[ranyume]

This might be off-topic but on-topic about child safety... but I'm surprised people are being myopic about age verification. Age verification should be banned, but people ignore that nowadays most widely used online services already ask for your age and act accordingly: twitter, youtube, google in general, any online marketplace. They already got so much data on their users and optimize their algorithms for those groups in an opaque way.

So yeah, age verification should be taken down, as well as the datamining these companies do and the opaque tunning of their algorithms. It baffles me: people are concerned about their children's DMs but are not concerned about what companies serves them and what they do with their data.

[LoganDark]

Monitoring children's DMs is the responsibility of the parents, not megacorps. If a parent wants to install a keylogger or screen recorder on their child's PC, that's their decision. But Google should not be able to. Neither should... literally anyone else except maybe an employer on a work-provided device.

[ranyume]

> Monitoring children's DMs is the responsibility of the parents, not megacorps

Absolutely. But what responsibilities do megacorps have? Right now, everyone seems to avoid this question, and make do with megacorps not being responsible. This means: "we'll allow megacorps to be as they are and not take any responsibilities for the effects they cause to society". Instead of them taking responsibilities, we're collecting everyone's data and calling it a day by banning children from social networks... and this is because there are many interests involved (not related to child development and safety).

[LoganDark]

> But what responsibilities do megacorps have?

They should have a responsibility of transparency, accountability and empathy towards users. They should work for the user and in the interests of the user. But multiple constraints make this impossible in practice.

[acuozzo]

> But what responsibilities do megacorps have? Right now, everyone seems to avoid this question

Clear, simple, direct: Whatever was required of The Bell Telephone Company and nothing more.

[da_chicken]

So there should be a human operator manually gatekeeping every individual request to connect with another endpoint?

It's a good thing those human operators couldn't listen in to whichever conversation they wanted.

[acuozzo]

Human operators were not required of The Bell Telephone Company by law. Bell switched to mechanical switching stations as soon as doing so was economically advantageous.

(Reconsider my post. I'm arguing for no regulation.)

[da_chicken]

You're arguing for no regulation and your example is one of the most oppressive and stifling monopolies in American history?

[lmz]

Sure. And "lawful access" intercept capabilities are also required of telcos.

[ranyume]

I'd say that at minimum social networks need to be required to show how their algorithm works and allow users control over their data. They must be able to know why a content was served to them. Nowadays social networks are so pervasive in society, affecting it and molding it to unknown interests, that this is the bare minimum for a free society.

Ideally, users should be able to modify the algorithm, so they can get just what they want, while simultaneously maximizing free speech. If something isn't illegal, it shouldn't be hidden or removed.

[acuozzo]

> social networks need to be required to show how their algorithm works

Hypothetically speaking: What if it's a neural network in which each user has his/her own unique weights which are undergoing frequent retraining?

Would it not be an undue burden to necessitate the release of the weights every time they change?

Also, what value would the weights have? We haven't yet hit the point of having neural networks with interpretability.

Wouldn't enforcing algorithmic interpretability additionally be an undue burden?

> They must be able to know why a content was served to them.

What if the authors of the code are unable to tell you why?

[BlueTemplar]

The use of black boxes like neural networks is already effectively illegal in some governments for this very reason.

[drnick1]

> Nowadays social networks are so pervasive in society, affecting it and molding it to unknown interests

I think this is the real issue. We should free ourselves from "social networks" such as Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram and others. Even with direct messages truly E2EE, they create countless other privacy problems. They enable surveillance of people at scale and should be completely shunned for that reason alone.

[techpression]

I don’t remember reading about ads in phone calls, nor the complete mapping of customers behaviors to use in contexts not being the phone call.

The apples to oranges in this comparison is probably top five on HN ever.

[acuozzo]

> nor the complete mapping of customers behaviors to use in contexts not being the phone call

This is because the telephone system was regulated with wiretapping laws, among others.

> I don’t remember reading about ads in phone calls

See above, but also: Junk Faxes & Telemarketing/Robocalls.

> The apples to oranges in this comparison is probably top five on HN ever.

It all comes down to whether you view social media as a communications platform or a publishing platform.

The strict regulations governing the telephone system (see above) would adequately cover both with deliciously-antique turns of phrase like "wiretap" and "pen register".

[iso1631]

Whatever was required of the new york times and nothing more.

If the NYT publishes and advert or editorial, it's held accountable for the contents.

[acuozzo]

Touché!

The question is: Are social media services more similar to communications platforms or publishing platforms?

My reply obviously treats them like the former and yours like the latter.

[iso1631]

Posts made are like the letters page in my view, but even if you don't believe that should be controlled, when it comes to the adverts these publish surely it has to be the latter.

Personally I argue they are more like a newspaper as they are providing a platform. Your ISP is more like a phone company or postal service as they just transport packets from one person to another.

Cloudflare and similar are more arguable, but to my mind if you host a computer you are responsible for the contents stored on that computer.

[j16sdiz]

> But what responsibilities do megacorps have?

fake and scam AD.

they literally profit from those ADs. When the AD distributes malware or make scam, they don't take any responsibility

[KaiserPro]

> Monitoring children's DMs is the responsibility of the parents, not megacorps.

Yup, but the tools provided make that easy or hard.

But putting that emotive bit to one side, Megacorps have a vested interest in not being responsible to children. They need children's eye balls to drive advertising revenue. If that means sending them corrosive shit, then so be it.

Its a bigger issue than encryption, its editorial choice.

[iso1631]

I'm all for helping parents to do this. Any site requiring age verification should indicate this as a http header or whatever, and the browser I allow my child to use should respect that and the parental controls should be easy for me to engage with

Many parental controls are massive pains to get working. Apple does fairly well (although I don't get a parental pin number to unlock the phone, which is normally fine as my child will tell me, but in some circumstances it wouldn't be), but does require the parent to be on the apple ecosystem too.

EA and Microsoft however are terrible, especially as it's likely the child will be playing fortnite/minecraft and the parent won't have ever touched it. I think with minecraft we had to make something like 5 or 6 accounts across three different sites to allow online minecraft play from a nintendo switch.

[gzread]

The simplest way that can work is for the child account to be linked to a parent account, and the parent account can see the child account's DMs.

[prmoustache]

I also think children do/should have a right to privacy and their parents do not have to know everything.

Kids should be able to write a journal or talk to friends with total trust that this information will not reach their parents.

[duped]

Parents shouldn't give their child access to a device that allows DMs.

That said, these platforms are making it impossible for parents to monitor anything. They're literally designed to profit off addiction in children.

[greygoo222]

Why? Plenty of children benefit from talking to other people. Some children need careful monitoring, and some children shouldn't be allowed to use DMs, but it's not universal and should be up to the parents.

[iso1631]

Control over who they can talk to (if needed), certainly monitoring of both who they talk to and in many situations what the contents are

At some point between the age of 0 and 18 the child has to be fully ready for an independent world. A cliff edge is a terrible idea, allowing 3 year olds unmonitored uncontrolled conversations with strangers is a terrible idea, but not allowing 15 year olds to talk to their friends is a terrible idea.

[DANmode]

> maybe an employer on a work-provided device.

The children yearn for the mines(?).

[baq]

Mega corps should be compelled to and rewarded for allowing parents to monitor their children’s dms.

[nandomrumber]

> people are concerned about their children's DMs but are not concerned about what companies serves them and what they do with their data.

Hogwash.

Where are these mythical people who aren’t concerned with both?

[ranyume]

> Where are these mythical people who aren’t concerned with both?

People don't care about "what companies serve them". They only care if the children see sexual content (or things considered deviant). Once sexual and deviant content is filtered, they're happy to give away their children's development to the company's algos.

In effect, the people don't want to concern themselves with what their children consume, unless they're outraged by things normally taboo in their age group. Besides, if everyone is in it "it's not that wrong". They seek reactive entertainment rather than proactive engagement in their children's development.

[jbstack]

> Where are these mythical people who aren’t concerned with both?

They're called politicians.

[Nursie]

> Age verification should be banned

Why?

> They already got so much data on their users

There are a variety of ways (see "Verifiable Credentials") that ages can be verified without handing over any data other than "Is old enough" to social media services.

[shakna]

Age verification obliviates anonymity on the internet. If everything you do, _can_ be tracked by the government, it _will_ be.

Allowing for more effective propaganda, electrol control, and lights a fire on the concept of a government _representing_ anyone.

[Nursie]

> Age verification obliviates anonymity on the internet.

How so?

Please explain in detail, because there are already schemes such as "verifiable credentials" which allow people to prove they are of age without handing over ID to online services.

[shakna]

Last time my government tried that, they failed. [0]

You need to 100% trust those verification services. And considering their success rate [1], you shouldn't.

[0] https://thinkingcybersecurity.com/DigitalID/

[1] https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide...

[Nursie]

> You need to 100% trust those verification services.

First link - mitigation: use a well supported standard like OIDC, not a home-cooked scheme. Duh.

Second link - this is part of the problem such schemes as verifiable credentials are designed to address, random third parties collecting ID they don't need.

Yes, any system needs to be executed well. Neither of these really display that.

[shakna]

If _the government_ can't be trusted not to use a dumbass scheme, then no, it isn't a duh moment. You don't exactly get to dictate how the government implements it!

The point is that systems today, aren't really well executed. So it is unreasonable to expect them to be well executed.

If you can't trust people not to build the bomb well - then don't let them build a bomb.

[afiori]

because most implementations are not going to be like that.

[Nursie]

In the context of "Age verification should be banned" though, we're already talking about legislative intervention. If there's no particular problem with schemes that are like that then we don't necessarily need a blanket ban on age verification.

Perhaps what we're really saying is "Ban age verification that collects lots of personal information".

Or perhaps we could distil it down further to "Ban unnecessary collection and storage of PII". In which case, Congrats! You've arrived back at the GDPR :)

Which I think is a good thing, and should be strengthened further.

(Also the other response to "because most implementations are not going to be like that" is "why not?". People are already building such ecosystems.)

[AnthonyMouse]

> If there's no particular problem with schemes that are like that then we don't necessarily need a blanket ban on age verification.

There is a problem with schemes like that.

The way computer security works is, attacks always get better, they never get worse. A scheme that nobody has found any privacy holes in when it's enacted will have one found a week after.

The way governments work is, the compromise bill passes if the people who care about privacy support it because then it has the votes of the people who care about privacy and the people who want to ID everyone. But then when the vulnerability is found, the people who care about privacy can't get it fixed because they can't pass a new bill without also having the votes of the people who want to ID everyone, and those people already have what they want. More specifically, many of them then have what they really want, which is to invade everyone's privacy, as they were hoping to do once the vulnerability was found.

Which means you need it to be perfect the first time or it's already ossified and can't be fixed. But the chances of that happening in practice are zero, which means it needs to not happen at all.

[Almondsetat]

Ok, and? Presenting your ID at a number of IRL estamblishments also heavily reduces anonymity

[gschizas]

The difference is that IRL establishments don't sell off that data to anyone else, nor do they have the ability to collate that data with data from other establishments to make a profile of you.

(at least not yet)

[fragmede]

If you think the nightclub that scans your driver's license magstripe isn't selling your data off, when they could be making money off of it? Between PatronScan,Intellicheck, Scantek, and TokenWorks, yeah a dingy bar where it's a dude visually checking isn't it, but a nightclub and quick swipe totally is.

[shakna]

But to get that ID from the bottleo, you need to hold them at gunpoint.

To get it from Discord you need to sneeze.

The internet has scale and availability, that physical locations do not.

[echelon]

It's a slippery slope.

This is the next two steps into 1984.

Once you start mandating this, there's no going back.

The next generation will start associating wrongthink with government IDs. (Wait, we already do that, right?)

[Nursie]

> It's a slippery slope.

Is it? I thought that was a logical fallacy?

> This is the next two steps into 1984.

How so?

> Once you start mandating this, there's no going back. > The next generation will start associating wrongthink with government IDs.

Could you provide some more details on why you think this? For a start I talked about a scheme in which you don't hand over ID.

[consp]

Slippery slope can be argumental if you provide the actual argumental reasoning for it as I was thought it could be used as deductive argumentation (though that does not say much). On itself it is a fallacy.

I don't see how verifiable credentials with zero knowledge proofs provide that however.

[sham1]

The Party doesn't care about the Proles, only the members of the Outer Party.

I think that it's rather funny that people like to appeal to 1984 as if the only point of Mr. Orwell was that surveillance is bad, missing the entire point about stuff like the control of the language or the idea that the only self-justification of the (Inner) Party is power for the sake of power (see also: The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism).

I'd even go as far as to say that if "telescreens are horrible" is the only thing that someone takes away from 1984, they've frankly missed the point.

[fragmede]

Unfortunately, having totally missed the point, they still get the same number of votes as you do.

[drawfloat]

Read another book.

[pjc50]

The problem with this discussion is that this is a wonk solution for wonkish times. You're trying to thread the needle between various reasonable compromises. Ironically due to social media, that is simply not how politics and lawmaking works any more. Instead it's an emotionally driven fight between various different sorts of moral panic, and the only option is to get people more mad about surveillance than "think of the children".

You might be able to get somewhere by getting a tech company on your side, but they generally also hate adult content and don't mind banning it entirely.

(people are not going to get age verification _banned_ any time soon! That's simply not going to happen!)

[Nursie]

> You might be able to get somewhere by getting a tech company on your side

There are quite a few already looking at this, some in the context of providing secure verification services for the existing and upcoming social media bans etc.

Unfortunately I agree with you on the rest - facts and pragmatism have fallen by the wayside compared to feels and shouting.

[Dban1]

I thought it was common knowledge to just set your birthdate to 1970 or something

[input_sh]

You can make it a nice round 2000 these days.