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A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

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Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#81

Post by Ekaros »

forinti wrote: post #68
goatlover wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should there be age restrictions once you're legally an adult at 18? 21 is unnecessarily puritanical (EU countries don't have that) and most teenagers are going to drink anyway, just as they're going to find a way to bypass age verifications for their social media of choice.

Maybe the law could have different ages for beer and distilled spirits. Let the kids have a beer at 16 or 18. I have the same feeling about motorcycles. The age for riding them should be a bit later, when you've acquired some sense. Maybe 21 or even 24.

Finland does that 18 for up to 22% and 20 for above that in stores(state has monopoly for above 5.5%).

Maybe some type of tiered system could be in place. Text one limit, images next and then video one more.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#82

Post by echelon »

fwn wrote: post #75
endisneigh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of social media is to interact with real people, no?

Personally, I engage with hacker news for the content, not the people. It's the thoughts, opinions, narrations, and arguments that I enjoy consuming and contributing to. How would my position in this argument be any less valuable if it turned out that I automated it with the help of a text generator?

I think it would be funny to write LLMs to generate noise and jam the Reddit signal. Do it slowly so the frog doesn't notice it's getting boiled. I can't be the only one with this thought.

I wouldn't personally act on this, of course. It's not at all constructive. I find it amusing to contemplate, though, and I also believe it's plausible others will execute on a similar vision.

There will be all sorts of other actors using LLMs for their own ends, too. Astroturfers. Trolls. Griefers. You name it.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#83

Post by mrobins »

fwn wrote: post #73
echelon wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13 Once LLM-powered bots flood social media [1], websites will have to implement verification as a means of survival. [1] That hasn't even really begun. Wait until ChatGPT+ capabilities can be run from home at next to zero cost.

I read this a lot, but I don't get it. ...and I don't get the implied paradigm shift that's supposed to happen with better text generators. If people generate better content with bots, that's a good thing. If the content people generate with bots is worse, then they're not going to be successful with it. If bad content outperforms good content, that would be a problem for the social network. ... but that would be a p…

Let’s say you’re right and only the good content rises to the top. What’s the motivation behind that content? It’s likely not just to improve online discussions and be your AI online thought partner. It will have an agenda and it will be using crazy amounts of computational power to steer you towards someone else’s financial or political goal.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#84

Post by jqpabc123 »

bdcravens wrote: post #9
Zetobal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? Because they take the burden of the companies to age verify their users? Right now they really argue that a kid should have read the ToS and get of Scots free if something happens on their platform.

Are you willing to submit your photo ID information to Y Combinator? After all, they have no way of knowing any of us aren't 12 without that information.

After all, they have no way of knowing any of us aren't 12 without that information.

And equally important, they have no way to really know we aren't 12 even *with* that information.

For example, a 12 year old could easily provide a photo of mommy or daddy's ID. Or a photoshopped copy of an older friend's ID?

Basically, any reasonably secure verification method will need to be equivalent to the KYM (know your customer) process used by banks --- and a lot of *legal* users will be excluded because they can't pass the test. Many teenager's lack a reasonably secure identity document.

The USA suffers from an over abundance of ignorance and stupidity --- and this extends all the way to the government level.

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#85

Post by LinuxBender »

Manfred wrote: post #45
htag wrote: post #39

This is movement is going to be widely regarded as on of the largest prohibitions in our era. * Whatever verification system a user has to do to prove they are older than 13 will also being to freak users out about 'whoes listening'. It's insane to think a First Name, Last Name, and Address might be tied to _every reddit account_. * That data will be used for government surveillance. Maybe I should start creating a h…

There are solutions like Yivi[1] (previously IRMA) that allow you to have a wallet of attributes signed by federal or local government (eg. "user is over 13" or "user lives in Wisconsin"). That way you never have to share your identity, just certain attributes that are specific to the use-case. [1] https://www.yivi.app/en

Are those attributes reversible to an index of real PII? Asking because these things all seem to oopsie leak or get sold or hacked or turn out to be sitting in a public S3 by mistake eventually.

How does the site know that I am using my wallet attributes and not someone else's?

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#86

Post by philjohn »

b112 wrote: post #27
friendlyHornet wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah just give a scan of your ID to Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok, Snapchat, etc There is absolutely no chance that it will ever get leaked, misused or stored unencrypted

Giving Facebook my picture, in conjunction with ID, is a sure way for the entire platform to do facial recognition on all existing pictures. They already do it, but such a time save to 100% verify who is who. And even if you esque facebook, never have an account, you're one step away from the same happening after a buyout, data share agreement, etc. Banks often get around data sharing laws, by jointly buying companie…

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/03/why-is-fa...

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#87

Post by Bender »

hnlmorg wrote: post #23

The issue as I see it isn’t going to be solved by forcing social networks to gather even more personal information about individuals (eg proof of ID and proof of age). The issue is how social networks are engineered, either by chance or by design, to promote negativity in the pursuit of engagement. If we can find a way to declaw social networks then we’d have a healthier ecosystem for all ages. But this is a much har…

I believe the only correct way to solve this is to add an RTA header on sites that permit user-generated content and require the most common devices and browsers to once again recognize this header and instead of just treating it as adult content, also use it for user-generated content. Then put the liability on the parents to lock down devices. Let parents decide which domains/urls to approve-list in the devices.

If a site with user-generated content is missing this header give them a warning, then fine them {n} percentage of their net revenue per day until remediated. After {x} days out of compliance seize their domains.

If a child/parent is having compliance issues on their devices leading to problems, hand it over to social services like they would for any other social/family issue. Social service issues are not tech platform issues.

Using RTA in HTML:
PHP:

    header("Rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA");
Apache:

    Header set Rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
HAProxy:

    http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"
NGinx:

    location / { add_header Rating 'RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA'; }

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#88

Post by [deleted] »

hnlmorg wrote: post #51
_8j50 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A system to verify age is not needed. Simply making it illegal and holding parents accountable is enough. It's one of those things where perfection is the enemy of good. Some kids will do it anyways but parents can install hard to remove monitoring software on devices and the penalty can be similar to a somewhat serious traffic citation.

We haven’t had a good track record in recent years of businesses honouring the spirit of the law. For example cookie consent banners with horrible dark patterns aren’t necessary to operate in the EU but some companies feel this is a better approach than reducing the amount of data they harvest. Likewise some companies will see this new legislation as an excuse to collect more data too. The fact that a lot of social n…

[deleted]

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#89

Post by jutrewag »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #5

Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to simply have parental education around the harms of social media for kids under age XYZ? I mean, I’m all in favor of the goals of this bill. I think social media is a horrible negative for people of all ages, but especially children since they largely don’t have the mental capability to defend against the smartest people in the world trying to hijack their brains. But I can’t see h…

[dead]

Re: A US Bill Would Ban Kids Under 13 from Joining Social Media

#90

Post by htag »

LinuxBender wrote: post #85
Manfred wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are solutions like Yivi[1] (previously IRMA) that allow you to have a wallet of attributes signed by federal or local government (eg. "user is over 13" or "user lives in Wisconsin"). That way you never have to share your identity, just certain attributes that are specific to the use-case. [1] https://www.yivi.app/en

Are those attributes reversible to an index of real PII? Asking because these things all seem to oopsie leak or get sold or hacked or turn out to be sitting in a public S3 by mistake eventually. How does the site know that I am using my wallet attributes and not someone else's?

It looks like the answer is yes

1. These 'digitally signed attributes' (example: 'age: 19') are consistent across services. So if you attribute is leaked in a way that it connected to other PII, then everyone with the attribute will know your PII.

2. These attributes are generated by a central authority. Presumably the goal would be to have governments issue these attributes. Regardless, whatever verification you do with the central authority will reveal your identity, and they can always determine your PII from the attributes they created.

[0] https://irma.app/docs/what-is-irma/

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