative frontend for it?

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