4 ms·

Anonymity No More? Age Checks Come to the Web

raxxorrax 5y ago
I am sadly in an old country that implemented these checks. Of course I won't validate my age and use different means to access the content. But it highlights why some countries really fail in the digital sphere. Youth protection is a problem on the net, but you will never make the internet child safe, so parental supervision is the only alternative or your child will get in contact with non-approved content. Sadly, some people believe a clean internet is desirable, so a lot of barriers will be put up completely neglecting the fact that the average 12 year old is probably even more proficient in evading these than most adults. This is the next bad development politics brought to the net after we now have a lot of region checks. Not a single problem was solved by this and not a single problem will be solved by age restrictions but will make usability worse. This should have been discussed and the problem should have been identified pretty easily. > In response to mounting pressure from activists, parents and regulators Thank you indeed, please try to think better... > People in Japan must provide a document proving their age to use the dating app Tinder Well, not everything is bad... > called for new rules to protect young people after a former Facebook employee said the company knew its products harmed some teenagers Ah, the "whistleblower"... How long do you think it will take until people evade to other platforms? The content on the web is user generated. Any chat can have content that isn't age appropriate. So either children get supervised, or there is just no protection. > developing programs to look for signs that users were lying about their age, like spotting when someone who claims to be 21 gets messages about her quinceañera. So tech companies will spy on text message of little girls. Great idea. Explaining op-sec to users that they should not give credit card information to random sites is suddenly deprecated. Although recommending certain VPN settings might be an alternative still. It think Freetube still works and there will be alternatives. As I said, this is not beyond 12 year olds.
- scantis 5y ago
  Well what is it? Youth protection or punishing them for circumventing age restriction and parental oversight? Who is the victim and who is the offender? The child exposing itself to the content or the internet not protecting it's content from the grasp of some user? Protecting the offender from commiting the offense seems kinda dumb. Do we as a society are responsible for crimes, because we don't prevent them? If a twelve year old wants to see some boobs, he will find a way. Making it more difficult will make it only more rewarding. We would have colonized mars by now, if it had the same motivational power...
  - dude187 5y ago
    > Do we as a society are responsible for crimes, because we don't prevent them? That's been the mentality shift since the covid shutdowns. It's a mentality shift on how to approach freedom "free from" instead of "free too" that will basically eliminate our system of positive rights if we let it go unchecked. You even see the same language in that article. "X needs to do more to protect Y from Z". It's an unrealistic demand that can never be satisfied, just so long as society has prior unwilling to accept any risk or any level of inevitable bad things happening. Rather than eliminating the stated problem, all this attitude is going to least too is a neverending erosion of our rights
haspoken 5y ago
https://archive.md/qcHA0 https://archive.md/qcHA0

I am sadly in an old country that implemented these checks. Of course I won't validate my age and use different means to access the content. But it highlights why some countries really fail in the digital sphere. Youth protection is a problem on the net, but you will never make the internet child safe, so parental supervision is the only alternative or your child will get in contact with non-approved content. Sadly, some people believe a clean internet is desirable, so a lot of barriers will be put up completely neglecting the fact that the average 12 year old is probably even more proficient in evading these than most adults. This is the next bad development politics brought to the net after we now have a lot of region checks. Not a single problem was solved by this and not a single problem will be solved by age restrictions but will make usability worse. This should have been discussed and the problem should have been identified pretty easily. > In response to mounting pressure from activists, parents and regulators Thank you indeed, please try to think better... > People in Japan must provide a document proving their age to use the dating app Tinder Well, not everything is bad... > called for new rules to protect young people after a former Facebook employee said the company knew its products harmed some teenagers Ah, the "whistleblower"... How long do you think it will take until people evade to other platforms? The content on the web is user generated. Any chat can have content that isn't age appropriate. So either children get supervised, or there is just no protection. > developing programs to look for signs that users were lying about their age, like spotting when someone who claims to be 21 gets messages about her quinceañera. So tech companies will spy on text message of little girls. Great idea. Explaining op-sec to users that they should not give credit card information to random sites is suddenly deprecated. Although recommending certain VPN settings might be an alternative still. It think Freetube still works and there will be alternatives. As I said, this is not beyond 12 year olds.

scantis 5y ago
Well what is it? Youth protection or punishing them for circumventing age restriction and parental oversight? Who is the victim and who is the offender? The child exposing itself to the content or the internet not protecting it's content from the grasp of some user? Protecting the offender from commiting the offense seems kinda dumb. Do we as a society are responsible for crimes, because we don't prevent them? If a twelve year old wants to see some boobs, he will find a way. Making it more difficult will make it only more rewarding. We would have colonized mars by now, if it had the same motivational power...
- dude187 5y ago
  > Do we as a society are responsible for crimes, because we don't prevent them? That's been the mentality shift since the covid shutdowns. It's a mentality shift on how to approach freedom "free from" instead of "free too" that will basically eliminate our system of positive rights if we let it go unchecked. You even see the same language in that article. "X needs to do more to protect Y from Z". It's an unrealistic demand that can never be satisfied, just so long as society has prior unwilling to accept any risk or any level of inevitable bad things happening. Rather than eliminating the stated problem, all this attitude is going to least too is a neverending erosion of our rights

haspoken 5y ago

https://archive.md/qcHA0 https://archive.md/qcHA0