[armchairhacker]

Age verification is fine, at least in theory. It’s the implementations that are bad.

More and more people agree that kids shouldn’t be on modern social media, including me. But most people also agree that mass surveillance is dangerous. The solution is to propose ways to block kids from modern social media (that actually works) without mass surveillance.

Better parental controls, more parental education, and site-specific age verification (Facebook etc. can require whatever PII they want to use their service) backed by incentives (whitelisting in parental controls, promoted as a “safe site” in parental education). Are these enough? Maybe not, but maybe mandatory ID and blocking VPNs aren’t enough as evidenced by people bypassing them. These (first three) are progress, that don’t yet require mass surveillance, and we can first see how effective they are then go from there.

I wish people wouldn’t say “age verification is bad”, it’s like “anti-work” and “defund the police”.

[sunaookami]

No, age-verification IS bad and is a slippery slope that will always lead to surveillance. If we don't stop this now everything will get worse. And trying to lump this in with other extreme rhetoric doesn't help. The answer is and always was "better parenting".

[armchairhacker]

Everything good is a slippery slope: every step in the right direction is bad if you overshoot. Maybe age verification isn’t needed, and educating parents is important; but without more, they’d have to be ultra-helicopter parents to stop their kids from accessing social media.

At minimum, parents need other parents in their local community to be educated; and better parental controls, so they can give their kid a phone and computer (for good reasons like safety and education) that won’t let them access social media (even unintentionally, some parental controls are that bad). Both can be done without laws, only social pressure and at least the potential for new (locked-down) devices.

(In theory, kids should also be prevented from buying unlocked devices, like drugs and alcohol. And showing the local cashier your ID to buy a generic device (whose packaging is indistinguishable from other device packing, so it can’t be traced to you afterward) is technically a form of age verification. But in practice this may not be necessary, because hardware is too expensive for most kids.)

[ian_holt]

And in addition to that, it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing. As far as I am concerned most governments stick their collective noses in where they are not required. And, yeah, I do agree that kids shouldn't be on social media. Having sid that, even some adults shouldn't be on social media...

[p2detar]

> it is the role of the parents to be having the say in what their kids should and shouldn't be doing

The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle. So yes, I do agree that parents must talk to their children and explain what social media can lead to, including the dangers of internet predators and so on. But no, I don't agree that parental control is a general solution that will work for all kids out there. It never has.

[ian_holt]

<The only effective tools parents have is to disallow or remove devices from their kids. It will work at the beginning but as they grow up it will become impossible, since at some point kids get influenced mostly by their friends' circle>

Very true & having 6 kids of my own, I know that only too well. I still don't like the idea of Mr Government trying to tell me how to raise my family. Here in Australia the government seems to like that a lot...

[maigret]

Well the thing is that people often love when the government tells other families how to live, and partly for good reasons including enabling basic education for everyone. Partly the wants of the parents and the needs of the kids might be at odds. Society is a complex construct.

[pocksuppet]

Governments are required to enforce that devices must give the choices to parents though, right? Otherwise devices won't give the choices to parents because it's more profitable if you don't.

[jenscow]

I won't disagree with that. And "better parenting" is a solution. However, what about the children who don't have the advantage of "better parenting"?

Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary

[platevoltage]

If parents don't want their kids on social media, get them a dumb phone, or use the parental control features. Maybe some parents don't care, and that's their prerogative. None of this is about protecting children, it's about "protecting" adults from "bad ideas".

[djaro]

The problem is many parents will not do that. Do those children then deserve to be taken advantage of by social media corporations?

Generally, things that are harmful and addictive such as alcohol, cigarettes and casinos require age verification. We dont just put the onus on parents because a child with bad or absent parents still deserves to be shielded from alcoholism at 12 years old.

[platevoltage]

Social Media companies taking advantage of people is a whole other conversation, and isn't just an issue with minors.

[chadgpt3]

So are gambling and cigarettes. As a society we've decided a reasonable compromise is that you can get the freedom to harm yourself at a certain age where you're assumed to understand that you're harming yourself.

[coldtea]

>Rightfully blaming bad parents is reactionary

So? Not all reactionary (if you mean "conservative") takes are bad. Sometimes they're better than the alternative: accepting bad parenting as some default and working around it with technological restrictions.

[Nasrudith]

"Reactionary"'s origins as far are pure political DARVO and gaslighting anyway. It originated in the French revolution and basically declared "You are morally wrong for being horrified at my horrific and evil actions." That origin tainted the term for me personally.

The actual modern reactionary meaning of "referrant to a mythical past as a standard" always felt like it deserved a better term. But nobody would get what you were saying if you called them a "fairytaleland resident" or similar.

[pocksuppet]

I always read "reactionary" as "oh no, someone did something! now I have to react by getting angry!" and it seems to fit well enough.

[insane_dreamer]

The slippery slope was ad-sponsored social media in the first place. Ban it at the source rather than trying to fix downstream problems.

[intended]

HN is filled with people who are on the other side of an "internet best practices" information divide.

For everyone else, the internet is already a shit show and a half. They want control, because it means putting a stop to being predated upon, or more nihilistically, harming the firms that are harming them.

I don't know how to let other commenters see how bad it is, or make the gulf in view points clear.

[Nasrudith]

Giving up control is always a mistake - they never do what they promised and you never get back the control. There is never a refutation to this fac: just a childish "But I want it!".

[pocksuppet]

I agree. That's why the government shouldn't stop toddlers from buying guns.

[notepad0x90]

How is that the answer when even parents don't have the right tools for this. are parents supposed to surveil their kids 24/7 and monitor their internet traffic?

Why is the internet special, do you also believe physical stores shouldn't check for ID for cigarettes and alcohol, because the solution is better parenting?

[jchw]

I never had to get my ID checked to be able to talk to strangers.

[SiempreViernes]

Did you to talk to the strangers in the night club when you were 11? Or were there several completely separate reasons for why you couldn't?

[jchw]

The internet has explicitly R-18 chats. Random IRC channels are not nightclubs. I am moving the goal posts back, if you touch them again we're escorting you off of the field.

[chadgpt3]

Most things that happen at nightclubs are not R-18 either.

[notepad0x90]

in real life people can see you and determine your age at a rough estimate and be able to tell if you're an adult or not. Do you support having to turn on your webcam and show your face in real time then, to talk to strangers on the internet? many age verification sites are doing just that.

[jchw]

Did you mean to reply to me? I evidently do not support the age verification regime, so no...

[notepad0x90]

maybe?

I get that you don't, all I'm trying to do (and failing) is have a discussion, apply critical thinking and be able to articulate a position. I'm neither fully opposed to it, nor fully in support of it. I'm always seeking nuance. I've found out lazy reductionism is the cause of much suffering and loss in the world, I can be bothered with the tedious nuance, especially for a topic I know a thing or two about in my own view.

Unfortunately karma systems on sites like this are not conducive to such a discussion. I want to challenge your opposition to the age verification regime, so that I can be better informed, and you will stand on a more firm ground, articulating your views with solid arguments instead of "i don't like it".

[RiverCrochet]

I think minors shouldn't be in any store period unless accompanied by their parent or guardian.

[notepad0x90]

you feel the same way about websites then?

[RiverCrochet]

Yes.

But parents should be penalized/inconvenienced if they can't control their children, not the store/website.

In some states, bounty hunters can find violators of various laws and bring them to the state in exchange for money. Allowing bountry hunters to be on the lookout for underagers trying to enter stores and report them could be a profitable endeavor for both the bounty hunters and the state, providing a market-based incentive to protecting children.

Stores/websites should only be penalized if they are specifically targeting and inviting children to enter.

Certainly there are some types of stores that are very safe for children to enter. So, the exception should be structured like this: "Stores that only sell these items mean that parents will not be fined if children enter it unaccompanied." Additional conditions could be attached, e.g. "a safe store shall verify the ID of anyone purchasing alcohol." And maybe other benefits can be attached to being a "safe" store, like tax incentives, etc. If the store violates that condition, then it should pay a fine or lose any other benefits of being considered a "safe" store. But a business should have a right not to be a "safe store" and the duty to prevent children from entering those should 100% fall on the parents.

[notepad0x90]

But in real life, if you sell cigarettes to a 5 year old, you'll probably go to prison.

Isn't a reasonable approach to the internet, to have a protocol by which individuals can prove they have a state issued identity that proves they are above a certain age, and nothing more than that to the website? That way the website doesn't need to check anything other than presence of a cryptographic identifier and validate it. And parents as you noted are responsible, but only to make sure their state issued cryptographic secrets can't be used by their children. it could be as simple as having an NFC capable state issued IDs that can do a challenge-response with the browser/os. We already sort of do this with EMV payment cards. Websites have to validate a payment card is authentic by asking for the CVV code for example.

[djaro]

Age verification has always existed in the physical world, such as at bars and casinos. I just dont see why the internet should be immune to real world rules we decided upon for good reason.

[zrn900]

> "better parenting"

This has nothing to do with parenting. It's surveillance. They failed to do it through child porn argument. They are doing it through 'social media is harmful for children' argument. People did not bite on the former. They ate up the latter out of hate for social media platforms.

[Hugsbox]

I don't believe children should be on social media. Some other people might not share that belief. Should be up to parents to decide what's okay for their kids, not governments or companies.

Age verification will always lead to more surveillance. People need to just be more mindful of what their children are doing online, maybe stop giving them smartphones, and just be parents.

[armchairhacker]

I don’t think social media is intrinsically bad, just the toxic popular social medias. Did kids in the 1990s with access to internet forums have stunted social development?

[reaperducer]

Did kids in the 1990s with access to internet forums have stunted social development?

"He's intelligent, an underachiever, alienated from his parents, has few friends. A classic case for recruitment by the Soviets." — War Games

More seriously, internet forums weren't designed to be addictive. They were designed to communicate.

That's the difference between the past and the present.

[api]

Old school Internet forums and sites were not designed to be addictive.

The "time on site" KPI and its variants is the root of all evil.

[lmz]

Somehow this "leave it to the parents" logic isn't followed when it comes to cigarettes or alcohol. Why is social media different?

[sundarurfriend]

Because the patterns of consumption and harm are very different. It's the constancy and immediacy of social media that makes up the major part of its harm. It's not something where a 15 minute smoke break or a weekend binge is the main mode of consumption and harm. So the parents have a lot more opportunity and power to handle it if they give it reasonable time and attention.

[chadgpt3]

Are 14-year-olds always with their parents?

[roysting]

I think you’re missing that this abdication of personal freedoms to the government in the form of government imposed restrictions on cigarette and alcohol sales is precisely how we’ve gotten to this point over time; arguably following a planned strategy. People who normalized prior subordination to government in the case like cigarettes, alcohol and other things; are now already even more primed to abdicate even more freedom to mommy and daddy government than the prior generation.

It seems clear to me that America is heading into an extremely repressive system where even the nominal use of America may just end up falling by the wayside within the lifetimes of some people alive today. Functionally speaking the, notional or spiritual death of America happened a very long time ago, probably 1840 but obviously no later than the outcome of the Civil War which turned a decentralized union of federated states that formed a republic, into a centralized dictatorial federal power and later the groundwork for becoming the empire we are only 55-80 years after the Civil War, depending on how you want to look at it.

I think people forget that there would have been people who experienced the Civil War that destroyed the central premise of the Constitution, that sovereign states join in a Union to cooperate, and the formation of the Empire of America by no later than the end of WWII.

Those things never happen abruptly, they happen in following a long strategic plan based on objectives not timelines. Part of such a plan is causing ever increasing dependence, deference, and subjugation to government, which is really just someone else’s control over you, the people who make up the “government”, instead of your own control over you. Part of that is giving the impression that money and daddy government will take care of the children, as a tool to psychologically manipulate people by hijacking their instinctual care and concern for protecting children.

It’s why and how they’re more pushing age verification, not ban for minors with similar criminal penalties for anyone who allows minors on the internet/social media. No, you as an adult need to confirm and tie your identity to the digital fingerprint that is tied to all the data that was and is collected about your activity over the last 20+ years … to protect the children of course.

It’s why some people refer to the majority of humans as cattle. You just have to herd them around and they moo and then start fattening up on corn instead of grass, just like the last generation did before they were harvested.

[squigz]

Maybe because they're not comparable.

[insane_dreamer]

By the same logic, we should allow the sale of cigarettes to minors.

[phatfish]

We don't let kids turn up to school drunk because they went to the cornershop on the way to school. I guarantee that would be happening if alcohol sales were not age gated and enforced by the government.

In the same way kids should not be infecting their minds with social media slop, or porn, or plenty of other internet content.

The only way this is stopped is when a social norm is created which shames all but the most negligent parents into compliance.

At the moment the absent and bad parents have all the power. Their kids scroll all night for memes, injest YouTube brainrot and turn up at school disruptive. Kids with responsible parents either want to that as well, or can't escape it.

Surveillance from age gates is a red herring. That horse bolted long ago. You are surveilled already by tech bros when voluntarily logging in, or by making yourself stand out a mile by using a VPN and a uncommon browser setup. This data gets handed to your government on request.

Having an anonymous VPN won't stop the tech bros or an authoritarian government forming, or bring one down.

People taking part in their existing democracy and maintaining the foundation of that is the best course of action. Raising a generation of kids not addicted to internet brainrot is a key part of this.

[Hugsbox]

So maybe there should be better education for parents. Maybe there's other solutions. I can't accept that the nanny state parenting our children for us is the way to go. If people are being negligent of keeping their children safe, maybe they should face consequences for that. The point is, the parents should be solely responsible for deciding what's appropriate for their children, and if they don't have the resources maybe that's something that should be addressed, or if they're not doing their job that should be addressed, but age verification just ain't it.

[chadgpt3]

That's contradictory logic. If you have to parent your children a certain way or else the state will take them away, then you aren't solely responsible, and the state is a nanny state.

[hydrogen7800]

Why isn't there a simple solution in the software world that's functionally equivalent to flashing your ID at the liquor store? They get the verification they need with no permanent record of your PII.

This can't be that hard. Can't I get an electronic certificate/flag verified by a trusted third party using my ID, where this cert retains no PII? This is what I come up with after not thinking very hard about the problem, and I can't be alone.

Maybe its naive to think that harvesting PII isn't the point.

[jsmith45]

In theory, sure, an identity verifier could issue you you a bunch of single use JWTs signed by them that contain `{"over18":"true", "nonce": 12748583..., "iss": "<issuerurl>"}`, signed by their key. A relying party just needs to know the public keys of all the issuers they trust, and can consume this JWT, verify it, and never learn anything about your IRL identity.

The important things are that they must issue a bunch at once. (Otherwise, correlating who you are becomes easy). They must keep no record tying nonce or the full JWT to an individual identity. Something user local or otherwise trustworthy (not keeping logs), needs to hold on to these, and send them out as needed, being very very careful never to reuse one (as that would enable cross site tracking). Lastly a relying party must be required to trust many issuers, not just those they are colluding with track users across sites with this.

The European Commission actually proposed pretty much exactly this system, also with a variation where instead of revealing the signed token, a ZSNARK proof (that you possess a validly signed token with the over18 attribute from a specific issuer) could be given to the relying party instead (to make it impossible for issuer and relying party to collude to release your identity). Many people here seemed to not like it.

[chadgpt3]

California just mandated a simple solution in this style.

[pocksuppet]

That's what was in the California bill that we all complained about until Linux got an exemption. We called it an age verification bill even though it has nothing to do with age verification, and was all about making sure every OS has a parental controls feature.

[reaperducer]

Age verification is fine, at least in theory. It’s the implementations that are bad.

I sometimes wonder what HN would be like with age verification.

[amanaplanacanal]

I doubt we have that many underage kids here.

[reaperducer]

I think you'd be surprised.

Also, imagine being able to filter posts by the age of the writer. I think it would be interesting to be able to compare the responses to a post by age.

Or to just filter everything by age, and view HN as anything from AI Hype Club to Graybeard's Tavern.

If nothing else, it would get rid of all the bots and AI nonsense.

[Hizonner]

> More and more people agree that kids shouldn’t be on modern social media, including me.

Has it occurred to you that nobody cares, or should care, about your opinions about what other people and other people's kids do? You and the "more and more" people who agree with you are cordially invited to fuck off.

> The solution is to propose ways to block kids from modern social media (that actually works) without mass surveillance.

The solution is for you to get over your bullshit, not to chase impossible pipe dreams.

[djaro]

> Has it occurred to you that nobody cares, or should care, about your opinions about what other people and other people's kids do?

Uhmm... Yes they do? That's... the whole point of living in a society? With laws? So we can collectively decide what is and isn't desired?

Children are also banned from purchasing alcohol or going to the casino. There are tons of things we collectively decided children shouldn't do.

[y0eswddl]

why aren't you using your full government name as your handle here on HN?

age verification is a cover for universal internet IDs. you'll never be able to go online and do anything anonymously again.