Comment by pylua
1 month ago
I’m actually okay with not letting under age people use e2e. I’m not okay with blocking everyone. I have 2 kids.
1 month ago
I’m actually okay with not letting under age people use e2e. I’m not okay with blocking everyone. I have 2 kids.
I'm not comfortable with the idea that children's private messages would be exposed to thousands of social media workers and government employees.
I understand the concern but then to make this available for adults you now have to provide proof of age to companies, which opens up another can of privacy worms.
Theoretically we don't actually need proof of age. Websites need to know when the user is attempting to create an account or log in from a child-locked device. Parents need to make sure their kids only have child-locked devices. Vendors need to make sure they don't sell unlocked devices to kids.
> Theoretically we don't actually need proof of age. Websites need to know when the user is attempting to create an account or log in from a child-locked device. Parents need to make sure their kids only have child-locked devices. Vendors need to make sure they don't sell unlocked devices to kids.
Given how current parental controls work, kids are not getting access if their device is under parental control (the default for open web access is off). So Facebook still won't see any child-locked devices, even before this ruling. My guess is that this ruling applies to parents who aren't making sure their kids get access only via child locked devices.
The actual problem is that there are parents, I even remember them growing up, who do not care what their kid is exposed to and won't flinch at anything. I'm sure most here had a "Jeff's mom" who didn't care if you guys were playing mortal combat while blasting Wu Tang at 9 years old.
So even if 95% of kids have responsible parents locking down access, there will still be this 5% that will continue to drip horror stories that motivate knee-jerk regulation.
Exactly.
Trying to approach it from the direction of websites determining if you are an adult is a privacy nightmare and provides a huge attack surface. (Which is what the government wants--the ability to monitor.) Flipping it over is much, much safer--but fails the real mission of exposing dissent.
(On-device security, the credential of the adult is loaded onto the device but not transmitted anywhere, it can only be obtained locally. The device simply responds as to whether it has a credential loaded. Bad guys are unlikely to want to sell such devices as the phone could be traced back to them.)
And the parents can select a strict child lock, or permitted but copies forwarded to the parent.)
Children do not want child locked devices and they will find alternatives
15 replies →
Theoretically only
> Surveys by Britain’s tech regulator, Ofcom, find that among children aged 10-12, over half use Snapchat, more than 60% TikTok and more than 70% WhatsApp. All three apps have a notional minimum age of 13.
https://archive.ph/y3pQO
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I believe Zuckerberg has a term for people who willingly break online anonymity because someone with a domain name and website asks them to.
Establishments don't record my data or even take down my name. They take a look at the birthdate and wave me forward.
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I have kids. I don't want creeps and predators spying on their conversations with friends.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210522003136/https://blog.nucy...
That's true, I didn't consider that
In a way, this is like saying that one trusts total strangers in some random large tech company and total strangers in government agencies to read and/or manipulate conversations that kids have. This also paves the way to disallow E2EE for other classes of people based on arbitrary criteria. I don’t believe this is good for society overall.
The reason we are having this discussion, is because the private route worked up to a point.
Firms have a fiduciary duty to shareholders and profit.
On the other hand, You ultimately decide the rules and goals that operate government organizations, and do not have a profit maximization target.
They aren’t the same tool, and they work for different situations.
The E2EE slippery slope is a different challenge, and for that I have no thoughts
The problem is all these ‘for the children’ arguments contain collateral damage.
And the effectiveness for the stated goal is also often questionable.
Well, the problem is that the “don’t do it” arguments have children as the collateral damage.
We are at a point where we are picking and choosing collateral damage targets.
It does seem like it could potentially be used to enforce mass surveillance over the people of the United States
Alphabet can grep your emails, Amazon has literal microphones and cameras in most peoples houses
That ship has sailed
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You just need to provide the government with your name and address and the name and address of the counter party every time you send an encrypted message.
If you don't support this you're obviously a pedo nazi terrorist.
Meta is one of the worst offenders here. They are actively lobbying at least the US Congress for laws that require age verification at the hardware/os level.
There is no reason kids should use so called smart devices, except making certain companies richer. Kids have had a healthy development without such crap for thousands of years. We don't discuss what percentage of alcohol should be allowed in beer and wine for kids.
The French (watered wine) and British (shandies) do.