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Age verification is incompatible with the internet

jonaharagon.com

91–100 of 161 posts

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#91
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it isn’t a very viable option. I understand the logic of saying to them “here’s a more effective solution, which you would have suggested if you were operating in good faith,” but I think that your solution wouldn’t work, which causes the whole argument to unravel.

iPhones are pretty locked down, and stand a good chance of allowing parents to totally block adult content. Android and general-purpose computers less so, naturally. But VPNs have already come up as the way around these new age-verification laws, and that didn't stop them. Kids can always find ways around this stuff (when I was in high school eons ago, just about everyone was underage drinking, and a lot of my friend…

- Fortunately, most democratic countries will be constitutionally prevented from enacting full-blown police states to stop kids from doing naughty things. Hopefully.

Constitution/law just transfer responsibility to other entity. Whithout responsibility, there is no freedom. State never bringing morale or ethics to society. I would rather focus on why kids doing naughty things, where they learn it, what are consequences of their actions, etc.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#92
post #19

Kids can purchase unrestricted amount of sugar drinks and ruin their health for the rest of their lives. I insist government implements age verification for soda purchases. All sodas must be accessible to 21+ years only.

Adults ruin their lives by smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol... Also they ruin relationships by consuming porn. Maybe we should ban it completely?

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like a lot of the comments here are said ironically but would actually be wonderful for much of society. Very tired of the libertarian arguments when they obviously don't work.

Libertarianism doesn’t work as much as communism doesn’t work.

Apparently tribalism works.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#94
Yeah but unfortunately it is very compatible with social conservatives and certain extreme christians who want to make it as hard as possible for adults to access porn as well, ideally banning it.

Thats not possible to do, so they go and attack it with fake outrage (and it are all fake, children are not actually interested in sex nor do they spontainously combust if they see naked adults).

Same with exedus cry, which is not about "saving adult performers" but about making it harder and harder to run a porn site.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#95
It is possible to cryptographically attest to attributes like age without revealing identity.

I worked on a privacy preserving system that did this among other things. Third parties who received an attestation of some property could verify it.

To be fully private, a bit more is required. Crucially, each time an attestation is provided it is made unlinkable to previous times it may have been provided. So the third party only knows the attestation they have just received is valid, but not that it is the same unknown person they saw yesterday.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#96

It is possible to cryptographically attest to attributes like age without revealing identity. I worked on a privacy preserving system that did this among other things. Third parties who received an attestation of some property could verify it. To be fully private, a bit more is required. Crucially, each time an attestation is provided it is made unlinkable to previous times it may have been provided. So the third par…

You know what else preserves privacy?

Not giving all our information to data driven businesses just to exist.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does it stop next? Government telling us that we can't have our small piece of chocolate until we eat all our veggies and Mediterranean menu diet guide?

Sounds delicious.

This is the problem.

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#98
post #92
post #19

Kids can purchase unrestricted amount of sugar drinks and ruin their health for the rest of their lives. I insist government implements age verification for soda purchases. All sodas must be accessible to 21+ years only.

Adults ruin their lives by smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol... Also they ruin relationships by consuming porn. Maybe we should ban it completely?

I hope you like organized crime

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#99
post #26

Something like that parody of printed manual check copy protection on the original Larry game might actually work? Years later I had a huge "oh, so that's the answer!" moment when I finally discovered the meaning of the words agent orange. Jokes aside, what would be the failure mode if some metadata about audience minimum age was given legal blessing? Regular browsers would simply ignore it, browsers with enabled par…

> What am I missing? You are missing, that many people in that space don't want to solve that specific problem * Some companies and their lobbies want to sell their products for filtering or whatever * Some people want to get rid of all sinful porn * Some want to block a lot more content for more people and need infrastructure * Some want to have further control Etc. "protecting the children" is often a good way to d…

> Some companies and their lobbies want to sell their products for filtering or whatever

It really shouldn't be needed: web pages are all about tags with data and metadata. It shouldn't be hard to add metadata about content type.

I never quite understood why labeling initiatives never gained traction:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_for_Internet_Content_...

* https://www.w3.org/PICS/

* https://www.w3.org/2007/powder/

Throw some tags in and browsers can parse: then have a password-protected "filter controls" area in settings (and perhaps a GPO for corporate environments).

Re: Age verification is incompatible with the internet

#100
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any device a child has access to. That's not the world we live in today. Stores local to me will sell a (terrible but internet capable) phone for $35 to anyone. So you are proposing moving the age verification to the device purchasing stage?

Complete strawman on a complete strawman situation that isn’t even real. What $35 phone out there has the network bandwidth for porn that isn’t tied to identity in a way that a parent couldn’t easily spot and prevent?

> What $35 phone out there has the network bandwidth for porn that isn’t tied to identity in a way that a parent couldn’t easily spot and prevent?

Here's a couple. You can buy these and use them with the free wifi at McDonalds or with a $30 prepaid plan.

I'm not saying I support these age verification schemes but saying parents can easily control access to the internet is dead wrong.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Metro-by-T-Mobile-TCL-ION-X-32GB-...

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Simple-Mobile-Nokia-C110-32GB-Gre...

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