alt Hacker NewsI feel like all of these laws are being designed backwards. Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion.
Requiring my kids' devices to advertise their age (or their age "bucket", as if that was a meaningful difference) to protect them is not doing me or my kids any favors.
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> Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion.
If the intent were to actually protect children, then this would be what was done.
"Protect the children" is just a subterfuge to get electorate support for voting for the foundation for a "1984 thought crime" style monitoring of the internet.
Can we extend that beyond just parental controls? I'd love to permaban 90% of the internet from ever reaching me. But the laws are designed backwards because they're probably written for someone else's benefit.
If this age verification stuff ever becomes plausible we always have the option of distributing actual Linux ISOs over bittorrent. Failing that, source code in RAR'd archives distributed across IPFS nodes and Tor. I feel like many of us would welcome the challenge if it were under better circumstances.
I'm now pretty convinced that this is the best argument for persuading non-technical and non-internet-privacy minded people why this is a problem. It's hard to explain all the technical factors that make it impossible to implement without compromising privacy... but it's pretty easy to get them to understand the real intent. If you start them thinking through what mechanisms would make sense _if_ the original premise truly was protecting kids from content they aren't ready to see, it's easy to arrive at that answer, and equally easy to see why "everyone must provide their ID so we can verify their age" probably comes from other motivations.
They're actually designed quite well for the intended purpose: mass surveillance and suppression of speech.
Don't ever for one second pretend this is about anything else.
This is definitely not about "protect the kids" or age verification, this is a stepping stone to full identity verification to use the internet at all.
The idea of a 'user agent' where the 'device owner' decides 'what should be displayed and how' is ancient history, grandad.
Modern social media is delivered through 'apps' which are like web browsers, except without ad blockers or privacy settings, and with push notifications to make them more addictive, and they only show one website, and they're each 5x the size of a web browser for some reason.
> I feel like all of these laws are being designed backwards. Content providers, like MPAA films, should have to identify what sort of content they are providing. Then I can give my kids a device configured to allow some or all of that at my discretion.
This was tried in the past:
I think you’re missing the real purpose vs the stated purpose.
The point is monitoring everyone, age verification requires you to share who you are.
Or anyone else!
This isn’t for the protection of kids. It’s for the protection of profits by surveillance capitalism.
It seems like after Epstein was gone a lot of politicians in many countries suddenly want to identify children, take photos for "age identification", and their ages and what apps they use. Very strange.
How dare you try to use a system that we've used for generations!
Did you read the law? It actually imposes very (in my humble opinion) good rules on the content providers, specifically social media. We know why social media is addictive - the personalized feeds are highly optimized to extend usage time, with no amount of time being "good enough." Social media sites would be banned from using this type of feed, limiting it to feeds of content you've subscribed to or requested only. Instead of seeing mainly influencers and viral videos, people might even start seeing their friends' own content.
> Requiring my kids' devices to advertise their age ... to protect them is not doing me or my kids any favors.
Idk about you, but it'd be doing me favors because my kids will not be physically able to use the most addictive platforms that exist today in their current form. It would be a major disruption to the behavioral manipulation that Meta, TikTok, and X do.
Parents already have the ability to do this, at least when it comes to porn. The fact is that most parents aren't doing it. Hence the push for legislation that increase the uptake of content blocks for minors.
Having the ability to identify who is watching or saying what on the internet would be immensely useful to the government; the justifications are really meaningless.
Anti-money-laundering is a comparable field, as all the AML regulations and laws are ineffective at identifying money launderers, but they're wonderful for verifying (auditing and prosecuting) tax compliance.