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by Animats 34 days ago
Maybe age assurance should be in the display. The display's camera has to verify the age of the viewer to display adult content.

That might be simpler. Estimating age with a camera is already common in China. Cameras are cheap, and displays now probably have enough processing power to do it locally.

Will work for TVs, too.

5 comments

Again, the point of this legislation is not about protecting children. It's about ending anonymity on the web.

Any solution that cannot be evolved into "we must know who you are before you can access the web" will fail at the gate.

This is an alternative to use as a talking point against that.
Yes of course, let's add a government mandated camera to every display that won't be abused at all. And of course this will also need the display connection and the rest of the PC DRM'd to hell so can't trivially spoof any of this.
> And of course this will also need the display connection and the rest of the PC DRM'd to hell so can't trivially spoof any of this.

That's already in place. That's how High Definition Content Protection (HDCP) works - DRM in the display.

Kids have already found that drawing a false mustache on themself works to defeat age checks using a camera.
Your comment is constructive but I think it would be difficult for me to disagree more. Perhaps we should stop having a moral panic and realize that a few bad actors are pushing these laws in an attempt to dodge responsibility. Let's instead ban automated advertising targeted at an individual level as well as black box personalized "engagement" (ie outrage) algorithms.

It would probably also be a good idea to find a way to ban gambling mechanics in games because if we recognize casinos as vices that lead to widespread social dysfunction and that children have no business whatsoever interacting with them then it follows that gacha games are very clearly an end run around the spirit of the law.

Why don't you teach your children instead? Seems to have worked well for the last millennia.

Or did you have a guard posted at every door at your home?