Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
Its so good Meta is sponsoring a bill that removes necessary accountability on their side by pushing responsibility to a third party, while at the same time getting accurate headcounts for the ad platform /s
In Australia, the government has certified OAuth2 Identity Providers which act as a broker between social media sites and a provider that can verify your age, such as a bank. This allows age to be verified by a provider, with the social media provider having no access to your identity. If the social media companies chose to support this, they would be complying with the legislation. It's not the government forcing you to identify yourself.
the effort is being driven by a handful of tech and social media companies who have suddenly realized they cannot close the pandoras box of AI.
without a meaningful headcount of real users, advertisers will begin to push back on cost or even reduce and eliminate spending on social media altogether.
by proactively identifying real humans, you prevent the collapse of major social media outlets. by tracking their age and location directly, you restore that which AI took away from advertisers in the first place.
age verification makes sure surveillance capitalism continues to function.
Is is an excuse for some, sure. But we will fail at pushing back if we ignore that there are a meaningful number of concerned parents who support solutions like this because they have become aware of the danger that social media presents. For many of them, self-attestation of age at the OS account level is likely sufficient, not to mention much simpler to implement and use.
But others are working hard to shift the narrative away from age attestation towards age verification or even identity verification. Government officials (on both the right and left) want to be able to police speech based on what is acceptable to those who are currently in power. Companies want to verify humans for advertising and training purposes. And some privacy advocates intentionally conflate age attestation (like California AB 1043) with age verification because it is an easier strawman to attack.
Yes, but do you have any specifics? No one seems to have any specifics. I don't mean "plausible explanations of what the government might wish to to" -- I mean "specific actors pushing specific agendas."
Too many people expressing themselves on the internet with nothing that can be done against them...
From a government perspective, it is a gold mine to know who's on the internet. For advertisers it is another goldmine - you can target at will without having to figure out first some demographics. An probably there are some angles I don't yet see, but the fact that this is a concentrated effort across the world make my spidey sense tingle.
I agree with this especially as these laws specifically still allow kids to carry smartphones and use them away from parents watchful eye. There is no protection here. Get the kids off of the internet, there is nothing good for them there.
Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids.<country> as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that.
The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.
Suspicious? Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahuha repeatedly voiced concerns Israel is becoming increasingly unpopular amoung the youth because of social media.
His words: “the most important purchase going on right now (Tiktok)” alleging its control could be “consequential.” [1]
When kids have alternative news your pointless religious wars or fake democratic freedom wars cannot be fought. [2]
[1] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in September "We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one. Number one.". Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti‑Defamation League, warned last year: “TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and it’s like Al‑Jazeera on steroids. It’s amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti‑Zionism with no repercussions.”
[2] "There’s an eighth front," he said, describing a struggle "for the hearts and minds of people, especially young people in the West, and for me especially in the United States.
Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts.
Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't about protecting children or anything about ages. It's about locking down anonymity, and money for a few interests who want to be the verifiers and craft a future where they hold the keys.
Our environment contains harms. Vehicles are several tonnes traveling 60+ mph, they make guns look safe. The calculation is a risk-reward one.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these "protect the children" laws are worth the internet freedoms they are about to erode. I would argue not.
1. It is not the state's responsibility to raise your children. They should ensure that safety is available, they should have some ability to deal with clear cases of abuse - but otherwise you're on your own. Anybody who thinks they want a nanny state just has to imagine the worst possible government abusing this power.
2. On the basis of providing safety, it would be enough for example for mobile phone OSes to provide parent restrictions (as they currently do). Kids can't afford to buy phones, so it's the parents in almost all cases giving them unfiltered access. If you really really want to ensure that all children have filtered access on phones, just spot check kid's phones and confiscate them if they do not have the locks enabled.
It seems insane to me that so many parents believe they have zero responsibility for their children's access to the internet, despite being the source of that access. I'm sorry, parents need to step up.
there are plenty of alternatives if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process (and probably retain) personally identifiable information.. significantly safer too.
But that wouldn't come with baked in surveillance, so "what else can you do" sounds a bit unnerving.
I had an idea the other day that children could have some kind of jewellery that they can't remove like a curfew device. Probably impractical but at least it matches - children=limited rights and need protection. Once of age, no need, come of age, can remove.
Oh good, there have never been studies coordinated to come out to influence public opinion based on shoddy science before; just ask the tobacco industry
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted.
Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
Its reasonable to agree a problem exists and that we don't yet have a solution worth implementing.
Until there's a solution that actually addresses the problem without creating more, we should just try to make sure more people also know the problem exists and try to help equip parents to deal with it as best they can for now.
Can you give some examples of such studies? The ones I've seen are all pseudo-scientific or provide very low grade evidence, often nothing more than simple correlations.
The default value assigned to a social study from academia should be zero these days, so there merely being a lot of them doesn't mean anything. You really need some very high quality evidence to justify this kind of huge change.
I am really starting to think that the Very Smart People (pejorative) holding power think that they can just copy the Chinese mass surveillance and social control model without changing anything else about the economic or cultural models of the U.S. and Europe, and that's going to somehow allow us to compete with them. I'm sure there will be massive exceptions for anyone wealthy and connected, so the panopticon is just a way to whip and threaten the common folk. That's also why it probably won't work. In a way it just reeks of desperation and reaching straight for the most authoritarian approach.
No joke our politicians subject us to something stupid, and then travel around telling their foreign peers how amazing and genius they are for doing so. They help write the legislation for other countries. Of course they later return and have to deal with the results of their stupidity, but its already been sold.
Politics works that way sometimes. It could be a fad. It could be the culmination of years of the intelligentsia, political, and corporate benefactors finding this to be the right time to move forward.
There has been a lot of propaganda since the mid teens targeting the social and psychological impacts of social media. It is certainly plausible that some group or the aforementioned entities had a big part of this. Regulatory capture is a real thing that makes companies or breaks companies.
This is not the first time media consumption has been labeled and targeted in a negative way and it will not be the last. We as a society have to adapt to changing landscapes.
We shouldn't burn books. We shouldn't ban dungeons and dragons. Video games do not make people in general homicidal. History is repeating itself.
Anecdotally, I have not ran into a single person who has suggested we need to age-gate social media. It is on the politicians mind, but not the lay-person, as far as I can tell.
Feels more like a joint effort given the way the world is going with AI. Likely, everyone who has access to the internet will require a passport to authenticate and access all websites, including AI bots. That way, any illegitimate activity from AI bots can be traced back to individuals.
Why is it weird? Social media has existed for around the same amount of time for all western countries, and people have noticed the harm at around the same time everywhere.
Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up.
> So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.
> Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
How is it impossible? Worst case, parents can make the kids unlock the device and take it away if the kid does not comply. Not that such extreme measures should ever be needed if there aren't significant pre-existing parenting failures.
And at some age the parent's job should be to make sure the kid can act responsibly on its own rather than micromanaging every possible danger.
>people have noticed the harm at around the same time
the harm being us proles being able to communicate and organize. they don't give a fuck about kids, algorithmic feeds, or Russian/Chinese/other villains of the week disseminating propaganda to other bots in Facebook comments. they care exclusively about regaining some degree of control over the flow of information.
consider this: how many people in Europe would be against the ongoing replacement migration if it was still 1999 and 95% of people were still getting news exclusively from the TV and papers, where most incidents of cultural enrichment would never ever be mentioned? and on the other end of the spectrum, consider this: would the BLM protests of 2020 have the same scale and impact if there was no medium for people to spread the video and organize?
TLDR: Arab spring good, American/European spring bad.
Protect them from what? The known associates of trafficking associated with Maxwel & Epstein have not been fully exposed or prosecuted, instead their names are hidden. Nothing is happening. This is an attempt to force identity in all things. It should be stopped.
> There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
yea, you know who they are, I know who they are and we all knoww what they are tryin to hide. but anyone who spells it out will get downvoted to hell here.
Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children.
But the way it is done is weird for sure.
But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent?
Or is your point that the internet should be used by children?
If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content?
From my point of view we are in the digital Middle Ages. We do not yet understand if this global connection is actually being good or bad in the long run. The only thing that starts to crystallize is that it isn’t great for children. Specifically social media, especially especially people gaining access to children on troves to spread ideology.
So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
You make it a burden on the parents, like all parenting always has been.
In my opinion, US culture losing sight of this is part of why our country is spinning down the drain. Combining Ipad kids with "what do you mean my child is failing? Isn't it your job to fix that?" I suspect has lead to a populace that can't think for themselves.
Being willing to give up your online anonymity to be surveiled online and not only beliving it's not a problem, but really thinking it's to protect children is another result of this.
>But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
Why should we aim to do that ? Who give internet-enables device to their children? In most cases, who give pay for their internet access?
> So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
Defining the problem, and if it exist altogether should be a good start. I'm not even sure the problem is defined, even less it need a solution so badly that we should kill everyone privacy for it.
I don't think it's a given that this can't be partly or mostly policed by parents if they were provided good tools to do so.
As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster.
So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.
You're engaging with the wrong argument. "Think of the children" is meant to confuse and diffuse discourse around what is happening. The argument which actually reflects the true intention of your politicians and lobbyists with respect to this issue is an argument of free access to information by anyone, including children.
I was raised in am extremely oppressive and abusive religious household. I would not be who I am today if I didn't have access to opinions outside of those shoved down my throat. I couldn't even listen to radio stations that weren't corporate soft rock or Christian music.
The internet was the only free space I had. Without it, I would certainly have killed myself as a child, rather than continue to submit to violent physical and religious abuse.
If we would stop blindly reacting with short-term thinking to each issue in turn that Corpgov presents us, and actually think deeply about what kind of future we'd like to build for those after us, it becomes radically clear that both the problem and solution as presented to us are actually detrimental in the long term.
I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections.
I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter.
I find it kind of hilarious that we spent ages trying to make teenagers not hang out in public spaces, not to drink, not to fuck. And now they have finally obliged, we start to take their obedience as a sign of declining mental health.
Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.
> There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones
I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.
Instead of social media we should focus on other things that happened in that same 20-year period, which probably have a bigger effect on mental health.
For example in the country I live in psychiatric help has been systematically de-funded during that period as well as support for sports, education and more.
The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media."
This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect.
Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though).
But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too.
But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper)
"hey, your kids are unsafe, better allow me read all their and yours communication. Ah and please give me your id so I can protect your children more"
> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
.... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that?
Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved.
I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now.
Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse.
Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered.
I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.
It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well.
Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
I have not researched this, but I see some 4 to 10 year olds in the family being on the phone every time I see them. Usually they stream "brainrot" on youtube on the tablet while they play roblox on the phone. From time to time there are ads.
In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end.
My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook.
Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms.
If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).
there is a reason the gambling regulations are being eased up on and polymarket is so popular. Gambling addiction is notably harder to get rid of the earlier you acquire it.
But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content.
The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
I haven't vetted the research, but have heard plenty of personal accounts from people I know, and I see it in my own kids -- wrestling with social media addiction is a real thing. We have parental controls on but it's a source of contention.
But social media is already non-anonymous (twitter used to be anonymous but those days are long gone) so I don't have any problems with age checks there -- that's very different than requiring age verification to access the internet or the WWW generally.
Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.
There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.
Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill?
As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E):
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations."
Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
That's true, but the bank also already knows my age.
Also, a bank would not satisfy section 201 (B), (C), or (D), so it wouldn't be a covered platform anyway. (I should have left "bank" out of my original post, I was really thinking more about discussion sites like this one, blogs, etc.)
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise"
Is 99.9% of all websites. So long as websites don't sell things, they will be having ads.
This includes Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Imgur, TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc. I think even Steam and other game platforms would fall into this category despite the fact they make money selling products. Naturally search engines also fall into this category.
Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead. In fact, most people don't want to go through the trouble of maintaining their own blog, dealing with spam, hosting, hacking attempts, software updates, etc., when they can just use tumblr and pin the responsibility on the platform anytime something bad happens.
Not at all. You named eleven. Even if I'm generous and raise that by a couple of orders of magnitude, it's still a miniscule fraction of all websites.
Of course it's close to all big tech platforms, but that's not the same thing. And if one of the results of this whole kerfluffle is to make more people realize that the big tech platforms are not the same as "the Internet" or "the Web", that would be a good thing.
> Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
Which makes it even more important to ask the question of whether "exception" websites like this one can continue to survive if this bill becomes law. Sure, HN users are a tiny fraction of all Internet users. But that's supposed to be one of the things the Internet is for--to give even very small communities a place where they can be a community, and not have to worry about all the other crap that's out there, and not have to be micromanaged by politicians and lobbyists and tech giants.
> It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead
Not all blogging platforms use targeted ads. And if this gives more of them an incentive not to, that would be a good thing.
with respect to which more than one-third of the material made available thereon is sexual material harmful to minors; and (C) with respect to which the provider of such platform knowingly makes available the sexual material harmful to minors described in subparagraph (B).
(look for line 19 to see the covered platform)
Of course, it's a delicious web they're trying to weave - pass it now by casting the think of the children spell, amend and reinterpret later to soften the guardrails until everything is in scope and demands commercial ID checks, driving ID check industry software and adoption, until psuedo-anonymity on the web is virtually gone. Or do it with any combination of other bills.
You're looking at section 102 of the bill, which is a different part than the one I was looking at (and that the EFF article is referring to). The bill is a mismash of several different proposed bills all squashed together into one. Title I, which is what you're looking at, is more restrictive about what platforms it applies to than Title II, which contains the section I quoted.
But there are also other requirements in section 201 for a "covered platform", which advertising-funded sites that aren't "social media" most likely don't meet. For example, a typical personal blog, even if it shows ads, doesn't meet subsection (C), because its primary purpose is not to share user-generated content (e.g., comments by readers)--it's to share the blog author's content.
(HN itself doesn't meet at least one other requirement besides subsection (E): subsection (D), "Uses a design feature to promote user engagement on the platform".)
Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms. Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. they all have them so they can check the box but they are not good and certainly not a solution.
That said, it is better than nothing, but that’s about it.
You can control which apps children can install, how much time they are allowed to use those apps a day, decide if they have access to the web, which web sites they can visit, and decide who they are allowed to communicate with.
What features are missing that makes everyone giving up their privacy a better option?
> Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms.
So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
Not only does this moot the demands for capture of photo ID, beefing up the parental controls that already exist in every major OS means that -say- adults caring for their dementia-damaged parents can restrict those adults' access to things that could be very dangerous to them and/or their finances. A strictly-age-based "protection" scheme absolutely does not do that.
One might argue that one could "merely" require a "This adult is seriously intellectually damaged. [0] Make sure to protect them from scammers and predators!" flag that can be flipped on by a Registered Caretaker. I humbly suggest that that is information you should never disclose to a company that makes its money by trading in dossiers of its users.
[0] Dear downvoters: I understand that this isn't the PC term for the effects of these sorts of ailments. If you've ever had to watch over and care for someone who gets cored out bad by this shit, it's hard to describe it as anything else.
That's just not true. If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
Tell me how a parent is supposed to parent their kid when they can do that? Locking down WhatsApp is no solution because then they can't talk to anyone. (Other countries do not use SMS as much as the US does, it's mostly WhatsApp.)
Say you are sure your kid is being bullied or abused and you want to check their phone. You can't. From the password to encrypted apps kids can hide their communications in ways that are impossible for a parent to check.
Apps do not have "child modes" that disable all the secret stuff, although that would be nice.
> If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
So the solution to parents deciding to give their kids access to stuff is to make me flash my ID every time I go online on one of my devices that I use in my childless household? And you're confident that there won't be plenty of parents who just put their ID information in for their kids anyhow?
I don't have kids but I do wonder if maybe the downsides of WhatsApp etc outweigh the benefits?
Lack of practice with face to face communication, near inability to talk on the phone, less quality connection with people in general, craned necks, myopia, hidden bullying, privacy violations, dependency on a US company etc
If we expect the behavior of parents to change we must change their incentives.
Providing access to social media must be met with the same punishment as offering heroin to children. The monopoly on violence must be brought to bear on parents who neglect parental responsibilities.
Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1].
There's a big difference between your kid accessing inappropriate things at a friends house for a few hours a month and having that stuff at his or her fingertips 24/7.
If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
We could lock every kid and adult in a padded cell to prevent kids from being harmed, so why don't we pass a law requiring that? Because its not a proportional response, just like demanding mandatory age verification for every adult is not proportional either.
> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device".
The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's
way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the
first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to
crush those lobbyists that push for this.
By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point
did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information?
Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged.
The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.
> This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information.
Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet.
If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests.
Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success.
Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies.
In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups.
An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.
It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it.
It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.
We do not need to lose our rights to privacy because people want to control what their kids do and see. (I'm not even convinced this is true - this is likely just a convenient lie told by the politicians, because I don't see parents clamoring for this.)
We're below replacement rate, so it's not like most people are even having kids, anyway. Yet we have to give up our freedom for other people to raise little Christian tots (or whatever the motivation for this is billed as)?
I grew up in a Deep South Protestant household. Having access to the unfiltered internet got me interested in STEM. Bumping into occasional shock sites and porn as a preteen did not turn me into a satanist cannibal.
Keeping "Kids Safe" is a LIE.
This is about putting collars on every US citizen.
They'll filter you into groups.
They'll control what loans and jobs you can get.
They'll use this information to blackmail you should you ever run for office or gain wealth or power.
This is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.
At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion.
Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact.
The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
Because the internet is global and the negative effects of the internet are happening everywhere at the same time. Also, politicians look at other countries for ideas.
When nobody's done something before, there are lots of unanswered questions.
Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google?
Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.
Because it is an organized attack. The lobbyists got their orders,
now they pull it through. It is kind of fascinating to see though -
I bet many people don't realise this coordinated attack. To me it
is blatantly easy to notice. I am glad to not be the only one here.
And if they do it anyway? Sure, you can vote them out but it's hard to dislodge incumbents especially over policy choices rather than obvious problems like corruption. Then even after you've ejected them, you need to push their successor into the Sisyphean task of rewriting populist legislation.
Representative democracy is not adequate to the demands of the information age, where the informational asymmetry between individual and state is unprecedented in history. It's time to explore other models like administrative democracy.
Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012.
Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need?
On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?
Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.
To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.
It can't, because the government doesn't know shit about technology. Someone who knows tech, is close to the government, and isn't corrupt, would have to propose it and explain what this zorro-proof knowy doohicky is. The government knows ID checks because you get checked at bars.
Horse shit. The government has extremely deep expertise in computer science readily available on their payroll and at their beck and call. They literally have DARPA, for instance.
> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.
> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.
Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?
Dear goverments, if you care about KIDS, provide them a separete internet outside of ICANN with mandatory ID. Let the rest of the people create an anonymous, adult internet with no ID's.
The ongoing refusal for parents to parent necessitates a shift in their legal liabilities.
Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.
Yeah but don't expect much sympathy on a forum full of uber rich folks whose very income is directly tied to the same revenue streams you mention.
I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.
EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it.
Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd.
I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need.
In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it.
Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops."
Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.
You are missing half of the story. This is not “caring legislators punishing big bad tech”. This IS big bad tech. Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. More than wanting to get kids addicted, Big Tech and the intelligence community wants perfect observability into online activities.
This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. If they do get age verification, they get to see what everyone in the world thinks and is interested in, all linked to government ID.
Edit: the one outcome big tech does not want is anonymous age verification. This is technologically extremely possible, but that would be a lose/lose for big tech because they would lose kid (aka future consuming adult) addiction AND lose perfect tracking linked to government IDs.
This kind of restrictions expects account control to work. For example, parent's account & separate child account on a device. For the same reasons you describe, it will be ineffective: not tech-savvy. Children will use their parent's/grandma's account on TV and phone, one that has long been verified as "adult" despite the Youtube recommendations consisting of 6-13yo content.
If there were an organic push by parents, they would be happy to buy and promote products today, without waiting for legislation to catch up. Where are these local parental control products?
Speaking of social media and Youtubes of the world, why can't I, as account owner/parent, totally blacklist some "recommendations"?
Age verification is not a fit tool for content filtering. Users want the latter, but get switcheroo'd into the former.
This is just the latest incarnation. They’ve already used the same tactic successfully to remove other freedoms not related to tech. Just compare the stories from older people about their childhood experiences (when they’re being completely open and honest) with the way children are raised now. My own parents did things that would get them on a terrorist watch list nowadays like building explosives and home made mortars or even just walking through town with a shotgun to go down to the creek for duck hunting at the ripe old age of 13 (with no adult supervision).
The median age of a youth extremists is 19 [1], with the mean being ~20 (study rounded up).
The main issue with this bill is that it requires a huge cost in civic freedoms, with questionable benefits to societal stability. Not only do most youth extremists first offend past the threshold this age verification would catch, this legislation lets big tech off the hook for designing addictive algorithms in the first place, since "there are no kids on the platform anymore, and if there are, they're breaking the law".
> Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring.
It is far more common for that child to be targeted by parents, and maybe by people they know in person, especially because of the lousy social environment their parents have pushed them into, and therefore to have limited offline support systems, and you are now trying to take away all they do have.
The logical conclusion is to shutdown Meta, Youtube, TikTok, Twitter to name the biggest offenders. And why on earth would algorithmic manipulation, brain washing and exploitation of adults be allowed via the same platforms?
I am not disagreeing with you, but the conversation to be had is far, far wider than "think of the children!". Part of any deal would have to be: privacy of citizens is not a business model. But then you are facing the full might of Corp Inc, including their legislative powers.
The true solution to these problems is to be a parent. If you don't have the time to be a parent, then don't have kids. If you have kids, it's _your_ responsibility to keep them alive and healthy, both mentally and physically.
> Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds
> Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
No access is the solution here. Tools are not expected to be perfect. The railing on a balcony is there for accidents, not to stop you from jumping off headfirst.
> Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
Take away their internet access.
If your child spends 90% of their time on phub, _take away their internet access_. If they spend 90% of their free time doomscrolling, _take away their phone_. If they need Internet access for school work, the can either do their school work at school, or you watch them do their schoolwork, or you find someone else to watch them do it. If you cannot do this, then you cannot be responsible for them and they should be removed from your care. This is basic mental health.
> That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
This isn't a third party policing the industry, this is telling the industry to police itself...by reaching inside my pockets to check my ID. Invasive security like X-ray machines at the airport aren't there for _your_ safety (regardless of what they say), they're there for _everyone else's_ safety: we're making sure you don't kill others.
> I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
> That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately).
That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately).
Privacy can be taught. We don't anymore. Nobody objected when platforms like Facebook started requiring real identities, but the simple answer to this is to not give out your information.
This is something that is the parent's responsibility.
We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
The right way to age-restrict is for parents to configure certain devices as kids devices, and then it would be easy for any service to know if they are communicating with one of those devices.
This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.
same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up
Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children.
They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984.
Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy.
Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID.
Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases.
All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit.
What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
Once again banging my “there’s already an age check to get online and it’s the adult paying the ISP bill” drum.
Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.
Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.
This should be up to parents to parent. If their child has social media, or viewing sites that are for adults then the parents should be fined. In the US every weekend teens are shooting each other, i think we have bigger concerns than them being online
One could implement this at browser account level or even at OS-level, but no, let's just ask all the websites to implement a new service for ID check. Or let's ask all the websites to spam users with the never-read cookie usage request.
What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.
Yep, it'll either be connected through your own internet passport, or it'll be connected through a separate permit which is tied to your own passport.
In the end the monopolies will be the big winners.
I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on?
The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway.
Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.
Your ISP will eventually require a new protocol that can hold your digital ID in every packet to access certain content and you'll have to upgrade/migrate your OS if you want to view p0rn etc.
This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with AI. And to be fair to them, I don't really know of a better solution for what is coming... As much as I hate it.
How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise.
The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.
If it has nothing to do with children, then why is it named the KIDS Act? Are we being bamboozled? And you are IN SUPPORT OF that? Am I taking crazy pills?
I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity.
Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"?
I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the world's social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here either.
I like to look back in history for parallels. In 1912 the USA required that all radio transmitters be licensed. There were classifications established for commercial and amateur stations. So at that time Feds understood the power of giving citizens the ability to communicate with the masses.
Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world.
The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.
There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.
It's not a technology limitation as you say. The issue is a psychology problem. How do you keep a nation all playing on the same team, so to speak, when there are an infinite number of contradictory voices screaming at them?
My observation is that a society is based on some common ideas, many times myths, but without those common threads you can't make a civilization. This is why dictatorial regimes shut down open internet access rather quickly. They know it will undermine and/or destroy their control of the masses.
Remember the guy who had an entire island and all his friends literally have had no consequences? You really think the age checks will do what is advertised? Lmao
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted.
Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health
I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
What you're describing isn't a cancer to children but a danger to _people_, children or not. Children being children, they're sometimes less able to recognize danger ahead of time, and they're also more likely to get their kicks from sending each other there (I know I did). This is also not inherent to the Internet, however. "Stranger danger" warning exists for a reason. What we need to do is teach children that just like you wouldn't follow a random stranger into their house, you also shouldn't click random links. You also have to make the safe place dedicated for kids into a place that they actually _want_ to be (think neopets in the 00s), and then you don't have to put your resources into preventing them from leaving.
Maybe www users do not need "platforms" run by third parties, usually in Silicon Vallley, who conduct data collection, surveillance and advertising services as a "business model"
What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms"
No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley
Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general
The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services"
There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online"
Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1
If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict
The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable
The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies
1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service
> What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms." No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
I would love for people to stop using the evilcorp platforms. But what will actually happen is that normal people will just scan their IDs and continue as before and only weird geeks will refuse. Normal people will continue posting valuable information on YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, etc. and it will become increasingly impossible to access any of it without scanning your ID.
Just a story from Germany in early 2000. I had a website and just installed a php script to have a forum on my website and just forgot about it. Today, I could do the same, but I had a 24/7 job to monitor everything someone writes there because it could bring me personally into jail. The same with the comment section of my blog. Thats the reason why this big platforms exist and are used. Because no one other than they want to take the risk. At least in Germany are not much people that want to do that.
Theres this new form of technology that is allowing decentralized actors to publish information without government oversight.
It’s called the Printing press. And yes, there was a giant moral panic about it at the time that basically split Europe in half.
Yet, today, we would find it absurd to ban children from reading printed words. Book bans are often the most opposed policies by all sides when polled.
The fact we’re looking to block children from the modern equivalent is the most classic example of a moral panic I’ve seen.
The “social media” millennials remember from their youth where they saw all the parties they didn’t get invited to…doesn’t even exist anymore. The social graph is dead, it’s all just short form TV now.
The stupidity of this panic narrative is tremendous. Instead of attacking/regulating the algorithms (the problem) we’re banning children from all information and creating a global surveillance dragnet for all adults.
Age verification makes it easier for the bad guys to identify and groom children without adults finding out. Sting operations are that much harder if you have to convince the surveillance capitalism machine that you're an actual child, not just your target.
Kids want it themselves. All popular people want it too. Imagine if we don't do this for the kids? Either this or kids will get hurt. All my friends want it too. One eastern country didn't protect their kids and look where it's at. This is the only way to save kids and we need to act fast! You should rather be against child labor than this.
"kids" is just another word for "people" by the way - everyone is a kid, and everyone is an adult, except for people who die very young. We should not make the mistake of thinking of them as two separate independent categories of people.
Politicians who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children.
Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development.
Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist).
App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
The GOP. This is part of Project 2025. They want to outlaw porn.
> Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should
be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed
as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that
facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
A lot of it would go away if they just stopped consuming it. They consume it at least as much as anybody else. The only difference is the self loathing and belief that they need to be - and are qualified to be - the moral police.
If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.
To be even more specific then: Working and cheap alternative to the very real problem that this solves. It's not a made up problem, even though the current proposed solution was just shopping for a problem to solve so it could sell itself.
I was a bit upset to see vitriolic opposition online to systemd adding a field to store, entirely locally to a Linux system, the user's age.
I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
Isn't knowing if someone is above or below a certain age already privacy invasive if one chooses they don't want to share that? At least under GDPR age is protected as an indirect identifier.
Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s
This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term:
This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL
They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!!
Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not:
* of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE
* of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn)
* or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids.
Really, why doesn't actually matter too much.
The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news.
They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind)
We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices.
How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons.
These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.
Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.
You're distorting pretty hard about what happened there (mister random numbered throwaway account) but even if you weren't, that is not the definition of fascism.
Folks saying "kids will find a way" yes but the social norm of them being looked down upon certain online content would make it so they view it less as its not a norm. Kinda how NSFW content is right now, nobody whips that out unless they are in private...
Just put the age verification in the browser already.
Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.
We need social programs like social housing, universal healthcare, free education, and universal food stamps. We need to actually use the abundance of resources we have to meet our fundamental needs (shocker I know).
Parents won't parent without a change in incentives.
That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.
That's great messaging, but what exactly are you materially proposing that's different?
If you make corporations liable for minors using their product, they're just going to require identity verification to use their product, and we're back to effectively the same proposal, right? Unless I've misunderstood you.
Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
This is very "war on drugs" coded, but to extend the metaphor a bit:
Meta here is the heroin cartel. They're a publicly traded company, have offices all over the country, and have mountains of evidence sitting in moderately well secured cabinets. Why should the government go after users when it could more easily go after the producers?
Since the beginning of the computer age kids have found ways around parental controls. I'm very skeptical that it's a good idea to punish parents for that, especially since the kids are likely more tech-savvy than the parents.
And, in many cases, "parent" singular. Putting a single mom in court, in jail, because she works 2-3 jobs and her kids are more knowledgeable than she is about computers? C'mon.
You're not putting her in jail for having kids smarter than she is. You're telling her that if she can't parent, then she can't have kids. Having kids is a responsibility, not a reward, and that responsibility is more than just having money to pay for their food. If you can't afford to take care of your kids, then you can't afford to have them.
This applies to more than just tech and money: being unable to give your kids attention because you need 3 jobs to pay for them is just as bad for the kids as being unable to give them attention because you're busy gambling or a drug addict (it does makes a difference to whether you're a disgusting person, though).
If this was true, then the "parents should parent" camp doesn't have a valid argument. Practically speaking, if parenting to this level of involvement is not possible, then why do they keep pushing for it as a solution?
That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.
There's a big difference here, in the US anyways, neither alcohol nor nicotine have first amendment protections. Basically all content delivered over the US does.
But isn't putting something behind an age gate similar in concept to putting it behind a paywall? The speech is still there, whatever it may be, just has conditions for access.
What content shouldn't children be accessing? Is the content a 7, 11 or 16 year old shouldn't access different between age brackets? Who makes that determination? Is this access restriction at the whole site level, or per-post? Does safe-harbor apply, or is a site-operator liable for age-inappropriate content it hosts for its clients? On S3, for example, is each object tagged with an age category, or would it have to be a totally separate S3, like GovCloud?
It requires manual moderation. Companies like Facebook, Google, and co. have spent much effort telling you that's impossible. In fact, that is a type of half-truth that is a lie. The full truth is that it's impossible _at their scale_.
Their business models require little to no human moderation, because it simply doesn't scale (for their business to stay profitable).
Personally, my feeling is that if you can't take care of your product, you should go out of business.
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
No it's like the publisher of the adult content magazine being liable if an underage person buys the magazine. And due to burden of proof they require all stores that sell their magazine to make a copy of your ID and send it to them along with a recording of you providing the ID at the counter, some stores may require your address, iris or fingerprint scan.
Actually not to them through them to one of the few ID verifier 3rd parties that now receives a big portion of the records of anyone that buys adult content in any store with any publisher.
Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too.
At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
they literally do that though. They don't all just look at your ID any more, some scan it with a scanner or phone and that literally does what you just said. Paying with a card also does it.
> vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
In time, this will be used to shape what people are "allowed" to think. Porn will gradually be purged from the internet and then go away entirely as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
Then people who are neither of those things will start to be denied jobs and loans. Politicians that don't fit the mold will stop winning.
This is about turning the US to Christianity. (Read: this is really about controlling the massses and using religious fundamentalism as a tool to do so.)
Technology is the perfect tool for control. Just as we were becoming a liberal/libertarian society and letting people live their lives how they wanted, the wrong people started using technology not as an enabler of free minds, but as an inescapable straitjacket.
You've read 1984, right?
The sensors have been widely deployed. The internet will become your Big Brother. You won't be able to buy, sell, or even move between state lines without being in the good graces of the state.
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
I don't think this is a good assumption. It's not uncommon for stores to scan your ID when you buy alcohol.
> This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
This is not quite how typical systems are structured. Rather, the service provider outsources the age assurance to some third party Age Verification Provider (AVP), which then just returns an age estimate or a yes/no. Commonly, the AVP will have a stated policy that they don't share your identity with the client.
Obviously, you have to trust the AVP to comply with this policy, which is not ideal. There are approaches (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs) that provide some technical privacy protections, but they're not currently in wide use.
Note: this is not an endorsement of age assurance; I'm just trying to clarify the situation.
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
Yes you do, if they scan your ID with any technology they're uploading a picture to that company's server. If you use a payment card then your bank and the card network also know.
Age verification can be done by a third party, so that the online service isn't provided with any details of your identity, just that you passed an age verification check.
But if you're still worried about online pornographers getting a copy of your identity, maybe don't use their websites? It's an easily avoidable risk. Perhaps use your imagination instead, or read an erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop, or something like that.
> as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
As Christian I would say "more fundamentalist and less Christian". I am not sure this is religiously based. We have similar things happening in European countries that are not religious. Its a moral panic and "think of the children".
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
My (just turned 18) daughter said a pub in the UK scanned her driving license so they may well be connecting to some database before letting young people buy alcohol. IIRC the EU wants its age verification app to be used for things like this.
Nah, it should be like in California. When you set up an account you should put how old thr user is, and websites should get a header that says whether it's over 18 or not. No ID checks, just good parenting.
Aims aside, did you even read the article? This will mostly end anonymity online and require heavier policing of content.
A child might see something they shouldn't walking down the street, strolling thru the park, visiting the local zoo, or visiting an ice cream parlor. Should those places be requiring identification and hiring extra security guards to wander around making sure nobody is saying it doing anything politically objectionable?
Let's not accept creeping digital tyranny with self-assuring complacency... call or write (preferably snail mail) your congresspeople!!
Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
Facebook has been documented for sponsoring these bills in the USA.
But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives.
I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.
>But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives.
That's not the question. Some group is obviously pushing this agenda globally. Who?
Its so good Meta is sponsoring a bill that removes necessary accountability on their side by pushing responsibility to a third party, while at the same time getting accurate headcounts for the ad platform /s
That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it.
It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278
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It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse. In order to validate kids, they really need to identify everyone. That’s the real play.
In Australia, the government has certified OAuth2 Identity Providers which act as a broker between social media sites and a provider that can verify your age, such as a bank. This allows age to be verified by a provider, with the social media provider having no access to your identity. If the social media companies chose to support this, they would be complying with the legislation. It's not the government forcing you to identify yourself.
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the effort is being driven by a handful of tech and social media companies who have suddenly realized they cannot close the pandoras box of AI.
without a meaningful headcount of real users, advertisers will begin to push back on cost or even reduce and eliminate spending on social media altogether.
by proactively identifying real humans, you prevent the collapse of major social media outlets. by tracking their age and location directly, you restore that which AI took away from advertisers in the first place.
age verification makes sure surveillance capitalism continues to function.
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> It’s not for the kids. That’s just the excuse.
Is is an excuse for some, sure. But we will fail at pushing back if we ignore that there are a meaningful number of concerned parents who support solutions like this because they have become aware of the danger that social media presents. For many of them, self-attestation of age at the OS account level is likely sufficient, not to mention much simpler to implement and use.
But others are working hard to shift the narrative away from age attestation towards age verification or even identity verification. Government officials (on both the right and left) want to be able to police speech based on what is acceptable to those who are currently in power. Companies want to verify humans for advertising and training purposes. And some privacy advocates intentionally conflate age attestation (like California AB 1043) with age verification because it is an easier strawman to attack.
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Yes, but do you have any specifics? No one seems to have any specifics. I don't mean "plausible explanations of what the government might wish to to" -- I mean "specific actors pushing specific agendas."
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Of course, but why now?
Too many people expressing themselves on the internet with nothing that can be done against them...
From a government perspective, it is a gold mine to know who's on the internet. For advertisers it is another goldmine - you can target at will without having to figure out first some demographics. An probably there are some angles I don't yet see, but the fact that this is a concentrated effort across the world make my spidey sense tingle.
And who doesn't want to protect the children?
For the deep-pocked advertisers, this is a loss.
Because big players have systems to fill in those information gaps, they have a moat that protects their position in the market.
If the data were instead just handed over, that would weaken those moats.
I agree with this especially as these laws specifically still allow kids to carry smartphones and use them away from parents watchful eye. There is no protection here. Get the kids off of the internet, there is nothing good for them there.
Now as I've thought this through some, I could see where selected networking could be made kid friendly, you know, like a top level dns where you need to prove yourself to be underage or heavily vetted adult with id verification, and this entire tld could be made kid friendly. I don't doubt that most of today's dns infrastructure is probably not up to the job, but a very tight and heavily vetted registry for .kids for example (or maybe better as kids.<country> as laws vary) would solve all of this. Make a subset of the internet kid safe and serve the kids that.
The fact that all these proposed laws still give kids general tcp/ip access at the physical level means we do conclude exactly what my parent commenter says, its not really about the kids, its about the free and unfettered flow of information that must be stopped. In the US, its getting close to illegal to disseminate information but once factual information does indeed become criminal in nature, you need to catch the perps and thus the IDs attached to packets of fact carrying information.
Suspicious? Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahuha repeatedly voiced concerns Israel is becoming increasingly unpopular amoung the youth because of social media.
His words: “the most important purchase going on right now (Tiktok)” alleging its control could be “consequential.” [1]
When kids have alternative news your pointless religious wars or fake democratic freedom wars cannot be fought. [2]
[1] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in September "We have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefields in which we’re engaged. And the most important ones are on social media. And the most important purchase that is going on right now is TikTok. Number one. Number one.". Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti‑Defamation League, warned last year: “TikTok, if you will, is the 24/7 news channel of so many of our young people, and it’s like Al‑Jazeera on steroids. It’s amplifying and intensifying the antisemitism and the anti‑Zionism with no repercussions.”
[2] "There’s an eighth front," he said, describing a struggle "for the hearts and minds of people, especially young people in the West, and for me especially in the United States.
A lot of studies came out kinda at the same time showing how harmful it is and people aren’t coming up with alternatives. What else can you do?
Attestation of age should suffice; no one in a building somewhere needs to verify my age. If I tell you to treat me like a minor, you do it. Operating systems and browsers can work together to send this as a header. If you're a concerned parent: set your children's ages in their device accounts.
Done. This alternative solves the whole problem and it's been brought up a million times, but it doesn't matter, because this isn't about protecting children or anything about ages. It's about locking down anonymity, and money for a few interests who want to be the verifiers and craft a future where they hold the keys.
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Our environment contains harms. Vehicles are several tonnes traveling 60+ mph, they make guns look safe. The calculation is a risk-reward one.
The question we have to ask ourselves is whether these "protect the children" laws are worth the internet freedoms they are about to erode. I would argue not.
1. It is not the state's responsibility to raise your children. They should ensure that safety is available, they should have some ability to deal with clear cases of abuse - but otherwise you're on your own. Anybody who thinks they want a nanny state just has to imagine the worst possible government abusing this power.
2. On the basis of providing safety, it would be enough for example for mobile phone OSes to provide parent restrictions (as they currently do). Kids can't afford to buy phones, so it's the parents in almost all cases giving them unfiltered access. If you really really want to ensure that all children have filtered access on phones, just spot check kid's phones and confiscate them if they do not have the locks enabled.
It seems insane to me that so many parents believe they have zero responsibility for their children's access to the internet, despite being the source of that access. I'm sorry, parents need to step up.
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there are plenty of alternatives if we're willing to shift these costs and responsibility to ISPs, which could separate the internet into two networks, one for children and the other for the rest of us. This is technically just as feasible, and probably cheaper than requiring every website to process (and probably retain) personally identifiable information.. significantly safer too.
But that wouldn't come with baked in surveillance, so "what else can you do" sounds a bit unnerving.
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I had an idea the other day that children could have some kind of jewellery that they can't remove like a curfew device. Probably impractical but at least it matches - children=limited rights and need protection. Once of age, no need, come of age, can remove.
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Oh good, there have never been studies coordinated to come out to influence public opinion based on shoddy science before; just ask the tobacco industry
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The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
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Its reasonable to agree a problem exists and that we don't yet have a solution worth implementing.
Until there's a solution that actually addresses the problem without creating more, we should just try to make sure more people also know the problem exists and try to help equip parents to deal with it as best they can for now.
> What else can you do?
We could recognize the attention economy as inherently destructive to society and ban it altogether.
Well, I guess there is no other option then. Follow the science.
Can you give some examples of such studies? The ones I've seen are all pseudo-scientific or provide very low grade evidence, often nothing more than simple correlations.
The default value assigned to a social study from academia should be zero these days, so there merely being a lot of them doesn't mean anything. You really need some very high quality evidence to justify this kind of huge change.
> What else can you do?
Educate the parents maybe?
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I am really starting to think that the Very Smart People (pejorative) holding power think that they can just copy the Chinese mass surveillance and social control model without changing anything else about the economic or cultural models of the U.S. and Europe, and that's going to somehow allow us to compete with them. I'm sure there will be massive exceptions for anyone wealthy and connected, so the panopticon is just a way to whip and threaten the common folk. That's also why it probably won't work. In a way it just reeks of desperation and reaching straight for the most authoritarian approach.
Its Australia.
No joke our politicians subject us to something stupid, and then travel around telling their foreign peers how amazing and genius they are for doing so. They help write the legislation for other countries. Of course they later return and have to deal with the results of their stupidity, but its already been sold.
Just to piss off the downvoters more, here is a link
https://www.afr.com/technology/australia-takes-social-media-...
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https://avpassociation.com/ and a few key individual crusaders.
Of course. They meet in Davos every year.
Also in DC, eg, at the Bilderberg meeting.
Somehow the US ones always fly under the radar: Bilderberg, Council on Foreign Relations, Jackson Hole banker meetup, Bohemian Grove, etc.
Politics works that way sometimes. It could be a fad. It could be the culmination of years of the intelligentsia, political, and corporate benefactors finding this to be the right time to move forward.
There has been a lot of propaganda since the mid teens targeting the social and psychological impacts of social media. It is certainly plausible that some group or the aforementioned entities had a big part of this. Regulatory capture is a real thing that makes companies or breaks companies.
This is not the first time media consumption has been labeled and targeted in a negative way and it will not be the last. We as a society have to adapt to changing landscapes.
We shouldn't burn books. We shouldn't ban dungeons and dragons. Video games do not make people in general homicidal. History is repeating itself.
Anecdotally, I have not ran into a single person who has suggested we need to age-gate social media. It is on the politicians mind, but not the lay-person, as far as I can tell.
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Feels more like a joint effort given the way the world is going with AI. Likely, everyone who has access to the internet will require a passport to authenticate and access all websites, including AI bots. That way, any illegitimate activity from AI bots can be traced back to individuals.
If there was to be a small silver lining out of all this, then a way to verify human comments would be nice.
But it's not worth the privacy impacts and chilling of free speech.
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They've been saying it on stage for a couple years now:
https://x.com/HotSpotHotSpot/status/1996018001368563842
Why is it weird? Social media has existed for around the same amount of time for all western countries, and people have noticed the harm at around the same time everywhere.
Why do you require some special interest? Ordinary people are seeing the harm and demanding help. Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I've yet to meet an ordinary person who supports any of this, though they might agree if vaguely prompted about it without detail. They certainly aren't lobbying their politicians about it. This is top down, not bottom up.
> So now that parents have been blocked from parenting, who else is going to do it?
I'm a parent. Nobody has been blocked from parenting by tech companies.
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It's not about the kids.
It's so Facebook can prove to advertisers the views are not bots/AI.
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> Tech companies did themselves no favors by locking down phones and accounts to the point that it's impossible for parents to police and/or check their kids phones.
How is it impossible? Worst case, parents can make the kids unlock the device and take it away if the kid does not comply. Not that such extreme measures should ever be needed if there aren't significant pre-existing parenting failures.
And at some age the parent's job should be to make sure the kid can act responsibly on its own rather than micromanaging every possible danger.
>people have noticed the harm at around the same time
the harm being us proles being able to communicate and organize. they don't give a fuck about kids, algorithmic feeds, or Russian/Chinese/other villains of the week disseminating propaganda to other bots in Facebook comments. they care exclusively about regaining some degree of control over the flow of information.
consider this: how many people in Europe would be against the ongoing replacement migration if it was still 1999 and 95% of people were still getting news exclusively from the TV and papers, where most incidents of cultural enrichment would never ever be mentioned? and on the other end of the spectrum, consider this: would the BLM protests of 2020 have the same scale and impact if there was no medium for people to spread the video and organize?
TLDR: Arab spring good, American/European spring bad.
I would have used the word "suspicious", but yeah.
https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
I originally read it as EVIL/UPDATE.
Anyway, Meta, really? Just to have more of our data? For the absolutely pedestrian explicit purpose of providing more information to advertisers?
This is why I don't buy into conspiracy theories. The truth is typically really boring and predictable - evil corporations will evily corporate.
I half wish for a more exciting villain that would give people a noticeable reason to stand up against - not just annoying people with intrusive ads.
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Yes but there are also a lot of politicians excitedly going "wait, you can get away with this?"
Protect them from what? The known associates of trafficking associated with Maxwel & Epstein have not been fully exposed or prosecuted, instead their names are hidden. Nothing is happening. This is an attempt to force identity in all things. It should be stopped.
> There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
yea, you know who they are, I know who they are and we all knoww what they are tryin to hide. but anyone who spells it out will get downvoted to hell here.
I don't know who you're talking about. Am I missing some context here?
I think it's because they're afraid of what we might ask AI to help us build.
They read the Epstein files and reacted quickly.
It's like an open conspiracy but people go along with it because they perceive it will make parenting easier.
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Oh jeez, I wonder who on Earth could be behind this mass push for surveillance?
That's what GP is asking, except without the unhelpful sarcasm.
Maybe this is about time. It’s pretty clear that the internet as such is not and never has been for children.
But the way it is done is weird for sure.
But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents or peer pressure the issue that breaks the intent?
Or is your point that the internet should be used by children?
If so how do you propose restricting the harmful content?
From my point of view we are in the digital Middle Ages. We do not yet understand if this global connection is actually being good or bad in the long run. The only thing that starts to crystallize is that it isn’t great for children. Specifically social media, especially especially people gaining access to children on troves to spread ideology.
So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
You make it a burden on the parents, like all parenting always has been.
In my opinion, US culture losing sight of this is part of why our country is spinning down the drain. Combining Ipad kids with "what do you mean my child is failing? Isn't it your job to fix that?" I suspect has lead to a populace that can't think for themselves.
Being willing to give up your online anonymity to be surveiled online and not only beliving it's not a problem, but really thinking it's to protect children is another result of this.
>But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
Why should we aim to do that ? Who give internet-enables device to their children? In most cases, who give pay for their internet access?
> So how to solve it. And „I don’t like the current approach“ without having a better idea is not a solution.
Defining the problem, and if it exist altogether should be a good start. I'm not even sure the problem is defined, even less it need a solution so badly that we should kill everyone privacy for it.
I don't think it's a given that this can't be partly or mostly policed by parents if they were provided good tools to do so.
As it is all of the parental controls on all devices, apps, and services are extremely lackluster.
So I'd argue legally required, granular, parental controls and empowering parents would be a much better start to resolving this issue compared to blatant government privacy overreach.
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You're engaging with the wrong argument. "Think of the children" is meant to confuse and diffuse discourse around what is happening. The argument which actually reflects the true intention of your politicians and lobbyists with respect to this issue is an argument of free access to information by anyone, including children.
I was raised in am extremely oppressive and abusive religious household. I would not be who I am today if I didn't have access to opinions outside of those shoved down my throat. I couldn't even listen to radio stations that weren't corporate soft rock or Christian music.
The internet was the only free space I had. Without it, I would certainly have killed myself as a child, rather than continue to submit to violent physical and religious abuse.
If we would stop blindly reacting with short-term thinking to each issue in turn that Corpgov presents us, and actually think deeply about what kind of future we'd like to build for those after us, it becomes radically clear that both the problem and solution as presented to us are actually detrimental in the long term.
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> But how do you do it in a way that it isn’t a burden on the parents
Yea wouldn’t want to have parents be involved and managing what their kids interact with. What?
So.. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757...
Find your rep on congress.gov, and write them.
Sponsors: Brett Guthrie (R-KY) CoSponsors: Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
Find and write your congress member: https://www.congress.gov/
Guthrie is sponsored by: (Alpahbit is the biggest) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie /us_congress/summary?mpid=1048046
Frankie: (AIPAC, Anthropic and Comcast) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/s...
More info on AIPAC endorsements:
Guthrie (4th out of 7): $42k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky
Pallone (7th out of 10): $241k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey
I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?
There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Obviously it's difficult to pin a 20-year trend on a single cause. But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones; and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media. But it's not possible to prove causality in a way that will silence all objections.
I suspect it's particularly easy to convince politicians that social media is bad for mental health because of their lived experience. Consider the experience of being a professional politician on Twitter.
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/publications... [2] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/child-adolescent-and-yo...
I find it kind of hilarious that we spent ages trying to make teenagers not hang out in public spaces, not to drink, not to fuck. And now they have finally obliged, we start to take their obedience as a sign of declining mental health.
Maybe kids would be better off if we stopped regulating every facet of their lives under the pretence of safety and make them feel if they make one mistake they will ruin their life because now they can't get into a good college or something.
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> There's quite a lot of statistics saying currently teens struggle with mental health even more than is historically normal for teenagers. [1, 2] Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Yeah. No surprise. The generation of my parents used to run free in the woods. My generation was limited to whatever bicycles offered. And when I have children, I'll probably have to be happy if they can walk to a friend's without some busybody calling the cops on them.
And drinking? Don't get me started on that one - same here. My parents' generation distilled their own spirits (that's banned in Germany these days). My generation had beer. My children? Assuming drinking is still a thing when they're at that age, I'll have to fear getting the cops called on me if they ever drink enough to end up in a hospital (which is a routine thing these days).
Generally: Third spaces (e.g. libraries, "youth centers") are closing down, others (malls, parks) try everything possible to eliminate youth loitering or, god forbid, making noise. And that's if they can actually afford something. It's ridiculous how expensive basic stuff such as fast food or ice cream has gotten.
In contrast to that, phones are free-ish (well, parents buy them for their kids anyway, and mobile data plans aren't a big deal either).
> and with social media use as common as it is, almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Bullying always used to be a thing, yes. But that's a legitimate complaint, the mechanics of social media and cameras being ever present have made bullying much more severe in scale. Hell if I were young today, I'd have probably ended up arrested multiple times if there was some video camera rolling around all time.
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>Young people are barely living
Yeah, I wonder what caused that?
The most freedom they actually get is on the Internet, that's why they all hang out there.
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> But most parents have the sense their teens spend too much time on their phones
I've been pondering recently how much time parents are spending on phones, that, 20 years ago they might have otherwise spent engaging with their kids.
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Instead of social media we should focus on other things that happened in that same 20-year period, which probably have a bigger effect on mental health.
For example in the country I live in psychiatric help has been systematically de-funded during that period as well as support for sports, education and more.
> almost every kid who commits suicide will have recently used social media.
Sound reasoning lol some really hysterical folk on here.
if you actually believed it were that dangerous you wouldn't be literally on social media posting about this would you?
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Is there any evidence social media is improving mental health?
It feels absurd to even ask.
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> Young people are also spending less time with friends, drinking less, and having less sex than ever before.
Two of those three are probably better outcomes.
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Yes.
The research is quite confusing. This is because the strongest version of the argument is not "your child uses social media, and that makes them depressed". The strongest version is more like "when a society mass adopts social media, this irrevocably alters the culture in ways that causes massive changes in mental health, most prominently among young girls, including those exposed to the culture who don't even use social media."
This means you get a weird effect where experimental studies of high quality - which are usually the best evidence, are expected by the strong argument to show zero effect.
Correlational studies usually show either a weak effect (stronger in young girls) or no effect (it's extremely rare to see a study showing a positive correlational effect, though).
And where you get the most juice is looking at population level introduction of social media studies like those discussed here: https://www.afterbabel.com/p/phone-based-childhood-cause-epi...
But even then it's very tricky, as those studies can't exactly be replicated, and we don't know whether changes will actually reverse the cultural artifacts
but also, you have to distinguish from "society has separately become anti-child"
which also did happen through the nineties and 2000s before social media, but how would you measure the effects of each on their own?
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The problem is that argument is indistinguishable from the argument "the lack of proof is the proof!"
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Tbh I must admit that while I observe my children, any message on social media (especially Whatsapp) attracts so much attention, they are unable to continue with their normal chores. On the other hand I remember myself procrastinating while watching the TV in their age, which no longer happens as we have no TV. The difference is that anything watched on TV was public, you would need to eject your parents from home somehow, now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
This procrastination is why my children have 30mins + 1h bonus, if they do their chores, of the phone limit every day. This is done via family link. There is an exemption to music on Spotify, however recently I noticed they are watching (not listening) to podcasts on Spotify too.
But still this is managed by me on our local ecosystem. It's not government thing. That's super creepy when government says (read in your mind or aloud with a sleazy guy's whisper)
> now you can just take your private tv to the other room, and watch horrible things.
.... Is this trolling? Banning social media won't stop them accessing "horrible things", you'd need to disconnect the internet entirely from them, have you done that?
Why do you think social media is bad but somehow regular websites aren't horrible?
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Hmmmm that's odd, because everybody I know who has worked (or works) at a major social network (or two or three), including me, thinks it is horrible for mental health of everybody involved.
I'd be very curious what kind of "research" NPR is talking about, and who funded it, because it flies in the face of what all of us at these companies have seen.
The tobacco company lobbyists probably applied their whitewashing know how to social media after being done with industrialized foods. They're also likely on Meta's payroll now.
Age checks are part if that. They will just feed the sureveillance capitalism machine and make the problem even worse.
Age checked social media is just like the parlor walls in Fahrenheit 451 and infuencers are Mildred Montag. Just another thing to keep people distracted and neutered.
I remember I used to hang out on IRC during my teens with all kinds of people: jewish lesbians from conservative families and other teens from Scandinavia who got drafted on somewhat right wing warez groups, middle aged goth rockers on music sharing channels. Quite an experience for someone who grew up in a post communist country to interact with so colorful and genuinely interesting people. In contrast to that social media is an entirely fake experience generated with bots, algorithms and AI, just like a techno feudal version of the communist propaganda riddled lalaland that I grew up in. Many a DPRK on steroids, except it herds people into getting enraged and engaged with brands in order to hopelessly buy useless junk instead of submitting to a dear supreme leader. Of course it gets people addicted, because it was designed with that in mind.
It's a good thing what random people thing is not taken a science these days, oh wait I guess science is on a historic decline as well.
Maybe it's not climate chance, pseudo intellectualism, late stage capitalism, etc. Nah, it's the kids in their group chat or scrolling through tiktok, that's it, that's the reason.
The world sucks and the kids have no hope. Social media/ internet is to distract everyone from the real world problems
Normally we used beer for that, but during covid we've learned a whole generation that going out is danger and staying at the couch is good. And they decided that it's much easier than going out and have stressful situations with other people.
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I have not researched this, but I see some 4 to 10 year olds in the family being on the phone every time I see them. Usually they stream "brainrot" on youtube on the tablet while they play roblox on the phone. From time to time there are ads.
In school they still perform ok for what is required there today, but from what happens when you say "oh, wifi doesn't work today in our place" I would argue they behave like addicts... It might be a fun addiction insofar as mental problems are usually not the cause but possibly the result if this runs for years on end.
My pet theory is that these kids will graduate to online-gambling around 12-14 because that's exactly the kind of gameplay they prefer on roblox currently. Even when I was 16 there was a noticable share of classmates gambling online - and this was pre-facebook.
Probably the best way forward would be to make KYC mandatory for large, data-selling public fora like we do with banks. Noone complains there and noone is forced to use platforms.
If you don't want to do KYC (such as on hn or a model train forum) you are liable for any criminal activity you enable (such as pedophiles using your private messages or whatever...).
there is a reason the gambling regulations are being eased up on and polymarket is so popular. Gambling addiction is notably harder to get rid of the earlier you acquire it.
But it's not just teenagers, it's also adults who are harmed by overexposure to algorithmically presented content. Obvs we can't restrict adults from legal content but we can legislate against algorythmic content.
The NPR bit sounds like what I'd imagine I could expect from people who are very good at pushing junk food -they've got good science behind flavoring and light addiction (like you don't get withdrawals from not eating doritoes) and the same with social media. they have very good science behind getting people to spend more and more time viewing their content not matter what. So I take that bit on NPR with a grain of salt. In my experience, NPR often presents studies based on small samples for whatever reason. Maybe to go against the grain, maybe to get people to think, who knows...
I haven't vetted the research, but have heard plenty of personal accounts from people I know, and I see it in my own kids -- wrestling with social media addiction is a real thing. We have parental controls on but it's a source of contention.
But social media is already non-anonymous (twitter used to be anonymous but those days are long gone) so I don't have any problems with age checks there -- that's very different than requiring age verification to access the internet or the WWW generally.
The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
A bit of an off-topic, as age checks are not solution to this, it's just the usual "think of the children" narrative.
However, there are publicists like Jonathan Haidt who have observed the link between kids mental health and use of social media. (among other things) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anxious_Generation
Jonathan Haidt's book isn't taken seriously in academia. He also believes that social media turns kids transgender, and that may be part the reason that he's aggressively lobbying for bans enforced with mandatory age verification.
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Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence.
Sustained.
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I remember when the advice was to NOT give out your personal information online.
Now it's "present your personal info when demanded or else".
What's happens when that third-party identification verifier has a data breach?
Yeah, I remember when I finally had my own address and could stop entering nonsense. Felt like a rite of passage.
There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised just one of those things simultaneously.
I don't know what that means.
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There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised any one thing at all, ever.
There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.
Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill?
As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E):
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations."
Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
Your bank almost certainly uses your personal information to advertise or market to you — and so seems like it would be covered by that definition.
That's true, but the bank also already knows my age.
Also, a bank would not satisfy section 201 (B), (C), or (D), so it wouldn't be a covered platform anyway. (I should have left "bank" out of my original post, I was really thinking more about discussion sites like this one, blogs, etc.)
Wouldn't imply their needing any more information than they'd already have.
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You need to be more realist.
"Uses the personal information of the user to advertise"
Is 99.9% of all websites. So long as websites don't sell things, they will be having ads.
This includes Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Imgur, TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, etc. I think even Steam and other game platforms would fall into this category despite the fact they make money selling products. Naturally search engines also fall into this category.
Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead. In fact, most people don't want to go through the trouble of maintaining their own blog, dealing with spam, hosting, hacking attempts, software updates, etc., when they can just use tumblr and pin the responsibility on the platform anytime something bad happens.
> Is 99.9% of all websites.
Not at all. You named eleven. Even if I'm generous and raise that by a couple of orders of magnitude, it's still a miniscule fraction of all websites.
Of course it's close to all big tech platforms, but that's not the same thing. And if one of the results of this whole kerfluffle is to make more people realize that the big tech platforms are not the same as "the Internet" or "the Web", that would be a good thing.
> Websites like HN are the exception, not the norm.
Which makes it even more important to ask the question of whether "exception" websites like this one can continue to survive if this bill becomes law. Sure, HN users are a tiny fraction of all Internet users. But that's supposed to be one of the things the Internet is for--to give even very small communities a place where they can be a community, and not have to worry about all the other crap that's out there, and not have to be micromanaged by politicians and lobbyists and tech giants.
> It's also disingenuous to say "a personal blog" would be exempt from this when most people don't have blogs in first place since they start microblogging instead
Not all blogging platforms use targeted ads. And if this gives more of them an incentive not to, that would be a good thing.
You're way underestimating how many boring websites there are. County records websites, tax filing websites, dmv portals, shipping trackers...
> …is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
Which for ordinary people is the same thing, alas.
No, because:
with respect to which more than one-third of the material made available thereon is sexual material harmful to minors; and (C) with respect to which the provider of such platform knowingly makes available the sexual material harmful to minors described in subparagraph (B).
(look for line 19 to see the covered platform)
Of course, it's a delicious web they're trying to weave - pass it now by casting the think of the children spell, amend and reinterpret later to soften the guardrails until everything is in scope and demands commercial ID checks, driving ID check industry software and adoption, until psuedo-anonymity on the web is virtually gone. Or do it with any combination of other bills.
You're looking at section 102 of the bill, which is a different part than the one I was looking at (and that the EFF article is referring to). The bill is a mismash of several different proposed bills all squashed together into one. Title I, which is what you're looking at, is more restrictive about what platforms it applies to than Title II, which contains the section I quoted.
It’s not just “social media”. Any site that’s funded by advertising fits that description.
But there are also other requirements in section 201 for a "covered platform", which advertising-funded sites that aren't "social media" most likely don't meet. For example, a typical personal blog, even if it shows ads, doesn't meet subsection (C), because its primary purpose is not to share user-generated content (e.g., comments by readers)--it's to share the blog author's content.
(HN itself doesn't meet at least one other requirement besides subsection (E): subsection (D), "Uses a design feature to promote user engagement on the platform".)
Only if it's targeted.
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Parents already have the ability to lock down Android or iOS devices for their own children, if they choose to do so.
Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms. Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. they all have them so they can check the box but they are not good and certainly not a solution.
That said, it is better than nothing, but that’s about it.
You can control which apps children can install, how much time they are allowed to use those apps a day, decide if they have access to the web, which web sites they can visit, and decide who they are allowed to communicate with.
What features are missing that makes everyone giving up their privacy a better option?
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Parents have the ability to take any phone or pad out of their hands.
They are not good compared to what? The control that parents had what kids did in the woods or at the mall before smartphones?
> Parental controls are extremely weak on all the major platforms.
So pass laws and enact regulations that require them to be made strong.
Not only does this moot the demands for capture of photo ID, beefing up the parental controls that already exist in every major OS means that -say- adults caring for their dementia-damaged parents can restrict those adults' access to things that could be very dangerous to them and/or their finances. A strictly-age-based "protection" scheme absolutely does not do that.
One might argue that one could "merely" require a "This adult is seriously intellectually damaged. [0] Make sure to protect them from scammers and predators!" flag that can be flipped on by a Registered Caretaker. I humbly suggest that that is information you should never disclose to a company that makes its money by trading in dossiers of its users.
[0] Dear downvoters: I understand that this isn't the PC term for the effects of these sorts of ailments. If you've ever had to watch over and care for someone who gets cored out bad by this shit, it's hard to describe it as anything else.
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That's just not true. If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
Tell me how a parent is supposed to parent their kid when they can do that? Locking down WhatsApp is no solution because then they can't talk to anyone. (Other countries do not use SMS as much as the US does, it's mostly WhatsApp.)
Say you are sure your kid is being bullied or abused and you want to check their phone. You can't. From the password to encrypted apps kids can hide their communications in ways that are impossible for a parent to check.
Apps do not have "child modes" that disable all the secret stuff, although that would be nice.
> If you give your kid WhatsApp access because that's how 95% of their peers text each other, then your kid has access to a hidden chat that can only be revealed by typing a secret code in the search bar.
So the solution to parents deciding to give their kids access to stuff is to make me flash my ID every time I go online on one of my devices that I use in my childless household? And you're confident that there won't be plenty of parents who just put their ID information in for their kids anyhow?
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I don't have kids but I do wonder if maybe the downsides of WhatsApp etc outweigh the benefits?
Lack of practice with face to face communication, near inability to talk on the phone, less quality connection with people in general, craned necks, myopia, hidden bullying, privacy violations, dependency on a US company etc
And what do you mean by "can't talk to anyone"?
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If we expect the behavior of parents to change we must change their incentives.
Providing access to social media must be met with the same punishment as offering heroin to children. The monopoly on violence must be brought to bear on parents who neglect parental responsibilities.
That's how we end up with stolen generations of kids taken from parents.
It was bad and suggesting state violence for lack of compliance with your world view is bad.
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Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1].
1. https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-cont...
There's a big difference between your kid accessing inappropriate things at a friends house for a few hours a month and having that stuff at his or her fingertips 24/7.
If parents were really concerned about this stuff they'd take the time to set up parental controls, but they don't. Which makes me pretty sure the push for all this isn't coming from parents.
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Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
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> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
We could lock every kid and adult in a padded cell to prevent kids from being harmed, so why don't we pass a law requiring that? Because its not a proportional response, just like demanding mandatory age verification for every adult is not proportional either.
You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way.
More technological solutions to social problems.
> Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device.
Please describe how requiring a government ID in order to use a computer prevents an over-seventeen from presenting their ID to unlock their computer and then handing that computer over to an under-eighteen? An over-seventeen handing over control of their unlocked computer to a visiting under-eighteen seems to me to be an under-eighteen "go[ing somewhere] they could access a non-locked-down device".
The only way I can see to even begin to combat that is to constantly surveil the operator of the computer to attempt to detect when its operator changes. Do you have a superior method?
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So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to crush those lobbyists that push for this.
By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information? Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged. The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.
> This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else.
This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information.
Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet.
If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests.
Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success.
Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies.
Within two generations we're living in 1984.
We're already living in 1984.
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In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups.
An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.
Motor vehicles are very dangerous too, including higher-power e-bikes.
Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.
It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it.
It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.
I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.
Fun fact: Most firearms don't have a manual safety that you disengage.
call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this
We do not need to lose our rights to privacy because people want to control what their kids do and see. (I'm not even convinced this is true - this is likely just a convenient lie told by the politicians, because I don't see parents clamoring for this.)
We're below replacement rate, so it's not like most people are even having kids, anyway. Yet we have to give up our freedom for other people to raise little Christian tots (or whatever the motivation for this is billed as)?
I grew up in a Deep South Protestant household. Having access to the unfiltered internet got me interested in STEM. Bumping into occasional shock sites and porn as a preteen did not turn me into a satanist cannibal.
Keeping "Kids Safe" is a LIE.
This is about putting collars on every US citizen.
They'll filter you into groups.
They'll control what loans and jobs you can get.
They'll use this information to blackmail you should you ever run for office or gain wealth or power.
This is a threat to democracy and personal liberty.
Child safety is a LIE.
When did you grow up? The internet in 2006 and 2026 were nothing alike.
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Isn't it interesting how they're doing it in every anglo country simultaneously? How does that work?
At global conferences like Davos, where national leaders and policy makers go to schmooze and exchange ideas, this idea has been discussed for years. I’m sure there has been some subsequent cross-border coordination and discussion.
For instance:
https://idtechwire.com/spains-pm-proposes-mandatory-digital-...
https://www.weforum.org/publications/reimagining-digital-id/
https://www.weforum.org/stories/2021/01/davos-agenda-digital...
Everyone ignores stuff like this because of people like Alex Jones who make it seem like a lunatic conspiracy theory. But these conferences happen, and they do influence policy. It’s not a “cabal” that issues orders—many participants are national leaders bringing their perspectives (see the link above about Sanchez)—but it does have an impact.
The banal truth is that many different world leaders have talked each other into this after years of discussion on the proper way to “manage” the Internet. They see cyberspace as a threat to top-down technocratic control and view Internet-enabled populism (aka democracy) as something to be quashed.
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Because the internet is global and the negative effects of the internet are happening everywhere at the same time. Also, politicians look at other countries for ideas.
When nobody's done something before, there are lots of unanswered questions.
Is it even possible? Will businesses my voters like and use a lot just leave my country entirely? Will companies be able to develop privacy-preserving age check infrastructure? Will the press present it as a 'Chinese-style Great Firewall' or be more supportive of it? Will the blocks all be trivial to bypass? Will the large number of porn users in my country form a cohesive voting block? Will a powerful pro-privacy, pro-free-speech lobby emerge to challenge this? And will they be backed by powerful, well-funded US interests like Facebook and Google?
Australia simply showed the world passing this sort of legislation isn't political suicide.
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Because it is an organized attack. The lobbyists got their orders, now they pull it through. It is kind of fascinating to see though - I bet many people don't realise this coordinated attack. To me it is blatantly easy to notice. I am glad to not be the only one here.
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Globalism + Oligarchy
Don't forget to enclose a check
And if they do it anyway? Sure, you can vote them out but it's hard to dislodge incumbents especially over policy choices rather than obvious problems like corruption. Then even after you've ejected them, you need to push their successor into the Sisyphean task of rewriting populist legislation.
Representative democracy is not adequate to the demands of the information age, where the informational asymmetry between individual and state is unprecedented in history. It's time to explore other models like administrative democracy.
Details on how to do that here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48711871
and have your children on the phone telling them to not let companies store and leak their information before they are old enough to consent to this.
If they are asking you to leave a message, have your kids leave the message.
Then donate millions in campaign contributions to ensure they actually care at all what you think!
Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
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Money is a poor substitute for people who care.
The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.
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Espiallat ($9.5 million) vs Darializa (350k)
Money matters but a popular movement is more powerful still in some places look up DSA
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Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need?
On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID?
Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system.
To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.
It can't, because the government doesn't know shit about technology. Someone who knows tech, is close to the government, and isn't corrupt, would have to propose it and explain what this zorro-proof knowy doohicky is. The government knows ID checks because you get checked at bars.
Never been ID checked at a bar in my life. The whole concept is alien to me.
Zorro proof!
Horse shit. The government has extremely deep expertise in computer science readily available on their payroll and at their beck and call. They literally have DARPA, for instance.
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Note that the EU is proposing to do this [0]. The ZKP part is a bit of a WIP and there have been some questions about the quality [1].
[0] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/faqs/eu-age-verific...
[1] https://proton.me/blog/eu-age-verification-app-hacked
It’s quickly being understood as a ploy for mass surveillance.
We're approaching forty years of this:
> The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools.
> The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
It's so tiresome. It never stops...
sometimes it's true. We ruined the brains of a whole generation of people. Should we stop doing that? If so, how?
Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?
Which generation of people and with what? Kazaa or porn? I presume the former because the latter is about as old as the civilisations.
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Dear goverments, if you care about KIDS, provide them a separete internet outside of ICANN with mandatory ID. Let the rest of the people create an anonymous, adult internet with no ID's.
So Tor?
No. Separate of ICANN. Their own network. Like Yggdrasil, but ID checked.
The ongoing refusal for parents to parent necessitates a shift in their legal liabilities.
Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.
Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics.
It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better.
It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.
You mean targeting with ads, sucking into feeds, making kids harm themselves and making money on this with lip service about corporate responsibility?
Sounds about right.
you dont need to buy your kid the internet.
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Yeah but don't expect much sympathy on a forum full of uber rich folks whose very income is directly tied to the same revenue streams you mention.
I love freedom as a general principle, but internet 2026 is a undefendable cesspool of amorality, scams and worse. We are not in the 90s or early 00s anymore, and never will be again that era is gone.
They will always have reason. If it wasn't kids it will be national security or women....
EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it.
Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd.
I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need.
In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it.
Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops."
Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.
You are missing half of the story. This is not “caring legislators punishing big bad tech”. This IS big bad tech. Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. More than wanting to get kids addicted, Big Tech and the intelligence community wants perfect observability into online activities.
This is a win/win for big tech. If they don’t get age verification, they can keep getting kids addicted to propaganda and consumerism. If they do get age verification, they get to see what everyone in the world thinks and is interested in, all linked to government ID.
Edit: the one outcome big tech does not want is anonymous age verification. This is technologically extremely possible, but that would be a lose/lose for big tech because they would lose kid (aka future consuming adult) addiction AND lose perfect tracking linked to government IDs.
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This kind of restrictions expects account control to work. For example, parent's account & separate child account on a device. For the same reasons you describe, it will be ineffective: not tech-savvy. Children will use their parent's/grandma's account on TV and phone, one that has long been verified as "adult" despite the Youtube recommendations consisting of 6-13yo content.
If there were an organic push by parents, they would be happy to buy and promote products today, without waiting for legislation to catch up. Where are these local parental control products?
Speaking of social media and Youtubes of the world, why can't I, as account owner/parent, totally blacklist some "recommendations"?
Age verification is not a fit tool for content filtering. Users want the latter, but get switcheroo'd into the former.
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This is just the latest incarnation. They’ve already used the same tactic successfully to remove other freedoms not related to tech. Just compare the stories from older people about their childhood experiences (when they’re being completely open and honest) with the way children are raised now. My own parents did things that would get them on a terrorist watch list nowadays like building explosives and home made mortars or even just walking through town with a shotgun to go down to the creek for duck hunting at the ripe old age of 13 (with no adult supervision).
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The median age of a youth extremists is 19 [1], with the mean being ~20 (study rounded up).
The main issue with this bill is that it requires a huge cost in civic freedoms, with questionable benefits to societal stability. Not only do most youth extremists first offend past the threshold this age verification would catch, this legislation lets big tech off the hook for designing addictive algorithms in the first place, since "there are no kids on the platform anymore, and if there are, they're breaking the law".
[1]: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1057610X.2025.2...
> Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring.
It is far more common for that child to be targeted by parents, and maybe by people they know in person, especially because of the lousy social environment their parents have pushed them into, and therefore to have limited offline support systems, and you are now trying to take away all they do have.
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The logical conclusion is to shutdown Meta, Youtube, TikTok, Twitter to name the biggest offenders. And why on earth would algorithmic manipulation, brain washing and exploitation of adults be allowed via the same platforms?
I am not disagreeing with you, but the conversation to be had is far, far wider than "think of the children!". Part of any deal would have to be: privacy of citizens is not a business model. But then you are facing the full might of Corp Inc, including their legislative powers.
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The truth hurts and you're getting downvoted for it.
The public at large have real issues with the current state of the internet and people here don't want to hear it or address it so we get this.
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This is an outrage zone. Leave your rationality at the door please.
The true solution to these problems is to be a parent. If you don't have the time to be a parent, then don't have kids. If you have kids, it's _your_ responsibility to keep them alive and healthy, both mentally and physically.
> Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds
> Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective.
No access is the solution here. Tools are not expected to be perfect. The railing on a balcony is there for accidents, not to stop you from jumping off headfirst.
> Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764."
Take away their internet access. If your child spends 90% of their time on phub, _take away their internet access_. If they spend 90% of their free time doomscrolling, _take away their phone_. If they need Internet access for school work, the can either do their school work at school, or you watch them do their schoolwork, or you find someone else to watch them do it. If you cannot do this, then you cannot be responsible for them and they should be removed from your care. This is basic mental health.
> That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so.
This isn't a third party policing the industry, this is telling the industry to police itself...by reaching inside my pockets to check my ID. Invasive security like X-ray machines at the airport aren't there for _your_ safety (regardless of what they say), they're there for _everyone else's_ safety: we're making sure you don't kill others.
> I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers.
> That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately).
That's a different issue, and it's also being addressed by legislation in some places that actually care (not in much of the US, unfortunately).
Privacy can be taught. We don't anymore. Nobody objected when platforms like Facebook started requiring real identities, but the simple answer to this is to not give out your information.
This is something that is the parent's responsibility.
We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
The right way to age-restrict is for parents to configure certain devices as kids devices, and then it would be easy for any service to know if they are communicating with one of those devices.
This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.
btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?
Banning smart devices from schools seems the way forward.
What kids get to see at home is up to the parents.
same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up
Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children.
They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984.
Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy.
Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID.
Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases.
All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit.
What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
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De-fund education and encouraged so called "laptop classes", also mandated online classes in the covid-period.
btw, what have governments done in the past 2 decades to improve children's mental health?
I remember when having a phone in school got it confiscated, now I see videos of teens with their phones within class are heavily normalized.
Once again banging my “there’s already an age check to get online and it’s the adult paying the ISP bill” drum.
Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.
And all age-checks will be identity-checks.
Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.
Isn’t this already a thing because it requires an adult and a payment method to get a connection to your house.
I’ve already stated who I am when I paid.
It really should be as simple as that, which proves all these regulations are really there for something else.
This should be up to parents to parent. If their child has social media, or viewing sites that are for adults then the parents should be fined. In the US every weekend teens are shooting each other, i think we have bigger concerns than them being online
One could implement this at browser account level or even at OS-level, but no, let's just ask all the websites to implement a new service for ID check. Or let's ask all the websites to spam users with the never-read cookie usage request.
We are such a smart species.
Or not implement it at all...
What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.
Yep, it'll either be connected through your own internet passport, or it'll be connected through a separate permit which is tied to your own passport.
In the end the monopolies will be the big winners.
I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on?
The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway.
Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.
Anything to protect identities online is valid. I wonder how many apps and websites will have to do or implement age verifications ? And how ?
Your ISP will eventually require a new protocol that can hold your digital ID in every packet to access certain content and you'll have to upgrade/migrate your OS if you want to view p0rn etc.
One step closer to the great exile from the clearnet. I'd say "accelerate".
History rhymes.
They killed Socrates to protect the youth of Athens.
No age checks on bbs
This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with AI. And to be fair to them, I don't really know of a better solution for what is coming... As much as I hate it.
How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise.
The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.
If it has nothing to do with children, then why is it named the KIDS Act? Are we being bamboozled? And you are IN SUPPORT OF that? Am I taking crazy pills?
I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity.
Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"?
I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the world's social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here either.
I like to look back in history for parallels. In 1912 the USA required that all radio transmitters be licensed. There were classifications established for commercial and amateur stations. So at that time Feds understood the power of giving citizens the ability to communicate with the masses.
Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world.
The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.
> It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this
As others have said, there is a coordinated push to drive this legislation everywhere. There is no fight in nation states. Just capitulation.
There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.
It's not a technology limitation as you say. The issue is a psychology problem. How do you keep a nation all playing on the same team, so to speak, when there are an infinite number of contradictory voices screaming at them?
My observation is that a society is based on some common ideas, many times myths, but without those common threads you can't make a civilization. This is why dictatorial regimes shut down open internet access rather quickly. They know it will undermine and/or destroy their control of the masses.
You still got CB, FRS, GMRS, LORA, several ISM bands, etc.
There's no big conspiracy here, just a limited amount of the spectrum.
Remember the guy who had an entire island and all his friends literally have had no consequences? You really think the age checks will do what is advertised? Lmao
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health
I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
What you're describing isn't a cancer to children but a danger to _people_, children or not. Children being children, they're sometimes less able to recognize danger ahead of time, and they're also more likely to get their kicks from sending each other there (I know I did). This is also not inherent to the Internet, however. "Stranger danger" warning exists for a reason. What we need to do is teach children that just like you wouldn't follow a random stranger into their house, you also shouldn't click random links. You also have to make the safe place dedicated for kids into a place that they actually _want_ to be (think neopets in the 00s), and then you don't have to put your resources into preventing them from leaving.
Maybe www users do not need "platforms" run by third parties, usually in Silicon Vallley, who conduct data collection, surveillance and advertising services as a "business model"
What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms"
No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley
Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general
The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services"
There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online"
Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1
If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict
The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable
The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies
1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service
> What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms." No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad
I would love for people to stop using the evilcorp platforms. But what will actually happen is that normal people will just scan their IDs and continue as before and only weird geeks will refuse. Normal people will continue posting valuable information on YouTube, Reddit, Instagram, etc. and it will become increasingly impossible to access any of it without scanning your ID.
Just a story from Germany in early 2000. I had a website and just installed a php script to have a forum on my website and just forgot about it. Today, I could do the same, but I had a 24/7 job to monitor everything someone writes there because it could bring me personally into jail. The same with the comment section of my blog. Thats the reason why this big platforms exist and are used. Because no one other than they want to take the risk. At least in Germany are not much people that want to do that.
Theres this new form of technology that is allowing decentralized actors to publish information without government oversight.
It’s called the Printing press. And yes, there was a giant moral panic about it at the time that basically split Europe in half.
Yet, today, we would find it absurd to ban children from reading printed words. Book bans are often the most opposed policies by all sides when polled.
The fact we’re looking to block children from the modern equivalent is the most classic example of a moral panic I’ve seen.
The “social media” millennials remember from their youth where they saw all the parties they didn’t get invited to…doesn’t even exist anymore. The social graph is dead, it’s all just short form TV now.
The stupidity of this panic narrative is tremendous. Instead of attacking/regulating the algorithms (the problem) we’re banning children from all information and creating a global surveillance dragnet for all adults.
Do bother to write your representatives.
I'll see your "government wants biometric surveillance" conspiracy theory and raise you a "pedofiles want to keep kids on social media" theory.
Age verification makes it easier for the bad guys to identify and groom children without adults finding out. Sting operations are that much harder if you have to convince the surveillance capitalism machine that you're an actual child, not just your target.
Only if the bad guys are the ones you're verifying to, isn't it?
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TFA:
> We’ve seen this movie before.
...which one? 1984? The Terminator? The Truman Show? The Matrix? Minority Report? The Social Network?
Who wants this?
All governments in the world, both sides of politics.
It's for the kids, you understand - to protect the kids.
There is no more noble purpose than to protect the kids.
Only a monster would not want to protect the kids.
Kids want it themselves. All popular people want it too. Imagine if we don't do this for the kids? Either this or kids will get hurt. All my friends want it too. One eastern country didn't protect their kids and look where it's at. This is the only way to save kids and we need to act fast! You should rather be against child labor than this.
Tried to collect more logical fallacies here.
Think of the children [1]
[1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...
It's by the kids (the goats).
"kids" is just another word for "people" by the way - everyone is a kid, and everyone is an adult, except for people who die very young. We should not make the mistake of thinking of them as two separate independent categories of people.
Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870
They're lobbying FOR it?! I thought this would hinder them along with everyone else
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Parents who want to raise healthy children.
Politicians who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children.
Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development.
Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time.
The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist).
App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
Anyone who wants to centralize power: so big tech, big government, big corporations, and big dummies who think this is progress
These people are around you.
Watch this "regulate 3d printers because of children" hearing: https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285
Normal people that call themselves good names like "moms for actions" drag us into this totalitarian hell.
Government
We need opt-out clauses in taxes, so we can vote with our wallets if regular voting isn't working..
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The GOP. This is part of Project 2025. They want to outlaw porn.
> Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.pr...
Unfortunately I don't think it's that cut and dried.
Here is the list of cosponsors in case anyone was curious if their "representative" is on the list https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors
A lot of it would go away if they just stopped consuming it. They consume it at least as much as anybody else. The only difference is the self loathing and belief that they need to be - and are qualified to be - the moral police.
Why not just outlaw sex? If looking at sex is illegal they might as well go all the way.
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IIRC the onlyfans creators were deemed the desired kind of immigrants. What’s the plan here, lure them in and throw them in jail?
If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.
Here's my working and cheap alternative that respects privacy: Don't do it!
Seriously now, if you give in to demanding people, they will just demand more. Appeasement does not work.
To be even more specific then: Working and cheap alternative to the very real problem that this solves. It's not a made up problem, even though the current proposed solution was just shopping for a problem to solve so it could sell itself.
I was a bit upset to see vitriolic opposition online to systemd adding a field to store, entirely locally to a Linux system, the user's age.
I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
Alternative what? Government?
Isn't knowing if someone is above or below a certain age already privacy invasive if one chooses they don't want to share that? At least under GDPR age is protected as an indirect identifier.
toy story 5
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Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s
This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term:
This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL
They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!!
Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not:
* of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE
* of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn)
* or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids.
Really, why doesn't actually matter too much.
The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news.
They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind)
We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices.
How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons.
These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.
Anom caught way more E2EE terrorists than any other attack, and it wasn't even an attack on encryption.
Sounds great. What have you done?
I've been involved for years. Local politics are actually interesting and fun. Just look up your local party HQ.
Always remember Hanlon's Razor and the Golden Rule (for the other team too)
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Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.
You're distorting pretty hard about what happened there (mister random numbered throwaway account) but even if you weren't, that is not the definition of fascism.
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agreed
Why is it flagged?
This would be amazing .
Folks saying "kids will find a way" yes but the social norm of them being looked down upon certain online content would make it so they view it less as its not a norm. Kinda how NSFW content is right now, nobody whips that out unless they are in private...
Just put the age verification in the browser already.
Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.
USB anal probe can be integrated the same way.
Exactly! Websites should be able to tell apart lgbtqa+ people by probing their anus for traces of cum lol /Sarcasm
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Or we could have UBI and parents could parent their kids without corporations babysitting for them.
UBI isn’t enough — they will just raise prices.
We need social programs like social housing, universal healthcare, free education, and universal food stamps. We need to actually use the abundance of resources we have to meet our fundamental needs (shocker I know).
Wouldn't corporations still declare war on parents over their kids?
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What you describe, but at the OS level, is already the law in California. We got angry about it a few months ago when it passed, do you remember?
Note that California AB1043 isn't actually age verification; rather it just requires the OS to ask for your age, not check it.
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Wrong. Try again.
Parents won't parent without a change in incentives.
That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.
Age restriction puts the burden and punishment on citizens.
Your proposal to punish parents does the same.
How about a solution that puts burden on corporations for once?
That's great messaging, but what exactly are you materially proposing that's different?
If you make corporations liable for minors using their product, they're just going to require identity verification to use their product, and we're back to effectively the same proposal, right? Unless I've misunderstood you.
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Because corporations don't have children?
Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
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Bingo. And now GP should go look who is behind age verification and ponder why they'd be pushing for this if it didn't benefit them.
This is very "war on drugs" coded, but to extend the metaphor a bit:
Meta here is the heroin cartel. They're a publicly traded company, have offices all over the country, and have mountains of evidence sitting in moderately well secured cabinets. Why should the government go after users when it could more easily go after the producers?
Comparing Social Media to Heroin seems quite hyperbolic to me as someone who has had people in my life die of opioid addiction.
Social Media isn't even as bad as Tobacco I'd say let alone Heroin.
I hope someone punishes your parents for letting you on here.
Since the beginning of the computer age kids have found ways around parental controls. I'm very skeptical that it's a good idea to punish parents for that, especially since the kids are likely more tech-savvy than the parents.
And, in many cases, "parent" singular. Putting a single mom in court, in jail, because she works 2-3 jobs and her kids are more knowledgeable than she is about computers? C'mon.
You're not putting her in jail for having kids smarter than she is. You're telling her that if she can't parent, then she can't have kids. Having kids is a responsibility, not a reward, and that responsibility is more than just having money to pay for their food. If you can't afford to take care of your kids, then you can't afford to have them.
This applies to more than just tech and money: being unable to give your kids attention because you need 3 jobs to pay for them is just as bad for the kids as being unable to give them attention because you're busy gambling or a drug addict (it does makes a difference to whether you're a disgusting person, though).
If this was true, then the "parents should parent" camp doesn't have a valid argument. Practically speaking, if parenting to this level of involvement is not possible, then why do they keep pushing for it as a solution?
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That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.
There's a big difference here, in the US anyways, neither alcohol nor nicotine have first amendment protections. Basically all content delivered over the US does.
That's a much thornier legal issue
But isn't putting something behind an age gate similar in concept to putting it behind a paywall? The speech is still there, whatever it may be, just has conditions for access.
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What content shouldn't children be accessing? Is the content a 7, 11 or 16 year old shouldn't access different between age brackets? Who makes that determination? Is this access restriction at the whole site level, or per-post? Does safe-harbor apply, or is a site-operator liable for age-inappropriate content it hosts for its clients? On S3, for example, is each object tagged with an age category, or would it have to be a totally separate S3, like GovCloud?
It requires manual moderation. Companies like Facebook, Google, and co. have spent much effort telling you that's impossible. In fact, that is a type of half-truth that is a lie. The full truth is that it's impossible _at their scale_.
Their business models require little to no human moderation, because it simply doesn't scale (for their business to stay profitable).
Personally, my feeling is that if you can't take care of your product, you should go out of business.
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
No it's like the publisher of the adult content magazine being liable if an underage person buys the magazine. And due to burden of proof they require all stores that sell their magazine to make a copy of your ID and send it to them along with a recording of you providing the ID at the counter, some stores may require your address, iris or fingerprint scan.
Actually not to them through them to one of the few ID verifier 3rd parties that now receives a big portion of the records of anyone that buys adult content in any store with any publisher.
Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too.
At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
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they literally do that though. They don't all just look at your ID any more, some scan it with a scanner or phone and that literally does what you just said. Paying with a card also does it.
> vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification.
You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
In time, this will be used to shape what people are "allowed" to think. Porn will gradually be purged from the internet and then go away entirely as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
Then people who are neither of those things will start to be denied jobs and loans. Politicians that don't fit the mold will stop winning.
This is about turning the US to Christianity. (Read: this is really about controlling the massses and using religious fundamentalism as a tool to do so.)
Technology is the perfect tool for control. Just as we were becoming a liberal/libertarian society and letting people live their lives how they wanted, the wrong people started using technology not as an enabler of free minds, but as an inescapable straitjacket.
You've read 1984, right?
The sensors have been widely deployed. The internet will become your Big Brother. You won't be able to buy, sell, or even move between state lines without being in the good graces of the state.
Be a good citizen and comply.
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
I don't think this is a good assumption. It's not uncommon for stores to scan your ID when you buy alcohol.
> This proposal puts your name right next to the category of porn you're into, which will be a great way to coerce all those politicians into voting for the "correct" bill. Would be a shame if they found out a state senator watched porn, so maybe they'd better vote yes on the proposal.
This is not quite how typical systems are structured. Rather, the service provider outsources the age assurance to some third party Age Verification Provider (AVP), which then just returns an age estimate or a yes/no. Commonly, the AVP will have a stated policy that they don't share your identity with the client.
Obviously, you have to trust the AVP to comply with this policy, which is not ideal. There are approaches (e.g., zero-knowledge proofs) that provide some technical privacy protections, but they're not currently in wide use.
Note: this is not an endorsement of age assurance; I'm just trying to clarify the situation.
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
Yes you do, if they scan your ID with any technology they're uploading a picture to that company's server. If you use a payment card then your bank and the card network also know.
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Age verification can be done by a third party, so that the online service isn't provided with any details of your identity, just that you passed an age verification check.
But if you're still worried about online pornographers getting a copy of your identity, maybe don't use their websites? It's an easily avoidable risk. Perhaps use your imagination instead, or read an erotic novel bought in cash from a second-hand bookshop, or something like that.
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> as the US becomes more fundamentalist and Christian.
As Christian I would say "more fundamentalist and less Christian". I am not sure this is religiously based. We have similar things happening in European countries that are not religious. Its a moral panic and "think of the children".
> You don't wind up in a database for buying alcohol.
My (just turned 18) daughter said a pub in the UK scanned her driving license so they may well be connecting to some database before letting young people buy alcohol. IIRC the EU wants its age verification app to be used for things like this.
This is a time of "first they came for the....".
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Nah, it should be like in California. When you set up an account you should put how old thr user is, and websites should get a header that says whether it's over 18 or not. No ID checks, just good parenting.
Aims aside, did you even read the article? This will mostly end anonymity online and require heavier policing of content.
A child might see something they shouldn't walking down the street, strolling thru the park, visiting the local zoo, or visiting an ice cream parlor. Should those places be requiring identification and hiring extra security guards to wander around making sure nobody is saying it doing anything politically objectionable?
Let's not accept creeping digital tyranny with self-assuring complacency... call or write (preferably snail mail) your congresspeople!!
Why can't we talk about the topic that is in front of us instead of making absurd comparisons like hiring security guards to check ID to enter parks?