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Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

android-developers.googleblog.com

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Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#81

Post by dmantis »

superloika wrote: post #41
gruez wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>which is expensive The rumored Motorola devices are even more expensive. It's the signature and some foldables, all in the 1000+ MSRP range. At least with pixels you can get the a series for as little as 400 on sale.

If you buy one of the Motorola Grapheneos phones, you're gonna be marked. You will stand out in the crowd. It has happened before and will happen more frequently as the world becomes more authoritarian.

On the other hand, privacy becomes a luxury. People love signaling their status and standing out from the crowd. Entire car and clothing brands exist solely because of that.

And if enough people stand out, it doesn't matter anymore.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#82

Post by mikeocool »

watwut wrote: post #51
sschueller wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be a law that forces social media companies to use a different algorithm for anyone under a certain age and be required to disclose it to the public. Possibly different algorithm depending on age group. There should however be no force age verification. Social media companies already know how old you are or very close to it using the data they collect everyday. Using this data they should be required to…

> There should be a law that forces social media companies to use a different algorithm for anyone under a certain age and be required to disclose it to the public. Possibly different algorithm depending on age group. Frankly, in that case I want the kids algorithm. It is preferable for me as an adult, I do not want the intentionally harmful one either.

Yeah, seriously, New York just passed law that makes it illegal to show engagement-driven feeds to kids.

I can’t wait to not age verify on instagram and permanently get back a feed that’s only people I follow.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#83

Post by jeroenhd »

tjpnz wrote: post #74
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can approach this from more than one angle. Yes, it cannot be entirely on parents, but parents should bear some responsibility to not just hand a device over to their children with unrestricted access to the entire internet.

Up until relatively recently you would have to install custom VPNs and maybe add Pihole into the mix to achieve anything close to that. Easy for us here, but we're in a small minority.

Parental controls have been part of mobile devices for years, but so have bypasses. For instance, you can bypass Google's parental control settings by opening the help page in the Google settings and clicking links until you get to the Google homepage.

I doubt it matters because nobody seems to configure the parental controls that are there, anyway. Only schools seem to try, and only because they're legally held responsible for what kids do on their computers.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#84

Post by danparsonson »

inigyou wrote: post #33
BoxwoodSeed wrote: post #26

I'd be totally fine to solve this problem by banning children from the internet altogether. Not that I'd enforce this or anything. Just so no one other than the parents can be liable when things go wrong. There's more and more evidence that internet access isn't healthy to have for children anyway.

Yeah. And if a kid drinks beer only the parents should be liable. Why are we all so horny to transfer unlimited liability to parents?

Because raising children is unequivocally the parents' responsibility. It's, like, their main job.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#85

Post by 0x696C6961 »

K0nserv wrote: post #24
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #16

I find myself stuck on the fence with age checks. Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause. And market forces are not working to correct things. It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter. This is where regulation is supposed to come in. At the same time, c…

I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps. I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of ra…

This is scary though too. If the gov managed a key server like this, almost all companies would start requiring it. But this effectively gives the gov a very easy way to lock you out of everything.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#86

Post by cluckindan »

Havoc wrote: post #38

Global surveillance incoming. Heard Google is also rolling out QR codes to get past captchas? Ie linked to a device that would now be identity linked too. All seems pretty dystopian or to quote googles slogan - being evil

Incoming? Have you been asleep for 30 years?

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#89

Post by sevenzero »

inigyou wrote: post #33
BoxwoodSeed wrote: post #26

I'd be totally fine to solve this problem by banning children from the internet altogether. Not that I'd enforce this or anything. Just so no one other than the parents can be liable when things go wrong. There's more and more evidence that internet access isn't healthy to have for children anyway.

Yeah. And if a kid drinks beer only the parents should be liable. Why are we all so horny to transfer unlimited liability to parents?

You have a kid, you have responsibility for that kid. In Germany we have a term "Aufsichtspflicht" for this, which roughly translates to duty of supervision. Up to a certain age of the kid parents will be made responsible for damages your kid caused. One pretty funny example of that was a kid spending 1000s of Euros on a MMORPG because the MMO offered a payment option that allowed people to pay through their phone bill. Parents could've easily prevented any of that happening, but in that generation it was pretty common that kids were tech savvy while parents couldn't be bothered to learn about computers, which imo already is problematic.

Nowadays there are many many ways to supervise your children's online access. And yes, there are also many many ways for kids to work around that too, but ultimately if you buy your kid a device with internet access, you should try to supervise that. Parents need to care more about what their children are up to, instead of silencing them with a tablet for a moment of personal silence.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#90

Post by palata »

inigyou wrote: post #44
c0n5pir4cy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU actually has a very good, privacy protecting way of doing this based on zero knowledge proofs. Unfortunately they completely botched it by having the proof-of-concept app rely on Apple & Googles integrity APIs - which a bunch of countries copied.

ZKPs may as well just be unencrypted HTTP headers which would be way simpler and easier to implement. All a ZKP proves is that at least one person in the world is over 18.

This is not completely true.

With ZKP, if you make a business out of reselling tokens you get with your own identity, eventually they will see that you use orders of magnitude more tokens than normal people.

So with ZKP it's more difficult to cheat. Not impossible, just less accessible.

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