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stego-techyesterday at 8:24 PM3 repliesview on HN

Good on them. Devices shouldn't collect any extraneous data by default other than that needed to fulfill a feature a user consciously selects, and that includes this stupid age verification spyware regimes are pushing.

An adult had to pay for the ISP connection; that's the extent of age verification needed. We shouldn't be demanding adults expose their identities to for-profit entities and surveillance states, so much as mandating for-profit companies make parental controls easier to use, more effective, and stopping them from harvesting data on kids in the first place.

Not every corner of the universe needs to be baby-proofed; we just need to build a society where parents are enabled and supported to be parents, rather than outsourcing such a critical role to strangers and/or devices so they can get back to work.


Replies

pxebootyesterday at 8:39 PM

> An adult had to pay for the ISP connection

In many countries, it is still possible to buy a prepaid SIM without any ID.

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loloquwowndueoyesterday at 9:12 PM

> An adult had to pay for the ISP connection

Ever heard of free wifi?

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charcircuityesterday at 9:09 PM

Apps requesting an age is not extraneous and there are many legal and safety reasons why an app may collect this information. If the operating system doesn't do it you run into the cookie banner situation where every individual site has to implement a dialog box asking the user instead of there being a standardized way to do it.

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