I think, the best way to keep children from dangerous content is large fines for parents, for example, $4000 for every adult video their child was traumatized by due to their negligence. 50% of the fine is shared with the person who reported the violation (including site operators). After all being a parent is a responsibility.
Such law would not cause inconvenience to normal Internet users without children, would provide additional source of income for vigilant people and underpaid school staff, and would result in much higher degree of compliance. Why you guys don't elect people like me.
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eszed
Of course they do. Only fools expected anything else.
Does else anyone remember the "age verification" on '80s video games? Some of them were hilarious. I think it was Leisure Suit Larry that asked multiple choice history questions that I guess were meant to be impossible for fifth graders to guess. I was the local history nerd, so I remember getting calls from classmates, like "we're trying to get into a game; when was JFK assassinated?" If I didn't know I'd ask my dad, who never knew he was contributing to the delinquency of (other) minors.
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spelk
In a similar vein: A while ago, Chinese adolescents were bypassing age restrictions for playtime in Mainland China by using the published national ID numbers of insolvent debtors (which are apparently published online to ensure that no financial institutions extend credit to them) to sign up for accounts. From what I understand, they started partially masking these national ID numbers in response to that.
Morromist
The next age verification tech will involve checking tallness so we'll have kids standing on eachother's shoulders in a big trenchcoat to do the very adult act of installing linux.
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zeec123
The result will be age verification with a passport or ID "to protect the children". Probably this was the goal all along.
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nick486
I guess thats one important upside of age verification systems I didn't think of. They encourage creativity and a healthy disregard for stupid rules.
codedokode
Is it possible to generate or edit video with AI to pass the verification?
fhennig
I don't want to give my ID to every service I interact online. But I also don't think it's reasonable to ask of parents to ensure their children aren't accessing age restricted content online.
What about liquor shops or strip clubs? They ask for ID, which makes sense; we're not expecting parents to make sure their children don't go into these places. But the liquor shop takes a look at the ID and then doesn't collect the data.
Being entirely against age verification is not a good stance I think, but we should definitely have a hard stance on the privacy issue. There are systems that preserve privacy while still making it possible to verify you're old enough to use a service.
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pkphilip
The governments know fully well that simple checks for age verification will be bypassed. So they will "fix" this issue by demanding a digital id.
kleiba2
They also use VPNs, as anyone would have predicted within two seconds.
Maybe age verification will encourage kids to be more social in person, because they’ll need to have at least two inside the trenchcoat.
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phyzix5761
What if politicians are creating these systems that are easy to bypass so they have an excuse for starting to officially ID everyone?
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TheServitor
I process the manual ID reviews for a small system. I don't get many, but I have seen some funny stuff. Last week a kid tried to use a still from a Spiderman movie.
sandeepkd
The only good justification of it can be that the companies can claim that the age verification was done as per Terms of Service, so in the future no parent or parent group can come after them for the content. Along with better targeted advertising by identifying the target audiences.
Logically parents are probably best suited to gate the content for their children how they see it fit.
raffael_de
I think the reverse Hanlon's Razor applies here:
"Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice."
The Helen Lovejoy argument "will somebody please think of the children" provided for the foot in the door. The intended outcome is that only iris scans will allow for full child protection ... and that was the plan all along.
If you’re in Canada please write your MP about bill S-209, which brings this nonsense here.
As someone on a tech forum, we’re the only people who can really articulate the issues with the age verification approach.
It’s really the worst solution to these problems with awful tradeoffs.
harladsinsteden
Life finds a way...
heavyset_go
Another step towards "Insert your verification probe to continue"
i_think_so
Well of course. What else did they expect kids were going to do? This whole idea was braindead from the start.
charcircuit
One big problem is that the verification is trying to estimate your age instead of looking up who is the actual person and then checking what the age is of that person. If the lookup returns that the face is that of a video game character it should reject as opposed to trying to estimate the age of that character.
I think, the best way to keep children from dangerous content is large fines for parents, for example, $4000 for every adult video their child was traumatized by due to their negligence. 50% of the fine is shared with the person who reported the violation (including site operators). After all being a parent is a responsibility.
Such law would not cause inconvenience to normal Internet users without children, would provide additional source of income for vigilant people and underpaid school staff, and would result in much higher degree of compliance. Why you guys don't elect people like me.
Of course they do. Only fools expected anything else.
Does else anyone remember the "age verification" on '80s video games? Some of them were hilarious. I think it was Leisure Suit Larry that asked multiple choice history questions that I guess were meant to be impossible for fifth graders to guess. I was the local history nerd, so I remember getting calls from classmates, like "we're trying to get into a game; when was JFK assassinated?" If I didn't know I'd ask my dad, who never knew he was contributing to the delinquency of (other) minors.
In a similar vein: A while ago, Chinese adolescents were bypassing age restrictions for playtime in Mainland China by using the published national ID numbers of insolvent debtors (which are apparently published online to ensure that no financial institutions extend credit to them) to sign up for accounts. From what I understand, they started partially masking these national ID numbers in response to that.
The next age verification tech will involve checking tallness so we'll have kids standing on eachother's shoulders in a big trenchcoat to do the very adult act of installing linux.
The result will be age verification with a passport or ID "to protect the children". Probably this was the goal all along.
I guess thats one important upside of age verification systems I didn't think of. They encourage creativity and a healthy disregard for stupid rules.
Is it possible to generate or edit video with AI to pass the verification?
I don't want to give my ID to every service I interact online. But I also don't think it's reasonable to ask of parents to ensure their children aren't accessing age restricted content online.
What about liquor shops or strip clubs? They ask for ID, which makes sense; we're not expecting parents to make sure their children don't go into these places. But the liquor shop takes a look at the ID and then doesn't collect the data.
Being entirely against age verification is not a good stance I think, but we should definitely have a hard stance on the privacy issue. There are systems that preserve privacy while still making it possible to verify you're old enough to use a service.
The governments know fully well that simple checks for age verification will be bypassed. So they will "fix" this issue by demanding a digital id.
They also use VPNs, as anyone would have predicted within two seconds.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn72ydj70g5o
Consequently, we're now discussing VPN bans for under 18 year olds <insert facepalm emoji>.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn438z3ejxyo
Maybe age verification will encourage kids to be more social in person, because they’ll need to have at least two inside the trenchcoat.
What if politicians are creating these systems that are easy to bypass so they have an excuse for starting to officially ID everyone?
I process the manual ID reviews for a small system. I don't get many, but I have seen some funny stuff. Last week a kid tried to use a still from a Spiderman movie.
The only good justification of it can be that the companies can claim that the age verification was done as per Terms of Service, so in the future no parent or parent group can come after them for the content. Along with better targeted advertising by identifying the target audiences.
Logically parents are probably best suited to gate the content for their children how they see it fit.
I think the reverse Hanlon's Razor applies here:
"Never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice."
The Helen Lovejoy argument "will somebody please think of the children" provided for the foot in the door. The intended outcome is that only iris scans will allow for full child protection ... and that was the plan all along.
Source: https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/online-safety-a...
Some more earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48017190
If you’re in Canada please write your MP about bill S-209, which brings this nonsense here.
As someone on a tech forum, we’re the only people who can really articulate the issues with the age verification approach.
It’s really the worst solution to these problems with awful tradeoffs.
Life finds a way...
Another step towards "Insert your verification probe to continue"
Well of course. What else did they expect kids were going to do? This whole idea was braindead from the start.
One big problem is that the verification is trying to estimate your age instead of looking up who is the actual person and then checking what the age is of that person. If the lookup returns that the face is that of a video game character it should reject as opposed to trying to estimate the age of that character.