Comment by benrutter
1 month ago
I really wish this take was more prominent. I really don't buy that mass-surveillance should be required for age verification. There are plenty of very smart people who have created much more complicated things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it.
This also isn't helpful, but I think the sudden push of urgency isn't helping. The internet has existed without any kind of age verification or safety measures for about 30 years. We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs, but instead we've waited till now to decide that everything has to be rushed through with minimal consideration.
You don't even need to go all high-tech with it: Children, by nature of being children, aren't going out and buying their own smartphones and computers. When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age before handing it to them.
That's the flow that California's age verification system uses. Personally, I'm opposed to any age verification beyond the current "pinky promise you're 18" type deals, but California's is the least intrinsically offensive to me.
> When Mom and Dad buy the device for their kid, just punch in the kid's age before handing it to them.
Doing this doesn't accomplish anything in terms of protecting children from the harms of the internet. In fact it feeds your child's age to marketers and child predators.
Every website will get to decide how to handle the age data our devices will now be supplying them. In the case of facebook, it's not as if they had no idea the children endlessly posting selfies and posting "six seven" on their service weren't adults. Facebook was 100% aware that the children using their service were children. They knew what schools those kids went to, who their parents were, which other kids they hung out with. Facebook knew they were children and they took advantage of that fact.
The law California (and other states) passed doesn't define what content has to be blocked for which ages and doesn't give parents any ability to decide what content their children should or shouldn't be allowed to see. It takes control away from parents. As a parent, I might think that my 16 year old should be allowed to look up information on STDs but the websites that collect my child's age could decide they can't and I'll have no say in it.
> The law California (and other states) passed doesn't define what content has to be blocked for which ages
No, but it's a framework that would allow other laws to do so. Because...
> it's not as if they had no idea the children endlessly posting selfies and posting "six seven" on their service weren't adults.
...you can make statements like that which sound like common sense, but it would be incredibly hard to regulate based on "if you know, you know" (or "you should have known"/"you had to have known"). The law has to provide (guarantee) a way for them to know in order to actually require them to take action based on it.
> As a parent, I might think that my 16 year old should be allowed to look up information on STDs but the websites that collect my child's age could decide they can't
This is a different problem. It sounds like you're essentially wanting to guarantee access to certain things, not just for your own 16-year-old, but for everyone else's, too (because if it was just yours, you could look it up for/with them if necessary). It'd be difficult to compel businesses to provide services to audiences they don't want to. But again, that's a separate problem that doesn't necessarily conflict with the rest of the system.
4 replies →
>used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs,
On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too much money on ads to want that. It seems the other part that want freedom also want so much freedom it gives huge corporations the freedom to crush them.
>things than a digital age verification that doesn't track every time you use it.
The big companies that pay the politicians don't want that, therefore we won't get that.
> On HN itself, no way. Too many people here make far too much money on ads to want that.
Ya know, this might explain why the warnings seem to fall on deaf ears here.
New favorite person on the internet.
> We could have used that time to have a sensible conversation about policy trade offs [of age verification]…
There is always a conversation, but it is often not the popular one and gets drown out by whatever everyone is excited about at the moment. You can find it if you seek it out.
Lawrence Lessig’s book “Code” (1999), for example, talks about how a completely unrelated internet is an anomaly, and that regulation will certainly be necessary, and advocates that it be done in a thoughtful manner.
It's not about doesn't - the government can always claim that it doesn't track you. That is unlikely to stay true.
It's really either they can't track you or they will track you.
Best time to plant a tree: 30 years ago.
Second best time to plant a tree: now.