Comment by freedomben 6 days ago
It may not be effective in the long term, but I think it's very much worth doing. The privacy nightmare of uploading government docs is appalling and should be resisted by all who can, so I think you're doing great work. If it provokes regulators to push harder, they might just get enough attention from voters to motivate a change. That would be my hope anyway
The solution to spam is that everyone replies to the spam and engages up to the point that human labor is required, thus making it financially impractictable
The solution to this problem is not to provide YOUR ID but to provide AN ID, again and again, once per day. Again - cannot scale if a manual check is done by a human somewhere, flipside if it's fully automated now it's game-able
This is the AI we need.
Detect or tag an email as scam -> forward it to an AI agent that will keep the scammer conversing as long as possible.
Basically a tarpit solution but for actual humans.
Interesting idea. If you're of age, then arguably there would be no material deception from using a fake or borrowed ID to prove that you're of age.
I don't believe for a second that this argument would stand up in court, but it would at least be a rational form of protest against having to identify yourself.
> More and more sites (especially adult ones) are now forcing users to upload IDs or selfies to continue.
> they might just get enough attention from voters to motivate a change
Unfortunately, guaranteeing anonymous internet porno is a terrible political beachhead to motivate "voters" to do anything.
You don't have to sell it like that. The bill that needs to be passed is default presumption that all websites on the internet not explicitly marked as such and who voluntarily accept a higher legal burden and standard of moderation may contain content not suitable for children. And that is up to parents to control their child's internet access to limit their usage to only these sites.
Because I don't actually care about pornography, if it magically disappeared I wouldn't really care, it's all the other "not suitable for kids" content I care about that will get caught up in these laws. I don't want to give gross concern troll political groups moralizing about their precious hypothetical children the legal tools to ban what they don't like.
Ive had massive amounts of trouble convincing people that pornography is just the tip of the iceberg. That's why it's such an effective tool for broaching massive-scale surveillance: the architects of these laws have said that they want to be able to police all content with these laws, and anyone who tries to speak out against them can be painted as a pervert who hates the safety of kids.
You're asking for them to set up a system that won't be effective.
>And that is up to parents to control their child's internet access to limit their usage to only these sites.
This is an entirely unreasonable expectation on parents. I control web access at home, but I can't control it at school, or at their friend's houses. Nor do I have time, nor do I have access, to exert control over all the systems they come in contact with (even without their own device).
>it's all the other "not suitable for kids" content
Like what? Explicit violence?
Even in the age-verification world you were never safe against friends' houses; my parents bought me porn and took me to a sex shop to pick out toys when I was a teenager. I can't begin to tell you how mortifying that experience was in the moment but in hindsight my parents were just recognizing that teenagers are horny and need an outlet for that. If I were a teenager today I know for sure they would have given me their IDs. And schools have web filters right now today so you don't have to worry about your kids getting access there.
> Like what? Explicit violence?
I find this comment puzzling, you present yourself as someone who desires age restriction of adult content but at the same time only want it for pornography and can't even name other content unsuitable for kids?
Profane language, violence, content about alcohol, content about drugs, content about smoking, blood & gore, "disturbing" content like liveleak, horror, sexually suggestive clothing like titty-streamers, sexually suggestive situations, sex education resources, proana eating disorder content, content about guns and weapons, hate speech, content about suicide and self harm, content depicting and glorifying crime.
When it comes to curating a kid's online experience porn tends toward the bottom of my worry list.
Oh yeah, that IS a good point, this verification technique is even stupider than CC number validation in the late 90s!
Then again, these laws aren't about censoring children's access, they're about censoring EVERYONE'S access (and it blows my mind that conservative leaders will come right out and say it, but the average layperson doesn't seem to care or comprehend what a massive slippery slope censorship is -- porn is just the start)
Because there are so many explicit Bible verses[1], require ID verification to read scripture (online at least) and get the religious on your side!
[1] For example Ezekiel 23:20
Even if this was a good idea, ID verification technology should not be outsourced to private parties. This is a service governments themselves must provide. I shouldn't need to upload an ID because the government already has it!
If they simply wanted age verification, the dumb and lazy way is to SSO through a government managed portal with OAUTH2 and you only share your age with the third party. You do a one time account setup (you already have to do this in the US for many government services at the federal level) with age verification, that's your gov portal login. This means the government will now which naughty sites you visit of course, but like I said, it is the lazy approach, and if you think about it, if they respect the laws then a law can be passed to prevent them from storing or using that association, if they didn't, they could still sniff your traffic and wiretap you.
A slightly smarter approach would be to directly auth against a government portal and be given a 24h expiring code for age verification, and the government will publish an updated list of codes to trusted businesses. Those codes could be leaked, but making it a felony should deter most cases, because who wants to go to prison to let some kids watch porn?
Smarter people than me can come up with smarter solution, that is really my point. Involving third-parties and requiring you to upload documents is done either out of extreme incompetence or opportunistic malice by elected officials (bribery).
Every possible solution is terrible, many people have thought about this and nobody has found one that isn't.
The "24 hour code" one you suggest is something the EU is prototyping. Since there's nothing stopping an adult from sharing their code with a minor, or even code-sharing (or selling) websites to pop up, they want it to be bound to a particular device. So what they've done is added integrity checks to the app, so you can only run it on a locked down phone.
Want to run GrapheneOS for privacy and security? Or use an unofficial ROM to get updates on a phone the manufacturer stopped supporting? Just want to uninstall the bloatware and spyware the manufacturer installs? Want to use Linux? Have an old computer without a TPM? All of that and more - congrats, no "adult content" for you.
And no, it's not "porn", it's "adult content", which is a much broader and blurrier category. Is discussion of sexual orientation or gender issues adult content? Sex education? Medical information about "private parts"? News articles mentioning scary things like rape?
This is bad technology and it should never be developed. Do Not Create The Torment Nexus.
South Korea has implemented something similar, but through private corporations, not directly by the government.
When you sign up with a South Korean online service that might contain age-restricted content, you provide your name, date of birth, and phone number. The service operator uses a special telecom-provided API to have a 6-digit code sent to your phone. (The code is generated by the telecom, not the service operator.) When you enter the code, the telecom confirms the name and date of birth. No need for random online services to ask for government IDs, because they're allowed to pass the burden of proof to telecoms who have already verified it offline.
You could probably do something similar via banks, schools, the social security system, or any other regulated industry that has KYC rules.
> the dumb and lazy way is to SSO through a government managed portal with OAUTH2
The weird thing is that UKGOV already has this for the NHS - my GP's app uses access.login.nhs.uk to log me in. That could easily verify my age to another system.
(Admittedly it's not sufficient for the wider case because not everyone is registered on nhs.uk but it does show that UKGOV has the capability to do this.)
Imposing a policy on the whole internet in order to make it safer for children is like imposing a national 4mph speed limit on cars in order to make it safe for children to walk to school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_traffic_laws
(personally I think there's a lot of non-sexual material which is bad for children but not covered by age verification, like Andrew Tate, but that's impossible to define or enforce)
I hope you understand that every single work-around you see popping up is a result of your support of censorship and verification policy. *Your* support is going to push children onto more dangerous sites and expose their private browsing data to honeypots as they seek ways around this.
If my children were older, I would immediately be educating them on the dangers of this policy and of the dangers of seeking ways around it.
I confess, as I type this, I have a lot of anger at the dangers you're putting children into.
Absence of parenting is a bigger threat than privacy. I accidentally agree with you, even if you're wrong.
I understand being a parent is scary and stressful. I wish I could tell you that goes away, but it doesn’t. However, your children, I hope, will spend far more of their lives as adults than as children and I think you should worry a lot more about what type of world you’re helping to create for them.
Raising children is not a risk free activity. Parents shouldn’t follow their children 24/7, even if they could. Your children, by accident AND through their own curiousity are going to be exposed to things you don’t think they are ready for. You can’t stop that, even in a perfect world. Prevent and delay it as best you can, sure, but the best protection is internal. Instill in them the ability to make good choices, build trust and confidence and be someone they can talk to about it when it happens.
There’s nothing new here. Nothing special about the internet. Parents were saying the same thing about us when we were children and none of their controls were effective. We were still exposed to some things before we were ready. Those kids with shitty parents (and even the ones with good ones) are going to get around any such restrictions and expose your kids to things and your kids might expose them to things as well.
Stop denigrating non-parents’ opinions. Not only do they have a stake in the situation but you seem to forget they were also children too. And before you write off my opinion the same way, my children are adults.
Are you sure it's not you, a parent, whose opinion might be irrelevant? I mean out of you and non-parents, you are the one who has an extremely deep and instinctive emotional attachment that might cloud your judgement and affect your ability to think rationally or objectively on such a topic.
Does that argument work in other cases? "Sure it's insert bad thing, but if you were a parent, you'd understand. I'd do _anything_ to protect my lil one"
No, being a parent doesn't make your opinion more relevant really.
Sounds like offloading bad parenting onto others, you're supposed to communicate with your kids about safety, there are solutions to restrict their devices to make the impulse control barrier higher.
If your kid goes out of their way to use a third party device without age restriction you can't stop them if they're determined either way, and no matter how right you think you are it still doesn't warrant destroying privacy for EVERYONE.
Nice assumption! Unfortunately, your mind reading skills aren't the most perspicacious. I actually have five kids. How many do you have? And how old?
Turns out that just being a minor doesn't make you technologically incapable. My 16 year old learned how to use VPNs and torrents when he was 12. Unless you're prepared to force everyone on the planet to use government or big tech controlled everything and ban terrifying technologies like open source, it's not going to be hard for them to work around them. Maybe we should have government cameras in all of our homes with AI constantly observing, transcribing, and recording everything we do or say. We could even hook up an MCP server to law enforcement so the cops can be sent ASAP upon any violations. A robo-car could show up within minutes and the cameras could announce that you must get in. We could start with forced re-education, and escalate to imprisonment on multiple offenses or if the severity of the violation exceeds some threshold. Might make sense to just have all the kids taken from home at birth and raised in a safe government run rearing house. Then we could make sure they're getting well educated in the manner that our rulers at the time desire. Trump would make a great father figure and example right? No? Why don't you want to protect the children? Is there anything not worth doing to protect the children? Won't somebody please think of the children?
It's a great idea to get rid of, I'm shocked a company is this brave to do this. It's not in the interest of any adult to upload their ID so the government can track their web browsing. I didn't want to expose my kid to porn when they were 5, somehow it wasn't a problem because the avg browser use was guided by me, but also the browser blocked porn. When they were a bit older, a teenager, I also lightly guided their computer use.