Comment by armchairhacker
4 days ago
Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account. If that's criminalized (like alcohol), it will happen too often to prosecute (much more frequently than alcohol, which is rarely prosecuted anyways). I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift.
If there's a fundamental culture shift, there's an easy way to prevent children from using the internet:
- Don't give them an unlocked device until they're adults
- "Locked" devices and accounts have a whitelist of data and websites verified by some organization to be age-appropriate (this may include sites that allow uploads and even subdomains, as long as they're checked on upload)
The only legal change necessary is to prevent selling unlocked devices without ID. Parents would take their devices from children and form locked software and whitelisting organizations.
I don't understand how this is any better.
It's my job as a parent (and I have several kids...) to monitor the things they consume and talk with them about it.
I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate", because I don't approve that content being banned. (honestly - the idea of "age appropriate" is insulting in the first place)
Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't see why it's appropriate to enforce what content I allow them to see.
And I have absolutely all of the same tools you just discussed today. I can lock devices down just fine.
Age verification is a scam to increase corporate/governmental control. Period.
You should be able to choose what's age-appropriate for your kids. Giving them access to e.g. "PG-13" media when they're 9 isn't the problem. Giving mature kids unrestricted access isn't a problem. The problem is culture:
- Many parents don't think about restricting their kids' online exposure at all. And I think a larger issue than NSFW is the amount of time kids are spending: 5 hours according to this survey from 2 years ago https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-h.... Educating parents may be all that is needed to fix this, since most parents care about their kids and restrict them in other ways like junk food
- Parents that want to restrict their kids struggle with ineffective parental controls: https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-pare.... Optional parental controls would fix this
> Parents that want to restrict their kids struggle with ineffective parental controls: https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-pare.... Optional parental controls would fix this
I don't think they will, and this is because there's an inherent conflict of interest from these large tech companies about actually protecting my kids.
To be blunt: They don't give a fuck, they make money. They will pick money over kids EVERY time.
My current answer is that absolutely none of my children are allowed anywhere near these devices. Mandating shitty age verification laws isn't going to somehow make these companies act responsibly... it's just going to drive alternatives that are actually respectful out of business with additional legislative burden, while Google and Apple continue to act irresponsibly and unethically.
Further - it continues to enshrine the idea that parent's aren't responsible for their kids (see your first point)... The parents that are already neglecting this space will point to laws like this and go "look, the government is doing this for me!". Which is exactly wrong, and exactly what these companies want parents to think (again - the alternative, that parents actually engage and realize just how fucking morally bankrupt these bastards are, hurts bottom lines)
If you want change - remove the damn duopoly. Break them up. Force open markets. Force inter-compatibility.
This is not rocket science. This is basic political science we've known about for literally hundreds of years, the only difference is that our government in the US has been fucking useless because of regulatory capture (of which this will worsen) and the perceived national security & economic value of "owning" the tech stack used internationally.
"Security" when used in these contexts has very little to do with protecting you, or me, or our kids. It has a whole lot to do with protecting corporate bottom lines and governmental control.
Part of the issue with phones is that they are already controlled by the Google/Apple duopoly, and hence heavily optimized for constant distraction and addiction. These laws only cement that duopoly and provide fewer means to build more friendly platforms.
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> Parents that want to restrict their kids struggle with ineffective parental controls: https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-pare.... Optional parental controls would fix this
Did you mean "mandatory" parental controls? All current systems are optional and as you describe they are frequently ineffective, so not clear why keeping things like they are would be different.
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> Fuck man, I can even legally give my kids alcohol - I don't see why it's appropriate to enforce what content I allow them to see.
In the USA it depends on the state. Federal guidelines for alcohol law does suggest exemptions for children drinking under the supervision of their parents, but that's not uniformly adopted. 19 states have no such exceptions, and in many of the remaining 31, restaurants may be banned from allowing alcohol consumption by minors even when their parents are there.
You're assuming that this person is in the US. Alcohol is treated far more liberally in other places. For example, in some places it is legal for restaurants to serve alcohol to minors who are accompanied by a parent...
Another thing: I fundamentally disagree with certain age rarings for kids content. Some explicit violence is rated OK for young audiences, but insert a swear word or a some skin and the age rating is bumped up? This rating system is nonhelp at all. I have to review each bit of content anyway before I can be certain.
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Your kids can’t buy alcohol though. If you want to unlock your phone and let your kids read smut then more power to you. Age gates do not and never will stop that. But I sure as hell don’t want companies selling porn to 5 yr olds.
Well they can just ban porn altogether, for everyone, and enforce it with jail time for everyone involved (from its creation to distribution); then most of the problems will be solved.
* it's a bit sarcastic, but tbh it isn't such a bad idea, considering the negative impact that porn has.
> I don't want some blanket ban on content unless it's "age appropriate"
I'm currently struggling with FitBit. Since about the start of the year, my kids can no longer sync their watches to their phones. The "solution" is to completely disable all parental controls on their Google accounts.
I was going to recommend the Gadgetbridge app, but it seems to have little or no support for Fitbit. I does support hundreds of devices, though. I used it extensively with a Mi Band 3, but have yet to try it with my Garmin.
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this seems to be an issue of being able to be a parent, period.
yup we should all be able, to talk to our kids instead of screaming at them.
The law is there to protect children in the case they have absent/neglectful parents. Unfortunately not every child has a parent as aware as you.
Then why won't they focus on fixing the root of the problem, with educating and healing (psychologically) people before they have children so that there won't be neglected children to protect in the first place?
Having children should be a privilege, not a human right. Especially when the majority of children end up being abused either way (either physically, emotionally or both). It is far more common to have abusive or neglectful parents than it seems.
And to prevent companies from targeting children inappropriately.
People angrily replying to the top comment on this article are going to be pissed when they find out about this guy.
> Age verification is very hard, because parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account
More simply: If ID checks are fully anonymous (as many here propose when the topic comes up) then every kid will just have their friends’ older sibling ID verify their account one afternoon. Or they’ll steal their parents’ ID when they’re not looking.
Discussions about kids and technology on HN are very weird to me these days because so many commenters have seemingly forgotten what it’s like to be a kid with technology. Before this current wave of ID check discussions it was common to proudly share stories of evading content controls or restrictions as a kid. Yet once the ID check topic comes up we’re supposed to imagine kids will just give up and go with the law? Yeah right.
Circumventing controls as a kid is what taught me enough about computers to get the job that made college affordable (in those days you could just boot windows to a livecd Linux distro and have your way with the filesystem, first you feel like a hacker, later the adults are paying you to recover data).
If we must have controls, I hope the process of circumventing them continues to teach skills that are useful for other things.
The older sibling should be old enough to know better. Or if they're still a kid, they can have their privileges temporarily revoked.
This problem probably can't be solved entirely technologically, but technology can definitely be a part of solving it. I'm sure it's possible to make parental controls that most kids can't bypass, because companies can make DRM that most adults can't bypass.
> The older sibling should be old enough to know better.
This is exactly what I meant by my above comment: It’s like the pro-ID check commenters have become completely disconnected from how young people work.
Someone’s 18 year old sibling isn’t going to be stopped by “should know better”. They probably disagree with the law on principal and think it’s dumb, so they’re just helping out.
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>Or if they're still a kid, they can have their privileges temporarily revoked.
Since people are already talking about using the law instead of parenting this needs clarification. Are the parents the one that would revoke their privileges or the government?
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> If ID checks are fully anonymous (as many here propose when the topic comes up) then every kid will just have their friends’ older sibling ID verify their account one afternoon.
Exactly the same way that kids used in former days to get cigarettes or alcohol: simply ask a friend or a sibling.
By the way: the owners of the "well-known" beverage shops made their own rules, which were in some sense more strict, but in other ways less strict than the laws:
For example some small shop in Germany sold beverages with little alcohol to basically everybody who did not look suspicious, but was insanely strict on selling cigarettes: even if the buyer was sufficiently old (which was in doubt strictly checked), the owner made serious attempts to refuse selling cigarettes if he had the slightest suspicion that the cigarettes were actually bought for some younger person. In other words: if you attempted to buy cigarettes, you were treated like a suspect if the owner knew that you had younger friends (and the owner knew this very well).
Probably will limit to one device per person, to save the children, so we won’t share with others.
(So you need to keep all your stuff into one device to be fully tracked easily. And have no control over your device, share your location… )
More simply: If ID checks are fully anonymous (as many here propose when the topic comes up) then every kid will just have their friends’ older sibling ID verify their account one afternoon. Or they’ll steal their parents’ ID when they’re not looking.
Digital ID with binary assertion in the device is an API call that Apple's app store curation can ensure is called on app launch or switch. Just checking on launch or focus resolves that problem. It's no longer the account being verified per se, it's the account and the use.
Completely agree. The internet works differently than how people want it to, and filtering services are notoriously easy to bypass. Even if these age-verification laws passed with resounding scope and support, what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws. The leads to run down would be legion. I think you could seriously degrade the porn industry (which I wouldn't necessarily mind) but it would be more or less impossible to prevent unauthorized internet users from accessing pornography. And of course that's the say nothing of the blast radius that would come with age-verification becoming entrenched on the internet.
> what would stop anyone from merely hosting porn in Romania or some country that didn't care about US age-verification laws
A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people. The main problem I suspect is that it would be widely unpopular in the US or Europe, because (especially younger) people have become addicted to porn and brainrot, and these governments are still democracies.
Even China hasn't been remotely successful at banning porn, and it already has the great firewall and porn is illegal there.
That isn’t necessary because porn companies don’t exist to gift orgasms, but to make money. They need US citizens to pay them for premium content and subscriptions, and that dependency means they’ll have to comply with US laws.
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> A government could implement the equivalent of China's great firewall. Even if it doesn't stop everyone, it would stop most people.
Porn is not just political information about human right abuses, government overreach or heavily censored overview of concentration camps for "group X". People can live just fine with government censorship buying into any kind of propaganda.
Kids would find a way to access porn though. Whatever it VPNs, tor or USB stick black market. Government cant even win war on drugs and you expect them to successfully ban porn. What a joke.
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Oh but brainrot would not be blocked, how would poor Meta keep making money otherwise?
What will be blocked are news outlets that don't agree with the government propaganda.
eh... they are more like `dumbocracies` with these measures. None of this is to protect children. Except to satisfy rabid parents who think the world needs to serve them.
It’s very odd to hear you complain about age verification but then be fine with ruining the porn industry
Just a personal anecdote from my life - I have set up Youtube account for my kid with correct age restrictions (he is 11). Also this account is under family plan so there are no ads.
My kid logs out of this account so he can watch restricted content. I wonder - what is PG rating for logged out experience?
Age verification has always been about normalization of it, and about mitigating snow flake blame.
- I always give my children unlocked devices, because I know what they are doing
- Internet is not a safe space, and there will always be means of circumventing protections. Age verifications do not protect anybody
- Parents do not want to 'rise children' they give phones to kids and expects youtube to show kids only good stuff. They expect this from platform
The only needed culture shift is everyone should realize that it's ultimately the parents/teachers' duty to educate the kids.
If parents think it's okay for their kids to use Facebook/X/whatever somehow responsibly, they should not be punished or prosecuted for that. Yes, I do believe it applies to alcohol too.
It's how it works in physical world. We let the parents to decide whether hiking/swimming/football/walking to the school are too dangerous for their kids. We let the parents to decide which books are suitable for their kids. But somehow when it comes to the internet it's the government's job. I can't help but think there is an astroturf movement manufacturing the consent rn.
>parents will give their children their unlocked account, and children will steal their parents' unlocked account.
I think either is better than the staus quo. In the first case the parent is waiving away the protections, and in the second the kid is.
Even if a kid buys alcohol, I think it's healthier that they do it by breaking rules and faking ids and knowing that they are doing something wrong, than just doing it and having no way to know it's wrong (except a popup that we have been trained by UX to close without reading (fuck cookie legislation))
That would be the status quo if we had better parental controls.
Trying to enforce parental controls via regulation may only be as effective as Europe enforcing the DMA against Apple. But maybe not, because there's a huge market; if Apple XOR Android does it, they'll gain market share. Or governments can try incentive instead of regulation (or both) and fund a phone with better parental controls. Europe wants to launch their own phone; such a feature would make it stand out even among Americans.
> If there's a fundamental culture shift,
You mean this culture shift is needed for the masses but I don't think that's the case. In my widest social circle I am not aware of anyone giving alcohol to young kids (yes by the time they are 16ish yes but even that's rare). Most guardians would willingly do similar with locked devices.
The real problem is that the governments/companies won't get to spy on you if locked devices are given to children only. They want to spy on us all. That's the missing cultural shift.
> Most guardians would willingly do similar with locked devices.
Considering the echo chamber in which I was at school, my friends would have simply used some Raspberry Pi (or a similar device) to circumvent any restriction the parents imposed on the "normal" devices.
Oh yes: in my generation pupils
- were very knowledgeable in technology (much more than their parents and teachers) - at least the nerds who were actually interested in computers (if they hadn't been knowledgeable, they wouldn't have been capable of running DOS games),
- had a lot of time (no internet means lots of time and being very bored),
- were willing to invest this time into finding ways to circumvent technological restrictions imposed upon them (e.g. in the school network).
The kids in your social circle are used to not having access to alcohol, but they're not used to not having access to social media.
Hypothetically, if every kid in your social circle had their device "locked", the adults would probably have a very hard time the kids away from their devices, or just relent, because the kids would be very unhappy. Although maybe with today's knowledge, most people will naturally restrict new kids who've never had unrestricted access, causing a slow culture shift.
And we need a standard where websites can self-rate their own content. Then locked devices can just block all content that isn't rated "G" or whatever.
I imagine there would be a set of filters, including some on by default that most adults keep for themselves. For example, most people don't want to see gore. More would be OK with sexual content, even more would be OK with swear words, ...
Wrong incentive. If you don’t give a shit about exposing children to snuff or porn, but do give a shit about page views and ad revenue, you obviously don’t rate your content or rate it as G to increase that revenue.
Prove of adulthood should be provided by the bank after logging into a bank account. I'm sure parents just would let their bank details be stolen and such.
Of course no personal details should be provided to the site that requests age confirmation. Just "barer of this token" is an adult.
The "Bank identity" system in Czech Republic (and likely other countries) can be used to log into to various government services. The idea is that you already authenticated to the bank when getting the account, so they can be sure it is really sou when you log in - so why not make it possible for you to log in to other services as well if you want to ?
> The "Bank identity" system in Czech Republic (and likely other countries) can be used to log into to various government services.
In Poland we have the same setup.
So we trust a bank more than the government that they won’t extend this to earn more money by disclosing more information? Bad idea. You need a neutral broker.
Verifying identity works best when the stakes are high. And there are highest in online banking.
AFAIK today if you buy a device, the bank doesn't get the device-unique identifier, at best it sees the model number.
So kids can drive at 16. But can’t get access to an unlocked phone until their 18? Who gets to decide the whitelist? The government?
I never specified age.
The whitelist would be decided by the market: the parents have the unlocked device, there are multiple solutions to lock it and they choose one. Which means that in theory, the dominant whitelist would be one that most parents agree is effective and reasonable; but seeing today's dominant products and vendor lock-in...
How does this solve the problem at all? You're just making more problems. Now you have to deal with a black market of "unlocked" phones. You're having to deal with kids sharing unlocked phone. Would police have to wal around trying to buy unlocked phones to catch people selling them to minors? What about selling phones on the internet, would they check ID now?
SOME parents give their children access to their ID. That is NOT the same as ALL parents, and therefore is not a reason not to give those parents a helping hand.
Even just informing children that they're entering an adult space has some value, and if they then have to go ask their parents to borrow their wallet, that's good enough for me.
It would not be solved without a culture shift. But with a culture shift, giving a kid an unlocked device would be as rare as giving them drugs.
I'm sure it will occasionally happen. But kids are terrible at keeping secrets, so they will only have the unlocked device for temporary periods, and I believe infrequent use of the modern internet is much, much less damaging than the constant use we see problems from today. A rough analogy, comparing social media to alcohol: it's as if today kids are suffering from chronic alcoholism, and in the future, kids occasionally get ahold of a six pack.
> It would not be solved without a culture shift. But with a culture shift, giving a kid an unlocked device would be as rare as giving them drugs.
You understand that to many people that is a very obvious reason why we should never do this and they do not want that culture shift, right?
Doesn't the proposal as it's being implemented in the EU solve the problem under the exact same argumentation? Why are you dismissing a one proposal to then make your own that has exactly the same probable challenges?
What if my kids want to follow nand 2 tetris or build their own custom os from a Linux fork?
Yes we need a fundamental shift where sharing of parent accounts is akin to atleast some sort of infraction or maybe even a misdemeanor.
This could help, but without the culture shift, way too many parents will intentionally and unintentionally break that law.
Just remove "parent" and "account" from the mix and all these. Tie the screen to the human and most of these challenges go away. This is what is trying to be achieved with these laws, so we may as well institute it that way.
Shouldn't it be done at the account level if you're going to do this? I am an admin. My kids have a non admin account. That seems pretty normal.
BTW this is a terrible idea. What if I can afford only one computer but have a household of four?
I mean look, there's a point where the manufacturers back off and entrust the parents.
Any parent can be reckless and give their children all kinds of things - poison, weapons, pornographic magazines ... at some point the device has enough protective features and it is the parents responsibility.
Digital media use is easier to conceal than weapons. My parents did not protect me from it growing up because they were not responsible, and I was harmed as a result. To this day they still do not realize I was harmed, because I did not tell them and we are not on speaking terms. Trying to be honest would have resulted in further rejection from them. This was on a personality level and I had no way to deal with this as a developing human.
I could not control how my parents were going to raise me, I was only able to play with the hand I was dealt. I hate the idea that parents are sacrosanct and do not share blame in these situations. At the same time, if this is just the family situation you're given and you're handed a device unaware of the implications, who is going to protect you from yourself and others online if your parents won't? Should anyone?
Similar to alcohol, the system doesn't prevent all underage access
> I don't see a solution that isn't a fundamental culture shift.
What shift?
That is actually a very good solution that is respecting privacy. And is much more effective than asking everyone for ID when opening a website or app.
I actually don't hate this??? As long as parents can set up their own whitelists and it's not up to the government to have the final say on any particular block.
Parents can do this today if they wanted to
The problem of "kids accessing the Internet" is a purposeful distraction from the intent of these laws, which is population-level surveillance and Verified Ad Impressions.
Today, in practice it's not a choice, because even the most attentive parents fail to block internet access. Parental controls are ineffective, and all the kid's friends have access so they become alienated. https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-pare...
But laws alone won't fix this, and laws aren't necessary (except maybe a law that prevents kids from buying phones). In the article, the child's devices had parental controls, but they were ineffective. There's demand for a phone with better parental controls, so it will come, and more parents are denying access, so their kids will become less alienated.
Definitively we should have constant verification of the current user with Face ID or similar tech. Every 5 minutes of usage, your camera is activated to check who’s using your phone and validates it. So much secure and safe. /s
This is Nirvana/Perfect Solution fallacy. That's like saying limiting smoking to 18 y/o was futile because teenagers could always have some other adult buy them cigs, or use fake IDs.
Ridiculous take.
Well, age verification is the "we have to do something about this nebulous problem even if the best thing we can think of actually makes everything worse for everyone but it makes us feel better" fallacy, which is equally ridiculous.
No, it's not the same. There are anonymous solutions that solve this problem that are perfectly acceptable. Not perfect for prevention, but a good compromise nonetheless. Like cig/alcohol underage consumption prevention.
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I'm saying that, in today's culture, age-gating the internet is likely to be much less effective than age-gating alcohol or tobacco. Most kids spend an appalling amount of time on social media (think, 5 hours/day*); most kids didn't spend this much time or invest this much of their lives into drugs.
* according to this survey from over 2 years ago: https://www.apa.org/monitor/2024/04/teen-social-use-mental-h...
not saying that I support age verification in any form, but you seen the vape sales?
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For the smoking analogy to fit, you'd have to have parents giving their children packs of cigarettes to play with and then being mad at Marlboro they figured out how to smoke them.