Comment by avidiax
10 days ago
For those wondering what the purpose is: https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/archit...
https://ageverification.dev/Technical%20Specification/media/...
Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check. I suppose this prevents under 18's from accessing porn, in the same way that most blocking technologies impose an expense on everyone but fail to block tech-savvy children.
Doesn't seem like it could ever stop someone with a bittorrent client, unless you have to attest you are over 18 to even use bittorrent.
If they could have stopped BitTorrent they would have long ago.
So no, this is totally ineffective. And it's not like there's actually a problem. There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults. We all had access to porn in some form and we all turned out fine. I used to watch the late night pay tv which was just 'scrambled' by removing the sync signal. It was easy to put that back with some electronics chops. I saw my share of gangbangs and cumshots and I did not get messed up or get weird ideas. In fact I often get compliments I'm a sensitive and caring lover. I never do or push for the dirty porn tropes (unless she asks for them :)
So did most of my school friends. Also video tapes got passed on at school and later CDroms (when the writable DVD came I was already an adult). We all had plenty.
This is all to mitigate a "crisis" which doesn't actually exist.
I don't want to ban porn or anything but the problem has definitely become worse than when I was growing up. I have a zoomer roommate that had unfettered access to the Internet and has some trauma she's still working through. I think the intense age verification laws popping up are going to be a big net negative but I think something needs to he done. I just don't know what that is. Maybe educating parents and children?
Im also "almost zoomer" that had unfettered access to much more diverse internet that zoomers ever had. Videos of extreme violence, murders, porn, war, bullying, and all blends of those to a degrees would surprise most. That happened when I was 7+ years old.
Does seeing these things mean I am broken in some way? It for sure didnt make me agressive or violent, actually Id say that it had quite the opposite effect.
I dont buy the "we must protect children by denying them access to whatever I feel like to prevent trauma", in fact the opposite, I feel the denying of access creates trauma when the false world-view eventually gets shattered by truth. It wasnt problem when I was 8, because I didnt have a false view about the world. It didnt traumatize me, I was just learning ugly stuff about real world.
Now it seem the only publicly acceptable option is to shelter everyone (without their consent, and ideally awarness) until they 18, and then throw them into the world and watch them struggle as they try to reconsile their dream-like version of reality with real world.
> some trauma she's still working through
From watching porn?
The content easily available on the internet in the 00's is way far far far beyond what is available today.
Liveleak was an everyday video host and they had terrorist beheadings on the front page. Once the masses moved online and the power players consolidated everything into modern social media (reddit, facebook, youtube), it kinda sucked all the air out of the room and killed all the small sites, of which there was no shortage of "test the limits of free speech" content.
That being said, the modern incarnation of social media has probably caused far more youth mental destruction than rotten.com or faces of death.
> but I think something needs to he done
This is exactly the problem. You have no idea what you want and will thus cave to whatever direction the winds blow.
There's a difference between passing on video tapes and having a pocket machine with an unlimited amount of adult content. Just my opinion, but I think it's worrying kids can access it in basically a few clicks.
But I agree, forcing verification will not be effective enough, kids will find their way. The real solution is more education on this topic from younger age.
>Just my opinion, but I think it's worrying kids can access it in basically a few clicks.
This has been true for millions of kids (now adults) in the US since at least 1999.
Then don't give your kid a smartphone. Even with a safety argument - a regular cell phone does that. The smartphone is just not necessary at a young age.
It's a choice and it comes with consequences. Parents can step up if they so choose - the problem is they don't choose.
If even the exact parents a child don't care, why should I? They've decided it's okay, and it's their kid. I'm inclined to just agree with them and move on.
Some porn videos were shared via Bluetooth in my school. From my perception, things you get from real people makes you more likely to think it's something real you ought to know about and not just an internet thing. Seems much better to me that kids can discover it on their own terms and know it for what it is
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There is actually a crisis of messed up kids and young adults and access to porn is related to it, but in the opposite way. The thing that is messing up boys and girls is anti-male puritanism that condemns male sexuality as inherently degrading and evil.
As girls grow up and become women, they become disinterested in men, due to the perceived danger. When boys grow up they become avoidant men who are scared of approaching and asking out women, due to the perceived risk of ridicule, shaming and legal action. This prevents the formation of stable marriages, which then culminates in low birth rates.
True, consensuality is difficult to ensure if you're not good at reading the signs. Especially with autism. It is deeply important though. I frequent sexually tinted parties and we have security, safe zones and coloured armbands (though these don't replace explicit consent, just an interest to be asked for it in the first place).
I don't think it's specially a male issue to worry about this because some of my female friends mention being worried about this too. But because of the role models still prevalent even in progressive communities they don't have to do the approaching so much so it's less of a problem for them.
I also think this is a very specific autism/adhd thing. I see this mostly in neurodivergent friends. And avoidant attachment is more of an upbringing thing (physically or emotionally absent partners). It doesn't really have anything to do with porn.
I don't care about stable marriages or birth rates though. I'm happy to be polyamorous. A lot happier than before I knew it existed. Having a traditional family would be a prison for me and I've always felt that way. The religious community in particular advocates this as the only moral way but it isn't. In fact my poly friends are much nicer and considerate people than my religious friends.
The human population is way too big anyway. If we had half or a third of the population we'd have far less problems. Environmental pollution, housing, fighting over scarce resources leading to wars. I'm proud not contributing to this by not having kids.
> There's no crisis of messed up kids or young adults
This is objectively not true. Not to say that a porn ban combined with age restrictions would help, but it's just objectively not true.
* Rise of incels as a thing, and even violence committed by them
* Various loneliness epidemics
* Rise of movements such as the 4B in South Korea, where women flat out refuse traditional relationships with men
* the rises in STDs and teen pregnancies can probably be explained by other factors
* The rises in various diagnosis (ADHD, etc) and rates of sexual assault can probably be explained by just having more rigorous reporting and testing, as well as higher awareness, but the rise of specific types of sexual abuse (like a popular one, choking without consent, which can easily lead to brain damage) can be directly linked to its prevalence in porn
* significant differences in opinion on equality and general political leanings between boys and girls
That's not to say that porn is a problem, and removing it for <18 will magically make everything fine. But things are decidedly messed up for a lot of teens and young adults, and parts of that messed upness can be potentially inspired by porn, and "the manosphere". The second one is more important IMO.
The single biggest driver of the things you mention is the war on boyhood. It has nothing to do with porn or "the manosphere" and everything to do with the alienation of young men in effort to force equal outcomes.
I wish the left would just own up and take the L on this, and go back to race/gender/sexuality blind "everyone is awesome and everyone is equal" policy. Maybe we could start winning elections again.
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>but fail to block tech-savvy children.
If I were a kid, I could see myself downloading Opera GX and enabling the free VPN. It's probably not "tech-savvy" because the browser gets a lot of ad views on YouTube; it would be pretty obvious.
Or using a torrent. Or trading a fileshare with your friends. Or finding a box in the woods. Or finding dad's "tax returns" folder. Or getting on TOR. Or finding an open directory. Or asking AI to produce something.
Basically anything other than going to a legally compliant website and trying to attach your mom's passport to the age verification app and doing the challenge.
> Or finding dad's "tax returns" folder.
I would want to sit in on this audit.
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I think social media does more damage than porn. We should just instead legislate that all social media has to shutdown and just let everyone watch porn and be done with it. Sure, you wind up with ED if you watch that stuff since you were a kid, but hey, if birth rates around the world are anything to go by, no one seems to really want to bring children into this world anymore anyway, so it's not as if that actually matters anymore.
I think I have become far too cynical.
The one good thing (in principle) about a service like this is that social media is much more centralized, so this kind of system could put seemingly-effective age restrictions on social media. For example, no under-14's, or under-14 requires a supervising guardian and has other guardrails.
But this still wouldn't stop determined kids from VPNing to another country to make their account, and wouldn't stop peer pressure on kids from bleeding to parents to help them.
What do you think will happen when the EU regulates the “centralized” social media companies? Kids will just flock to other services that don’t care about EU regulations or use a VPN.
We see something similar in the US with age verification for viewing porn in some states. Mainstream porn sites that I’m sure you have heard of that aren’t based in the US just ignore the laws and VPN sales skyrocket in those states.
Or you know the government could stay out of it and parents that wanted kids to stay off of social media could use the existing parental controls.
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Social media laws are actually being discussed, designed, and even implemented, targeting teenagers at the moment.
What classifies as social media? Is Reddit social media? Is Hacker News?
It seems reversed, that the default is legal eligibility, and that minors should need to prove their status. They're the ones who need policing, after all, not us.
For instance, it's not illegal for me to be served alcohol. If I'm not carded when being sold a drink, nothing illegal has taken place.
If the lawmakers are being cowards and not saying they want to round up and ID all the children from birth until they are eligible to participate in the adult world, that's their battle to fight and not our burden.
So they are doing this to block the children that are able to “hack” their phones, from watching porn.
Don’t know how to describe how insane this is
> Essentially, the core user journey is a privacy preserving "over 18" check.
You can not check the age without breaking the privacy, technically it is Not possible; this is like a religious faith exercise, not science.
What one read in the specification is, firstly you install an official software in your device, the device becomes identified "as you" the first time you verify your ID and receive your unique internet ID hash, linked to your personal data at the identifier platform.
In addition, your unique internet ID hash will become you, and each time a Non-porn-related platform ask for it, you will leave track of who are you -as internet ID- to the platform (finger printing), and also what you visit to the identifier platform.
Yeah, I said Non-porn-related platform, literally, because what we are reading here is about an Internet digital ID hash for each EU citizen,
Lets be clear, if it were to protect the children from porn, it would say "verify with the personal internet ID only for porn sites", in company with all the adjectives derived from porn, exclusively, with specificity, nothing more.
But what we are seeing here about this matter is deliberately open to interpretation, they say "platform that can be considered to be accessible to minors"... boom, What does this mean, News for adults? Criticise a corrupt government for adults? In my village this is called a back door trojan, because when they want they redact the directives, laws, with precision.
Anyway, I invite the reader to take a look to the Digital ID directive on its own,
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1183/ (2024)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2022/2065/ (2022)
After this, they only have to define progressively, frog cooking time, and increase the affected Internet platforms with obligatory identification, and then we will think that the Great Chinese Firewall was a children game compared with this.
The "it's to protect the children" political tactic to break privacy is quite old. In addition we should remember the other EU law about breaking the encryptions.
My humble opinion.
PS: Ironically no more of two months ago I was saying that as I was European I have freedom and I didn't need a tooling for circumvent something like the Russian and Chinese censure. Oh my... If I were know this, I was absolutely blind about what someones try to cook.
I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period. If you are under 18, and online without some sort of adult supervision, we have failed you. Maybe that ship has sailed with so much coursework requiring online access, but I maintain that perhaps we should declare it lost at sea and try again.
Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is *other people.* Other addictions still exist. Removing one vice without solving the underlying systemic problem merely shifts the goalposts, and everyone is up in arms about what a slippery slope that is for good reason.
EDIT: Clarity here because I phrased that badly in a hurry: I'm in disfavor of internet access being a requirement for schoolwork, but I failed to set that context initially. If parents trust their kids enough with access, once they've reached a certain point of maturity, that's fine. I'm against technological age gates and I'm against removal of bad content from the net at large. Parents should decide when their kids are ready, and guide them appropriately.
I will leave my original remarks unedited so the remaining discussion is sensible. (Sorry!)
> I keep coming back to the actual solution being to keep kids off the internet period.
W T F ? ? ?
> Because the practical reality here is, like, porn is the big scary word, but the actual danger to kids is other people.
Bad news, Champ. Other people also exist off of the Internet. They always have. The world is not entirely safe. And that does not mean children shouldn't get to be part of the world.
The main problem here is panicky idiocy.
While there are absolutely issues with kids coming across things they shouldn’t, I’d argue an equally large issue is parents buying into the delusion that they can keep their children contained within a bubble of perfect innocence until adulthood.
That idea has never really been realistic short of keeping them isolated from society until 16-18 (which most would consider abuse), but it’s not even slightly possible today with how readily available information has become. It’s an inevitability that they will learn about the topics you’ve been avoiding and take on external influences you may not approve of.
Now to be clear, I’m not advocating for letting kids run wild on the internet with no guardrails, especially earlier on. Guardrails are important, but it’s even more important in my opinion to try to stay ahead of what they may encounter by talking with them about those things so when they eventually run across it, they’re not flying blind and might even seek your guidance about the incident since they know you’re not going to get angry about it. That’s much more likely to bring positive outcomes than if they ran into these things without parental support.
You know what helps? Proper sex ed around the age of 12-14. That's what we do in Holland. And why we had one of the lowest teenage pregnancy ratings. Unfortunately the conservatives are complaining about this more and more (the Lentekriebels program) because they mention that men can also love men. This porn filter is also from their corner.
Yeah, I'm nodding in agreement here for the most part. I didn't mean to suggest crazy helicopter parenting surveillance nonsense, just ... the idea that giving young minds the whole dang net and letting them loose without any guidance or oversight is kinda dangerous. Growing up we always had an adult in the computer lab, or the library, where most computer coursework was being taught. I had "the real internet" right there, but if I actually got into trouble, someone was bound to notice, and I could always ask for help.
The point I was actually trying to make is just this: if the parent's goal is to block content, then the simplest thing to do is to be there when the child is surfing the net. That shouldn't take crazy technological measures. At some point, most parents realize their kids are mature enough to handle things and back off, but the parent should be making that call for their own kid. I don't think the government should be doing it on their behalf. If the government believes the internet is dangerous for young minds, then it should focus on the thing it can control: educational curriculum, primarily. Trying to "fix the internet" is a fool's errand.
Couldn’t disagree more. I watched my first beheading video at 13, let alone porn. I still remember it, Nick Berg. I think I turned out ok. My online freedom was largely why I became who I am.
As for other people being the danger, there’s some truth to that for women. I have a daughter, so this will be a concern. But you know, she won’t die. Everyone goes through trauma. The key here is to make sure she feels comfortable enough to talk to me and to my wife before doing anything (too) stupid.
I snuck out of my parents’ house to go see a girl when I was 16. Took my dad’s station wagon. On the way, some car tried to pass me and ended up hitting a big truck on the side. Truck was fine, I was fine, that fella was not. He ended up on the side of the road. Me and trucker just kept going. I still think about that guy a lot, because obviously the correct thing to do would have been to call 911, but I was a dumb 16yo who was out past midnight to go see a girl.
Point is, if things went a little differently, I could have been the one who crashed, or even dead. But that doesn’t mean that the girl I was going to go see was somehow a threat to me. It means I was doing something dangerous.
Again, this is easy to say as a man. The threat model for women is different. But prohibiting minors from the internet without supervision is totally absurd, and I feel bad for any parent who helicopters their kids like that.
Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
> Ultimately your kid will grow up and have their own life. Do you want to be remembered as the parent who had them under lock and key in the name of safety, or as a parent who monitored from a distance and occasionally let them do stupid things so that they could learn from it? For me, the latter is far more preferable.
You're trying to logically and emotionally appeal to people whose amygdala have been hijacked by a moral panic.
I agree with you, but good luck.
I'm kindof horrified that your immediate response is to defend a beheading video as something a 13 year old should watch. As a normal thing. What the actual hell. Like, the rest of your argument has some good points, but you led with something guaranteed to offend.
I was not clear enough, so I will try again. If parents do not want their kids to access "bad content", whatever that means to them, then they need to supervise the access. If parents are okay with their kids accessing bad content, then that choice is theirs to make. The internet itself should not be the gatekeeper here, neither should the government, but the parents do need to actually parent. I do not believe technology should be doing the parenting. And BECAUSE I believe this is a choice the PARENT should make, I also do not believe unfettered access to the internet should be a requirement for students. As long as that is a requirement, the parents aren't in control, and we get draconian laws trying to "fix the internet."
You have wildly misinterpreted my intent, and admittedly it is because my opening sentence was poorly phrased.
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