[athrowaway3z]

I bought a bag of chips without having to show my ID.

There is a big difference between: Government demands every website to have age verification, and government supported scheme by which service can opt into age verification.

As of now, American private spyware is actively filling the demand.

I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case.

I don't see it.

The only viable solution for the future of privacy is to not be dependent on the giant platforms in the first place.

[SoftTalker]

Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children. Yes parents have a role here but we live in a society and we depend on/demand everyone doing their part. We (the tech sector) made our own bed here.

[simoncion]

> Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children.

Nah. Parental Controls are baked into every major consumer OS. If government cared about giving guardians the tools needed to care for the vulnerable ones they're responsible for, they'd require those parental controls to be beefed up [0] and that it be a requirement that online services and both local and remote software be required to honor the restrictions required by those Parental Controls.

Instead, what we get proposed is a system that cares very much about how old you are, and not one bit about the things that one's guardian understands one needs to be protected from. This system will work for some under-eighteens, but it will fail for many others, as well as every single dementia-damaged elder or brain-damaged/developmentally-stunted adult.

What's being proposed is absolutely not about protecting people... if it were, the mandate would be to beef up the existing fully-anonymous systems, rather than requiring identifying information from users.

[0] ...I mention this because I often hear in Internet discussion that these controls are insufficient, not because I have personal knowledge that they're inadequate.

[microtonal]

Nah. Parental Controls are baked into every major consumer OS.

Even the parental controls that are there are a train wreck. Our kid has an iPhone and the parental controls have all kinds of weird issues like, you give them 15 minutes of WhatsApp daily. First time on a day they start WhatsApp it says that all their time is up. Or suddenly they cannot run an application that was permitted by a parent. Then you uninstall and install the app again and suddenly it works.

It is unusable.

There web is also a huge hole in all of this. A lot of services you can also use as a website. A whitelist is too limiting and a blacklist is a daily task to maintain (and would require spying on your kid).

I also prefer to avoid age attestation altogether, but I am also not sure what the solution is. I think many people do not realize how much social pressure there is to use certain apps/games and how bad parental controls are. Yes, we say "no" to a lot of things, but you cannot say "no" to everything. Missing certain cultural touchstones (certain TV shows, certain games) makes your child an outsider.

[simoncion]

> Even the parental controls that are there are a train wreck.

As I said:

  If government cared about giving guardians the tools needed to care for the vulnerable ones they're responsible for, they'd require those parental controls to be beefed up...

> There web is also a huge hole in all of this.

and as I went on to say:

  ...and that it be a requirement that online services and both local and remote software be required to honor the restrictions required by those Parental Controls.

I expect that you don't, but if you'd like to argue that it's impossible for the government to do either or both things, then I'd argue that it's impossible for them to make age and/or ID verification work.

[SoftTalker]

I agree... the government's plan (as usual) misses the mark and probably won't solve the problem. But the reason the government is getting involved is precisely because parental controls (if any) that were delivered by the platforms were too hidden, too complicated, and had to be set for every app or website instead of once on the device and have that enforced on everything.

[joquarky]

That is the superficial reason that government is getting involved.

If you want the real reason, I'll provide a hint: it aligns with the underlying goal of DOGE.

[simoncion]

> But the reason the government is getting involved is...

Nope.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

Parental controls, at minimum, need to be unified. I should be able to deal with the Xbox at the same time as the iPhone. Need a new standard. I need to be able to whitelist and blacklist times and dates, drill down into particular apps/games/services with some decent granularity, do conditional whitelisting, etc. I need a big red killswitch for these right at the top of the parental control app.

Parental controls aren't baked in, they're bolted on and half-assed. One of them I've noticed over the years... I can't disallow Plex except at the app level (outside of Plex entirely). I can't easily give access to the educational libraries, but disallow it to the entertainment libraries. There are a million little anecdotes like that, because no one gives a shit about the problem.

Many parents, I think, are left with all-or-nothing choices. And it's not long before the reddit crowd starts insinuating that the reason your kid doesn't have a phone is so they can't call for help... from you.

It's a big clusterfuck.

[simoncion]

> ...starts insinuating that the reason your kid doesn't have a phone is so they can't call for help... from you.

I mean, parents, are -far and away- the most likely folks to abuse a kid, followed by friends of the family and close relatives. Stranger Danger was always fake, and teaching kids to be afraid of every adult who's not a family member is -and continues to be- a fantastic way to perpetuate child abuse.

But. Internet trolls are gonna troll and are best disregarded. If those folks seriously live in an area where an abused kid can never physically go to a teacher or other responsible adult for assistance, I'd recommend that they get the fuck out of whatever hellhole they're living in.

[CircuitSeuss]

So what you’re saying is… the social media platforms/ tech sector needs to take basic measures to make their platforms less exploitative for all users regardless of age? I’m sold. What sort of incentives do you think would be the most effective motivation for platforms here?

[SoftTalker]

Ideally? Doing the right thing. But that's too much to ask.

Ending section 230 might be a good start. Make platforms responsible for the damages done by whatever they distribute.

[izacus]

> I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case.

The issue is that a lot of voices you hear are from a big country which voted for fascists and those people now somehow think that technology will save them from the government they created. But that's not how it works unfortunately.