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Google pulls up the ladder on open internet, pushes unconstitutional regulation

374 points by WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

cmiles74 3y ago
Maybe Google thinks that "age assurance" is a product they can sell? If it's required by state or federal law, other companies will have to pay for the service.
- 23B1 3y ago
  Naturally yes. Glue this to WEI and you have a perfect funnel into the forthcoming verification wars.
- sva_ 3y ago
  It seems like a bridge towards being able to pitch their Web Environment Integrity so that they can ensure the verification is not being tampered with. Coincidentally, that will also prove beneficial to their advertising business. Or maybe I'm overly cynical?
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  They already have to do it for age-gating youtube videos in some regions, like the EU. AFAIK, they want a CC number or phone number, neither of which really confirms your age.
coding123 3y ago
What are we protecting our kids from? If we coddle people too much we risk people not... talking to other people. That's already happening. Maybe instead of tech the world should be focused on physical things, like new innovations in building technology. We have so many homeless people, in my opinion, because we're constantly focusing our attention on tech - which is a skill that a smaller percentage of the population has a brain for. The trades need to come back, we need to beat SA in projects like "The Line" - and in the words of Joshua Weissman - But Better. We're at risk for just continued class divisions and potentially a war because we're turning a bunch of coddled spoiled kids into a millionaires that are being looked at with massive disdain. Maybe the internet should move back to being a background resource, not a precursor to ADHD.
- mattstir 3y ago
  There are certainly things that may be worth trying to protect children from online, like extremely targeted advertising that gets presented like legitimate content. Kids won't necessarily be able to differentiate between the two, and it's definitely not okay for companies to be tracking and profiling them like they do (but pretend to not be doing). A great example is reddit or instagram using the same algorithms that recommend content in their main feeds to also inject advertising. They'll claim all of that data collection is just to provide a "better experience", but advertising companies love it. I'm really not sure what else you're on about though.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Kids already see tons of ads at movies, billboards, clothes people wear. Those superhero movies are made to sell toys and games. Stores are setup for kids to pressure parents. Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids? Are we inventing problems? Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie. Adults and tracking is bigger issue, kids don't have positions in society to lose or secrets to keep or money to lose. What are we fooling ourselves into believing we are protecting again?
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      Ad targeting identifies a lonely person with self esteem issues. Tells them that they'll be more popular and attractive if they consume product. They consume product and of course it doesn't actually help, but more advertisements are already lined up to explain that they're still feeling bad because they need to consume even more product. The ads show unrealistically happy and attractive people, to reinforce the self esteem issues and encourage the consumption of even more product. This is a standard business practice for the advertising and marketing industry. It's evil.
    - mattstir 3y ago
      This sort of willful ignorance is disparaging to see. Surely you must see a difference between an ad block that's clearly differentiated from the main program (ads before a movie plays, ad breaks during TV) and an endless feed of content that has no clear delineation between 'content' and 'product sponsership'. You might well be fine believing that billboards are the pinnacle of advertising, but there's been about 160 years worth of progress in the ad space since those were the big thing. > Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids? Again, you seem to be either defensive or intentionally misconstruing the point. These types of problems shouldn't invoke fear in people. I think you're getting yourself too mixed up in the idea that [X modern issue] is fearmongering and that nothing bad ever happens. Kids are dumb and impressionable. If they spend 8 hours a day scrolling through an endless feed of cool posts featuring cool products being worn / used by cool people, they will absolutely get attached to the idea that it's normal and expected to have that thing. That's manipulative and disgusting marketing, and it's genuinely worrying that you don't seem to care at all. > Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie Again, intentionally misconstruing the idea... it's more like "kid spends 2/3 of their time awake being mined for data and having every interaction across every platform cross-correlated to ensure that *a company* can profit off of them". I suppose that's perfectly healthy and normal to you, that a company can know more about a child and exactly what they do and what they like than any human does.
dleslie 3y ago
Cynically, Google may be supporting this legislation because it believes that it will mandate that Browsers be secured from modification that could undermine the efficacy of the legislation. They have that Chrome change, whose name eludes me, which provides secure Browser validation to the host; this legislation would make use of that feature ubiquitous and mandatory.
- zerojames 3y ago
  Web Environment Integrity? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
  - dcow 3y ago
    Say a site uses WEI to block Google’s crawlers. If Google actually respected that then maybe it’s a fair playing field. But knowing Google they’ll issue their crawlers valid certs and create a huge dystopian nightmare.
    - extraduder_ire 3y ago
      IIRC, it's in the spec to have WEI fail some of the time randomly, so that sites are designed to deal with real failures. Though, that may just be in there to make the spec less unappealing.
    - google234123 3y ago
      What? Google has respected robot.txt for ever, why do you think it will change now?
      - ipaddr 3y ago
        It doesn't always and often returns with no agent from a google ip.
        notatoad 3y ago
mistrial9 3y ago
a fundamental question is "who, when and why can adults use the Internet while anonymous" .. followed closely by "who provides, checks and verifies identity including age"
- shafoshaf 3y ago
  I feel like anonymity is just a band-aid. Ideally we would have freedom and accountability. If everyone knew that I watched porn but respected by right to do so, that's the ideal. Without anonymity we would know that account is run by a bot or a foreign state. It goes to how homosexuals were forced to be underground for so many years (and still today for many) and if they were out of sight they were out of mind. That isn't equality if you have to have a really good way to hide. However, the penchant for people to be complete assholes to each other over things that are none of their business is real and a huge problem. So, yes it makes sense to be able to hide but, sadly, it doesn't advance the social contract.
  - toolz 3y ago
    In an ideal world we respect that what other people do is largely none of our business. I don't agree with any ideal that thinks everyone should agree on some set of rules and we respect anything that doesn't violate those rules. I think an ideal society has rich disagreement and a wide diversity of thoughts and opinions. With that diversity comes conflict which provides us all with opportunities to more deeply reflect on our own beliefs.
    - shafoshaf 3y ago
      I think that depends on the level of disagreement. I think gay people, women, and people of color should have the same rights as everyone else, which includes how they are treated at work. I'm willing to say that is a mandatory part of my social contract. Someone liking to dress in a cowboy hat, underwear, and playing a guitar in Times Square? Not my cup of tea, but sure, go for it.
      - 3y ago
nathias 3y ago
Google has been going down that path for a long time, they won't stop until the web looks like cable tv, every part infested with adds with content reduced to target the lowest denominator among the greatest number of people. It should have been broken up in smaller companies 20 years ago.
- gxs 3y ago
  I’ve been avoiding them like the plague. Thinking back years, going back to my first Debian install in 2000, in retrospect this is where things were always heading. It’s the same path every other industry has gone down, to ultimately yield all power to a few large corporations. The main issue with this is that even if you have a group of people passionately defending against this, googles attempts will likely persist long after any one person or group is no longer able to work against. On a side note, this is part of the reason why corporations were never intended to be allowed to exist as long as they do today, they were supposed to come with an expiration date. Not sure dismantling a company like Google is the right play, it just amazes me how much foresight people had 100 years ago and that we still let a bunch of those things happen.
gjsman-1000 3y ago
Here's a better compromise, if we must find a compromise, that Google won't be so in favor of: "No parent, or guardian, shall permit their children under the age of 13, to possess or easily have access to any device, which provides unfiltered and unrestricted access to the internet in such a way that said parent, or guardian, is not fully aware of each and every website that the child may access with said device." [As for anyone like, what about the vulnerable? There's this thing called a library, and don't tell me public schools don't have resources.]
- flenserboy 3y ago
  Ah, yes, the reintroduction of 3-channel TV. Progress!
darklycan51 3y ago
Google has lost all semblance of good faith from me, they are just intent on making the web their ads-infested playground
- moffkalast 3y ago
  When a company has a motto of "Don't be evil" and then changes it to something else... what are they thinking there exactly eh? Just saying.
  - akomtu 3y ago
    These "don't be evil" and "do the right thing" must have been taken from the well known buddhist story: "When a disciple approached the buddha, he asked to explain buddhism in one verse; the buddha answered: stop doing evil, start doing good and clean your heart - that's the religion of buddhas." However google here is that junkie who tattoed buddhists scriptures on his arms, but never bothered to live by them. He did the "don't do evil" tattoo when he was devising a plan to rob a monastery. That was his inner self tried to stop him. When he decided to take hostages, he added "learn to do good". Shortly before he decided to build a torture chamber, his inner self made the final attempt and made him do the "clean your heart" tattoo. Corporations are soulless creatures, and can't tell what's good and what's evil.
throwaway237289 3y ago
This is one of those things where it's cold practicality. A company realizes the political headwinds and has decided that it'll do its best with a bad hand. This is what leaders want? We'll throw our support behind the least bad option. But articles like this complain about the company, instead of the politicians. What a load of crap.
- tikimcfee 3y ago
  Are we forgetting who is paying the politicians and writing their bills?
  - SpaceManNabs 3y ago
    Government has legislature and litigation focused on big tech right now on multiple fronts.
    - sobkas 3y ago
      > Government has legislature and litigation focused on big tech right now on multiple fronts. If corporation gets a fine that's lower than their profits from breaking the law, then it's not a punishment but government getting its cut. Prosecuting few low hanging fruits doesn't make this administration any less neoliberal than previous ones, also remember that they will get prosecuted mostly for stealing from richer.
  - throwaway237289 3y ago
    Since you want to get to the root cause and we're talking about USA, I believe that would be the American people. Also - corporations are full of people. And those are all Americans. Even lobbyists are Americans. But we should do something useful, and we're looking for easier targets to focus our rage and aggression on. I recommend those being the people that explicitly have been given power. Based on what I know about the American constitution, I believe that would be the government.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Belopolye 3y ago
It looks like the direction we’re headed is a two-tiered Internet. The first layer will require your real world identity (more than simply your ISP knowing who you are because of billing) to access, post, download, upload, etc, which I suppose will first be required to access banking, social networks, etc, destroying anonymity. The second will be more or less what we have now, but my fear is that access to this layer will be restricted further and further until it goes the way of Usenet and ISPs either willingly (or by regulation) turn off access to it.
- gjsman-1000 3y ago
  I think there are actually several reasons why this is a likely direction: 1. Children (duh, this article) 2. Misinformation (accountability, no astroturfing) 3. Misinformation Robots (age verifying robots is a difficult task) 4. Malicious Robots (do you need Cloudflare if you have an Age ID Firewall?) 5. Scraping Robots (nothing prevents scraping like knowing who to sue...) 6. Hackers (nothing prevents hacking like knowing who to sue, even if it's only 80% of the time...) 7. AI Use / Abuse (anonymity is a dangerous thing with AI) Etc. To be honest, if I was an Age ID verification company, I'd be calling around to my competition to figure out how to develop some kind of interoperability standard; in the hopes that would make age-restricted services much more convenient and thus widespread. Now if they could get Billing integrated into the system as well, then we're cooking with gas.
  - Belopolye 3y ago
    8. Industry is desperate to destroy piracy. On top of all of your reasons.
    - gjsman-1000 3y ago
      Tragically, it works both ways. 8. Destroy privacy of anonymous users. 9. Increase privacy by preventing reposting (by robots or trolls) of information that a court has ordered suppressed. (Example from the near future: AI-generated revenge porn.) 10. Increase privacy by preventing companies like Clearview AI from legally getting away with murder of privacy. Edit for Belopolye's response below: Very good point; but that would require all websites to be in on it and not just a partial implementation. But the movie and video game industries would love that...
oh_sigh 3y ago
Just a general note, but everyone has their own view of what is unconstitutional, but really there are only 9 people with opinions that really matter.
- 23B1 3y ago
  While I appreciate the spirit of your comment, that's actually not true! There's an (admittedly winding and untested) route for The People to alter the constitution called an Article V Convention or 'convention of states': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendmen... I'm posting because a lot of people are unaware of this part of the American constitution, similar to how jury nullification is something 'they' don't want you to know about ;-)
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  If a set of basic laws can only be interpreted by professional judges, the laws are more or less useless. On the contrary basic laws should be a foundation of a social contract that hopefully most within a society agree upon.
jiveturkey 3y ago
> the company has now made it clear that it has no intention of being a friend to the open internet any more. It did that awhile ago with amp. > just because something is a good idea for companies to do does not mean that it should be mandated by law. like forcing use of USB-C connectors.
codedokode 3y ago
There is an easier way to protect everyone from kids. Make an OS-level setting ("show safe content only") that only parents can change. With this setting, the browser would open only pages that declare that they are safe for kids, by using an HTTP header (safe-content: yes). Any other websites are blocked by the browser. Make it a legal requirement for parents to set up this option for their children on every device they use. Make it illegal to send invalid "safe content" headers. Also, with "safe content" setting OS should allow running and installing only apps that are verified to be safe (for example, it should not allow installing messengers like Telegram or browsers that do not respect safe content settings). This way there is no need to verify anything and make life complicated for adult people.
- adverbly 3y ago
  Interesting idea... Opt in to opting out of adult content... Some potential issues: 1. Might be hard to enforce the safe content header... They have a hard enough time with copyright content, and there's a much larger financial incentive in that case. 2. Need to agree on what is safe and what isn't. Bit of a can of worms there...
  - codedokode 3y ago
    > Might be hard to enforce the safe content header... You don't need to enforce it. Sites without this header will not be accessible from a browser when "safe content" setting is active. > Need to agree on what is safe and what isn't There are ratings for games and movies, let's consider "safe content" to be a content which a 12-year old can watch.
    - gs17 3y ago
      And when sites outside of the jurisdictions that can take legal action put "safe-content: very yes" on whatever non-safe content?
      - codedokode 3y ago
        Let there be an government-assigned organization that verifies website owner, content and issues a cryptographic signature proving that the site has been verified. The browser shall not open any page without the signature.
firtoz 3y ago
Trying to look at the bright side: Raised barriers of entry means there will be improvements for services which can "help lift smaller companies up". For example, for finance, AML/KYC companies. Now I guess, for some internet services, "age verification" companies. This way age verification services may have some competition between each other and that can make it easier for people to do, and also cheaper for everyone to use.
yedava 3y ago
There's an easy solution to "protecting" children on the Internet. Let people and not companies decide what to view on a platform. Like Youtube can provide an option to whitelist channels or let users programmatically define rules on what kind of content they want in their feed. The downstream effect of this is that if some parents want to control what their kids see, they can just setup an account with rules on what content is allowed. Google doesn't need to appoint itself as a nanny. But then, such super easy technological solutions come in the way of selling people to advertisers. So here we are.
- extraduder_ire 3y ago
  I'm sad there's no other sites I know of, certainly not mainstream ones, that do moderation like HN does. I'm glad to see the [dead] comments on here, so I know what's current in not allowed and spam content. I think Scott Alexander wrote up a blogpost about the difference he saw between moderation and censorship. It's similar to what you suggested.
- 93po 3y ago
  I find it really sad that we no longer hold parents and communities responsible for just not. letting. their. kids. on. the. internet. Don't give your kid a smart phone. Don't let them use a computer unsupervised. Worried about them seeing shit from classmates? I think most schools these days don't allow phones during school hours, so just pick your kid up immediately as school ends and at worst they're gonna see 10 minutes of hardcore pornography per day but that's a pretty ridiculous assumption. Alternatively, instill good values and behaviors in your kid so that they will choose to avoid this.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    When there was one PC and one TV in the house it was a lot harder to hide what you were doing and parenting was easier.
    - makeitdouble 3y ago
      The big part of it though: the PC was basically a novelty, at a lower importance than the TV. 3 or more people could just take turn using it, no big deal. That ship has sailed.
skybrian 3y ago
Seems like this article spends more time telling you what to think than explaining what's actually going on. Is there a better explanation?
- g-b-r 3y ago
  The actual Google document is not very long or hard, just read that
sva_ 3y ago
So they're really going for that web environment integrity bullshit? And they're marketing it to politicians as 'protecting children'? Absolute scumbags if that is the case.
- mycall 3y ago
  Will Microsoft Edge support it?
narag 3y ago
Let me quote Nietzsche. "The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished —it is no longer secure in its instincts."
SanderNL 3y ago
This might be a threat, but I see weakness: Google is faltering. I haven't been impressed by them - and especially what they produce (their research looks cool, but is not going places) - in years and they are holding on for dear life. Producing new and interesting products is apparently no longer a viable avenue. They literally cannot do anything else but try and survive by throwing out the toys so nobody can play. It's a big boat and it takes a while to sink, but it will.
gamesbrainiac 3y ago
I might be a little dumb, but I genuinely found the article confusing. I have some questions nonetheless. What exactly is "Age Assurance"? Secondly, why would Age Assurance hinder new companies that want to create content platforms?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It's google's own terminology based on their proposal (PDF warning): https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/publicpolicy.google/en//resources/youth-legislative-framework.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/publicpolicy.goog... >Where required, age assurance – which can range from declaration to inference and verication – should be risk-based, preserving users’ access to information and services, and respecting their privacy. so it's purposfully vague. It can be anything from a checkbox you check saying "I'm 13/18/etc." to "we require a face scan or governent issued ID in order to verify you". If you believe their claim, they want to do something more towards the former except with 18+ sites. If you don't believe their claim, you probably veer more towards Techdirt's cynicism as it being sugarcoating for semi-invasive age verification: >But… it’s not? It’s basically lobbying for age verification, just in the guise of “age assurance,” which is effectively “age verification, but if you’re a smaller company you can get it wrong some undefined amount of time, until someone sues you.” I mean, what’s here is not “lobbying against age verification,” it’s basically saying “here’s how to require age verification.” ----------- >Secondly, why would Age Assurance hinder new companies that want to create content platforms? Regulation. the more you need to do to get your site off the ground (and make its money back), the higher the cost. Or if they ignore/are ignorant of it they can be sued out of the race. This can be good (GDPR requirements to protect privacy), but like everything we need to weigh if the effect is worth the outcome. I am admittedly more scrutiny on if every website over X size needs to make sure their site is "child friendly".
cvccvroomvroom 3y ago
Think of the children! Fuck Google and their inverted totalitarianism imposing regulator capture and Big Mommy.
jrockway 3y ago
I'm fine with age assurance. If you're under 13, you go to the post office to prove that you're under 13, they digitally sign some token on your phone, and then your access is restricted according to the law. If you are an adult who wishes to remain anonymous, take no action. Problem solved! It would be interesting to see how the reverse of this system is implemented; adults must prove they're adults before being able to access certain websites. What technical measures would allow this? Information can leak in HTTP requests and responses, i.e. "curl -H 'User-Agent: help me i am trapped at the bottom of the ocean' https://example.com https://example.com" before any authentication has taken place. Is an adult allowed to send that request to a child? Probably not! This would mean the system has to be implemented at a lower level layer; websites would only be served on private IP ranges, and you'd have to setup an IPSec tunnel or similar first to prevent that out-of-band leakage. (You can get more absurd; everyone has a /64 of IPv6 space for themselves, so you can use your source address as a form of intentional information leakage; 1:2:3:4::1234 is a 1, 1:2:3:4::4321 is a 0. This means that, legally, you would have to be careful about how you do the TCP 3 way handshake, because, as a middlebox, you can't prove that sending a SYN in reply to a SYN is not actually someone requesting adult content.) All in all, this seems technically impossible to implement, prone to making identity theft even more lucrative than it already is (don't reuse your ID.me password anywhere else, or some kid is going to use it to cheat in a video game and get you sent to jail a la South Korea), and unconstitutional ("prior restraint").
- johncolanduoni 3y ago
  I think you're overthinking this. You can just put the age-restricted portion of the website (which for some websites might be 99% of their content, but I think that's fine) behind a login page that verifies whatever age token you come up with. If the only information you can send to the website is your credentials, and the website can't send any "unsuitable" information to you, I'm not sure what the issue with allowing HTTP access is.
  - jrockway 3y ago
    Well, the government has to take action against you, the site operator, if you aren't enforcing the rules correctly. That means they have to think of every possible way to monitor the traffic, both in-band and out-of-band. They then have to do this for every site on the Internet. (Or sure, just selectively enforce it against whoever X says is a threat to their ad revenue today.) When you make something, you only have to figure out one way to make it work. When you try to secure something, you have to figure out every possible way the defenses could fail, or you've done nothing.
dclowd9901 3y ago
Can any modern journalist please just read the really quick AP style guidelines? It took me like 5 graphs before I actually understood what action google was taking. The initial bullshit hemming and hawing was excruciating.
- snek_case 3y ago
  I still don't understand what exactly is being proposed. Can you summarize?
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    It takes a while to get to the point but the article eventually gives one: >Last Monday, Google announced “a policy framework to protect children and teens online,” which was echoed by subsidiary YouTube, which posted basically the same thing, talking about it’s “principled approach for children and teenagers.” Both of these pushed not just a “principled approach” for companies to take, but a legislative model (and I hear that they’re out pushing “model bills” across legislatures as well). And if you want google's official lede: >Today we’re releasing our Legislative Framework to Protect Children and Teens Online. The Framework outlines some principles for laws seeking to improve online experiences and keep children and teens safer when using the internet. We hope that sharing our experiences and perspectives will advance the work of the policymakers and experts addressing these issues, and we look forward to engaging constructively with them. in essence, they want to push out more government sanctioned age verification (or "age assurance" as Google calls it), similar to COPPA.
Vriska1 3y ago
[dead]
tzs 3y ago
It is possible to do an age verification system with the following properties: 1. The site that wants to verify your age learns that your age meets their criteria but does not learn anything else from the verification system except as noted in #2. 2. The site that you present ID information to in order to prove your age does not learn what site the verification is for. The site in #1 will learn what site you presented ID to but not when you presented it. 3. Someone who obtains all the records from both sites is not able to tell whether or not you visited the site in #1. It seems inevitable that age verification is going to become a requirements at many sites. Instead of just trying to stop that from happening those who want to maintain the ability to browse anonymously should probably also put some effort into trying to insure that if/when it does happen sites are required to accept a system with those three properties.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  4. A third party knows which service you frequent and can also deny the service 5. With device tracking and fingerprinting and leaked data, establishing your real ID should ironically be childs play. You only look at the cryptographically relevant data of resource and auth provider, but there is contemporary data that makes including a third party a security issue. Otherwise #3 is wrong in any practical case. Age verification is already implemented for some services. I don't use them anymore. There are better alternatives.
teeray 3y ago
I guarantee this will do nothing to achieve its stated goals. Kids are far more resourceful than adults give them credit for and have an abundance of time to apply to obstacles put in their way. Never underestimate a hard drive of torrented porn circulating on the bus.
- mcmoor 3y ago
  Actually given recent reports on how kids these days only know how to tap at mobile and nothing else, we may need to stringent these restrictions just to teach them how to hack network like good old days.
avery17 3y ago
Repeat after me. Personal responsibility.
k310 3y ago
I couldn’t see where to put this in the thread, so let me reply to the OP. SOME parents think that some literature, as in book bans, is harmful, and this, in the opinion of very many, including myself, is wrong. Kids deserve the opportunity to access books of all kinds if they are to grow. Let’s not forget about this, and let’s not think that violent and hateful material is “OK” for parents. Kids kill almost entirely by accident. Parents kill almost entirely by intent. (And drunk driving)
deleted 3y ago
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riow 3y ago
"...for many companies this is a good idea. But just because something is a good idea for companies to do does not mean that it should be mandated by law."

374 points by WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

Maybe Google thinks that "age assurance" is a product they can sell? If it's required by state or federal law, other companies will have to pay for the service.

23B1 3y ago
Naturally yes. Glue this to WEI and you have a perfect funnel into the forthcoming verification wars.
sva_ 3y ago
It seems like a bridge towards being able to pitch their Web Environment Integrity so that they can ensure the verification is not being tampered with. Coincidentally, that will also prove beneficial to their advertising business. Or maybe I'm overly cynical?
extraduder_ire 3y ago
They already have to do it for age-gating youtube videos in some regions, like the EU. AFAIK, they want a CC number or phone number, neither of which really confirms your age.

coding123 3y ago

What are we protecting our kids from? If we coddle people too much we risk people not... talking to other people. That's already happening. Maybe instead of tech the world should be focused on physical things, like new innovations in building technology. We have so many homeless people, in my opinion, because we're constantly focusing our attention on tech - which is a skill that a smaller percentage of the population has a brain for. The trades need to come back, we need to beat SA in projects like "The Line" - and in the words of Joshua Weissman - But Better. We're at risk for just continued class divisions and potentially a war because we're turning a bunch of coddled spoiled kids into a millionaires that are being looked at with massive disdain. Maybe the internet should move back to being a background resource, not a precursor to ADHD.

mattstir 3y ago
There are certainly things that may be worth trying to protect children from online, like extremely targeted advertising that gets presented like legitimate content. Kids won't necessarily be able to differentiate between the two, and it's definitely not okay for companies to be tracking and profiling them like they do (but pretend to not be doing). A great example is reddit or instagram using the same algorithms that recommend content in their main feeds to also inject advertising. They'll claim all of that data collection is just to provide a "better experience", but advertising companies love it. I'm really not sure what else you're on about though.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  Kids already see tons of ads at movies, billboards, clothes people wear. Those superhero movies are made to sell toys and games. Stores are setup for kids to pressure parents. Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids? Are we inventing problems? Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie. Adults and tracking is bigger issue, kids don't have positions in society to lose or secrets to keep or money to lose. What are we fooling ourselves into believing we are protecting again?
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    Ad targeting identifies a lonely person with self esteem issues. Tells them that they'll be more popular and attractive if they consume product. They consume product and of course it doesn't actually help, but more advertisements are already lined up to explain that they're still feeling bad because they need to consume even more product. The ads show unrealistically happy and attractive people, to reinforce the self esteem issues and encourage the consumption of even more product. This is a standard business practice for the advertising and marketing industry. It's evil.
  - mattstir 3y ago
    This sort of willful ignorance is disparaging to see. Surely you must see a difference between an ad block that's clearly differentiated from the main program (ads before a movie plays, ad breaks during TV) and an endless feed of content that has no clear delineation between 'content' and 'product sponsership'. You might well be fine believing that billboards are the pinnacle of advertising, but there's been about 160 years worth of progress in the ad space since those were the big thing. > Why are targeted ads the thing we should fear for our kids? Again, you seem to be either defensive or intentionally misconstruing the point. These types of problems shouldn't invoke fear in people. I think you're getting yourself too mixed up in the idea that [X modern issue] is fearmongering and that nothing bad ever happens. Kids are dumb and impressionable. If they spend 8 hours a day scrolling through an endless feed of cool posts featuring cool products being worn / used by cool people, they will absolutely get attached to the idea that it's normal and expected to have that thing. That's manipulative and disgusting marketing, and it's genuinely worrying that you don't seem to care at all. > Kid watches superman movie and is shown an ad for batman vs here is an ad for a random movie Again, intentionally misconstruing the idea... it's more like "kid spends 2/3 of their time awake being mined for data and having every interaction across every platform cross-correlated to ensure that *a company* can profit off of them". I suppose that's perfectly healthy and normal to you, that a company can know more about a child and exactly what they do and what they like than any human does.

dleslie 3y ago

Cynically, Google may be supporting this legislation because it believes that it will mandate that Browsers be secured from modification that could undermine the efficacy of the legislation. They have that Chrome change, whose name eludes me, which provides secure Browser validation to the host; this legislation would make use of that feature ubiquitous and mandatory.

zerojames 3y ago
Web Environment Integrity? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Environment_Integrity
- dcow 3y ago
  Say a site uses WEI to block Google’s crawlers. If Google actually respected that then maybe it’s a fair playing field. But knowing Google they’ll issue their crawlers valid certs and create a huge dystopian nightmare.
  - extraduder_ire 3y ago
    IIRC, it's in the spec to have WEI fail some of the time randomly, so that sites are designed to deal with real failures. Though, that may just be in there to make the spec less unappealing.
  - google234123 3y ago
    What? Google has respected robot.txt for ever, why do you think it will change now?
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      It doesn't always and often returns with no agent from a google ip.
      - notatoad 3y ago

mistrial9 3y ago

a fundamental question is "who, when and why can adults use the Internet while anonymous" .. followed closely by "who provides, checks and verifies identity including age"

shafoshaf 3y ago
I feel like anonymity is just a band-aid. Ideally we would have freedom and accountability. If everyone knew that I watched porn but respected by right to do so, that's the ideal. Without anonymity we would know that account is run by a bot or a foreign state. It goes to how homosexuals were forced to be underground for so many years (and still today for many) and if they were out of sight they were out of mind. That isn't equality if you have to have a really good way to hide. However, the penchant for people to be complete assholes to each other over things that are none of their business is real and a huge problem. So, yes it makes sense to be able to hide but, sadly, it doesn't advance the social contract.
- toolz 3y ago
  In an ideal world we respect that what other people do is largely none of our business. I don't agree with any ideal that thinks everyone should agree on some set of rules and we respect anything that doesn't violate those rules. I think an ideal society has rich disagreement and a wide diversity of thoughts and opinions. With that diversity comes conflict which provides us all with opportunities to more deeply reflect on our own beliefs.
  - shafoshaf 3y ago
    I think that depends on the level of disagreement. I think gay people, women, and people of color should have the same rights as everyone else, which includes how they are treated at work. I'm willing to say that is a mandatory part of my social contract. Someone liking to dress in a cowboy hat, underwear, and playing a guitar in Times Square? Not my cup of tea, but sure, go for it.
    - 3y ago

nathias 3y ago

Google has been going down that path for a long time, they won't stop until the web looks like cable tv, every part infested with adds with content reduced to target the lowest denominator among the greatest number of people. It should have been broken up in smaller companies 20 years ago.

gxs 3y ago
I’ve been avoiding them like the plague. Thinking back years, going back to my first Debian install in 2000, in retrospect this is where things were always heading. It’s the same path every other industry has gone down, to ultimately yield all power to a few large corporations. The main issue with this is that even if you have a group of people passionately defending against this, googles attempts will likely persist long after any one person or group is no longer able to work against. On a side note, this is part of the reason why corporations were never intended to be allowed to exist as long as they do today, they were supposed to come with an expiration date. Not sure dismantling a company like Google is the right play, it just amazes me how much foresight people had 100 years ago and that we still let a bunch of those things happen.

gjsman-1000 3y ago

Here's a better compromise, if we must find a compromise, that Google won't be so in favor of: "No parent, or guardian, shall permit their children under the age of 13, to possess or easily have access to any device, which provides unfiltered and unrestricted access to the internet in such a way that said parent, or guardian, is not fully aware of each and every website that the child may access with said device." [As for anyone like, what about the vulnerable? There's this thing called a library, and don't tell me public schools don't have resources.]

flenserboy 3y ago
Ah, yes, the reintroduction of 3-channel TV. Progress!

darklycan51 3y ago

Google has lost all semblance of good faith from me, they are just intent on making the web their ads-infested playground

moffkalast 3y ago
When a company has a motto of "Don't be evil" and then changes it to something else... what are they thinking there exactly eh? Just saying.
- akomtu 3y ago
  These "don't be evil" and "do the right thing" must have been taken from the well known buddhist story: "When a disciple approached the buddha, he asked to explain buddhism in one verse; the buddha answered: stop doing evil, start doing good and clean your heart - that's the religion of buddhas." However google here is that junkie who tattoed buddhists scriptures on his arms, but never bothered to live by them. He did the "don't do evil" tattoo when he was devising a plan to rob a monastery. That was his inner self tried to stop him. When he decided to take hostages, he added "learn to do good". Shortly before he decided to build a torture chamber, his inner self made the final attempt and made him do the "clean your heart" tattoo. Corporations are soulless creatures, and can't tell what's good and what's evil.

throwaway237289 3y ago

This is one of those things where it's cold practicality. A company realizes the political headwinds and has decided that it'll do its best with a bad hand. This is what leaders want? We'll throw our support behind the least bad option. But articles like this complain about the company, instead of the politicians. What a load of crap.

tikimcfee 3y ago
Are we forgetting who is paying the politicians and writing their bills?
- SpaceManNabs 3y ago
  Government has legislature and litigation focused on big tech right now on multiple fronts.
  - sobkas 3y ago
    > Government has legislature and litigation focused on big tech right now on multiple fronts. If corporation gets a fine that's lower than their profits from breaking the law, then it's not a punishment but government getting its cut. Prosecuting few low hanging fruits doesn't make this administration any less neoliberal than previous ones, also remember that they will get prosecuted mostly for stealing from richer.
- throwaway237289 3y ago
  Since you want to get to the root cause and we're talking about USA, I believe that would be the American people. Also - corporations are full of people. And those are all Americans. Even lobbyists are Americans. But we should do something useful, and we're looking for easier targets to focus our rage and aggression on. I recommend those being the people that explicitly have been given power. Based on what I know about the American constitution, I believe that would be the government.
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Belopolye 3y ago

It looks like the direction we’re headed is a two-tiered Internet. The first layer will require your real world identity (more than simply your ISP knowing who you are because of billing) to access, post, download, upload, etc, which I suppose will first be required to access banking, social networks, etc, destroying anonymity. The second will be more or less what we have now, but my fear is that access to this layer will be restricted further and further until it goes the way of Usenet and ISPs either willingly (or by regulation) turn off access to it.

gjsman-1000 3y ago
I think there are actually several reasons why this is a likely direction: 1. Children (duh, this article) 2. Misinformation (accountability, no astroturfing) 3. Misinformation Robots (age verifying robots is a difficult task) 4. Malicious Robots (do you need Cloudflare if you have an Age ID Firewall?) 5. Scraping Robots (nothing prevents scraping like knowing who to sue...) 6. Hackers (nothing prevents hacking like knowing who to sue, even if it's only 80% of the time...) 7. AI Use / Abuse (anonymity is a dangerous thing with AI) Etc. To be honest, if I was an Age ID verification company, I'd be calling around to my competition to figure out how to develop some kind of interoperability standard; in the hopes that would make age-restricted services much more convenient and thus widespread. Now if they could get Billing integrated into the system as well, then we're cooking with gas.
- Belopolye 3y ago
  8. Industry is desperate to destroy piracy. On top of all of your reasons.
  - gjsman-1000 3y ago
    Tragically, it works both ways. 8. Destroy privacy of anonymous users. 9. Increase privacy by preventing reposting (by robots or trolls) of information that a court has ordered suppressed. (Example from the near future: AI-generated revenge porn.) 10. Increase privacy by preventing companies like Clearview AI from legally getting away with murder of privacy. Edit for Belopolye's response below: Very good point; but that would require all websites to be in on it and not just a partial implementation. But the movie and video game industries would love that...

oh_sigh 3y ago

Just a general note, but everyone has their own view of what is unconstitutional, but really there are only 9 people with opinions that really matter.

23B1 3y ago
While I appreciate the spirit of your comment, that's actually not true! There's an (admittedly winding and untested) route for The People to alter the constitution called an Article V Convention or 'convention of states': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendments_to_the_United_States_Constitution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendmen... I'm posting because a lot of people are unaware of this part of the American constitution, similar to how jury nullification is something 'they' don't want you to know about ;-)
raxxorraxor 3y ago
If a set of basic laws can only be interpreted by professional judges, the laws are more or less useless. On the contrary basic laws should be a foundation of a social contract that hopefully most within a society agree upon.

jiveturkey 3y ago

> the company has now made it clear that it has no intention of being a friend to the open internet any more. It did that awhile ago with amp. > just because something is a good idea for companies to do does not mean that it should be mandated by law. like forcing use of USB-C connectors.

codedokode 3y ago

There is an easier way to protect everyone from kids. Make an OS-level setting ("show safe content only") that only parents can change. With this setting, the browser would open only pages that declare that they are safe for kids, by using an HTTP header (safe-content: yes). Any other websites are blocked by the browser. Make it a legal requirement for parents to set up this option for their children on every device they use. Make it illegal to send invalid "safe content" headers. Also, with "safe content" setting OS should allow running and installing only apps that are verified to be safe (for example, it should not allow installing messengers like Telegram or browsers that do not respect safe content settings). This way there is no need to verify anything and make life complicated for adult people.

adverbly 3y ago
Interesting idea... Opt in to opting out of adult content... Some potential issues: 1. Might be hard to enforce the safe content header... They have a hard enough time with copyright content, and there's a much larger financial incentive in that case. 2. Need to agree on what is safe and what isn't. Bit of a can of worms there...
- codedokode 3y ago
  > Might be hard to enforce the safe content header... You don't need to enforce it. Sites without this header will not be accessible from a browser when "safe content" setting is active. > Need to agree on what is safe and what isn't There are ratings for games and movies, let's consider "safe content" to be a content which a 12-year old can watch.
  - gs17 3y ago
    And when sites outside of the jurisdictions that can take legal action put "safe-content: very yes" on whatever non-safe content?
    - codedokode 3y ago
      Let there be an government-assigned organization that verifies website owner, content and issues a cryptographic signature proving that the site has been verified. The browser shall not open any page without the signature.

firtoz 3y ago

Trying to look at the bright side: Raised barriers of entry means there will be improvements for services which can "help lift smaller companies up". For example, for finance, AML/KYC companies. Now I guess, for some internet services, "age verification" companies. This way age verification services may have some competition between each other and that can make it easier for people to do, and also cheaper for everyone to use.

yedava 3y ago

There's an easy solution to "protecting" children on the Internet. Let people and not companies decide what to view on a platform. Like Youtube can provide an option to whitelist channels or let users programmatically define rules on what kind of content they want in their feed. The downstream effect of this is that if some parents want to control what their kids see, they can just setup an account with rules on what content is allowed. Google doesn't need to appoint itself as a nanny. But then, such super easy technological solutions come in the way of selling people to advertisers. So here we are.

extraduder_ire 3y ago
I'm sad there's no other sites I know of, certainly not mainstream ones, that do moderation like HN does. I'm glad to see the [dead] comments on here, so I know what's current in not allowed and spam content. I think Scott Alexander wrote up a blogpost about the difference he saw between moderation and censorship. It's similar to what you suggested.
93po 3y ago
I find it really sad that we no longer hold parents and communities responsible for just not. letting. their. kids. on. the. internet. Don't give your kid a smart phone. Don't let them use a computer unsupervised. Worried about them seeing shit from classmates? I think most schools these days don't allow phones during school hours, so just pick your kid up immediately as school ends and at worst they're gonna see 10 minutes of hardcore pornography per day but that's a pretty ridiculous assumption. Alternatively, instill good values and behaviors in your kid so that they will choose to avoid this.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  When there was one PC and one TV in the house it was a lot harder to hide what you were doing and parenting was easier.
  - makeitdouble 3y ago
    The big part of it though: the PC was basically a novelty, at a lower importance than the TV. 3 or more people could just take turn using it, no big deal. That ship has sailed.

skybrian 3y ago

Seems like this article spends more time telling you what to think than explaining what's actually going on. Is there a better explanation?

g-b-r 3y ago
The actual Google document is not very long or hard, just read that

sva_ 3y ago

So they're really going for that web environment integrity bullshit? And they're marketing it to politicians as 'protecting children'? Absolute scumbags if that is the case.

mycall 3y ago
Will Microsoft Edge support it?

narag 3y ago

Let me quote Nietzsche. "The newspaper reader says: this party will ruin itself if it makes errors like this. My higher politics says: a party which makes errors like this is already finished —it is no longer secure in its instincts."

SanderNL 3y ago

This might be a threat, but I see weakness: Google is faltering. I haven't been impressed by them - and especially what they produce (their research looks cool, but is not going places) - in years and they are holding on for dear life. Producing new and interesting products is apparently no longer a viable avenue. They literally cannot do anything else but try and survive by throwing out the toys so nobody can play. It's a big boat and it takes a while to sink, but it will.

gamesbrainiac 3y ago

I might be a little dumb, but I genuinely found the article confusing. I have some questions nonetheless. What exactly is "Age Assurance"? Secondly, why would Age Assurance hinder new companies that want to create content platforms?

johnnyanmac 3y ago
It's google's own terminology based on their proposal (PDF warning): https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/publicpolicy.google/en//resources/youth-legislative-framework.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/publicpolicy.goog... >Where required, age assurance – which can range from declaration to inference and verication – should be risk-based, preserving users’ access to information and services, and respecting their privacy. so it's purposfully vague. It can be anything from a checkbox you check saying "I'm 13/18/etc." to "we require a face scan or governent issued ID in order to verify you". If you believe their claim, they want to do something more towards the former except with 18+ sites. If you don't believe their claim, you probably veer more towards Techdirt's cynicism as it being sugarcoating for semi-invasive age verification: >But… it’s not? It’s basically lobbying for age verification, just in the guise of “age assurance,” which is effectively “age verification, but if you’re a smaller company you can get it wrong some undefined amount of time, until someone sues you.” I mean, what’s here is not “lobbying against age verification,” it’s basically saying “here’s how to require age verification.” ----------- >Secondly, why would Age Assurance hinder new companies that want to create content platforms? Regulation. the more you need to do to get your site off the ground (and make its money back), the higher the cost. Or if they ignore/are ignorant of it they can be sued out of the race. This can be good (GDPR requirements to protect privacy), but like everything we need to weigh if the effect is worth the outcome. I am admittedly more scrutiny on if every website over X size needs to make sure their site is "child friendly".

cvccvroomvroom 3y ago

Think of the children! Fuck Google and their inverted totalitarianism imposing regulator capture and Big Mommy.

jrockway 3y ago

I'm fine with age assurance. If you're under 13, you go to the post office to prove that you're under 13, they digitally sign some token on your phone, and then your access is restricted according to the law. If you are an adult who wishes to remain anonymous, take no action. Problem solved! It would be interesting to see how the reverse of this system is implemented; adults must prove they're adults before being able to access certain websites. What technical measures would allow this? Information can leak in HTTP requests and responses, i.e. "curl -H 'User-Agent: help me i am trapped at the bottom of the ocean' https://example.com https://example.com" before any authentication has taken place. Is an adult allowed to send that request to a child? Probably not! This would mean the system has to be implemented at a lower level layer; websites would only be served on private IP ranges, and you'd have to setup an IPSec tunnel or similar first to prevent that out-of-band leakage. (You can get more absurd; everyone has a /64 of IPv6 space for themselves, so you can use your source address as a form of intentional information leakage; 1:2:3:4::1234 is a 1, 1:2:3:4::4321 is a 0. This means that, legally, you would have to be careful about how you do the TCP 3 way handshake, because, as a middlebox, you can't prove that sending a SYN in reply to a SYN is not actually someone requesting adult content.) All in all, this seems technically impossible to implement, prone to making identity theft even more lucrative than it already is (don't reuse your ID.me password anywhere else, or some kid is going to use it to cheat in a video game and get you sent to jail a la South Korea), and unconstitutional ("prior restraint").

johncolanduoni 3y ago
I think you're overthinking this. You can just put the age-restricted portion of the website (which for some websites might be 99% of their content, but I think that's fine) behind a login page that verifies whatever age token you come up with. If the only information you can send to the website is your credentials, and the website can't send any "unsuitable" information to you, I'm not sure what the issue with allowing HTTP access is.
- jrockway 3y ago
  Well, the government has to take action against you, the site operator, if you aren't enforcing the rules correctly. That means they have to think of every possible way to monitor the traffic, both in-band and out-of-band. They then have to do this for every site on the Internet. (Or sure, just selectively enforce it against whoever X says is a threat to their ad revenue today.) When you make something, you only have to figure out one way to make it work. When you try to secure something, you have to figure out every possible way the defenses could fail, or you've done nothing.

dclowd9901 3y ago

Can any modern journalist please just read the really quick AP style guidelines? It took me like 5 graphs before I actually understood what action google was taking. The initial bullshit hemming and hawing was excruciating.

snek_case 3y ago
I still don't understand what exactly is being proposed. Can you summarize?
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  It takes a while to get to the point but the article eventually gives one: >Last Monday, Google announced “a policy framework to protect children and teens online,” which was echoed by subsidiary YouTube, which posted basically the same thing, talking about it’s “principled approach for children and teenagers.” Both of these pushed not just a “principled approach” for companies to take, but a legislative model (and I hear that they’re out pushing “model bills” across legislatures as well). And if you want google's official lede: >Today we’re releasing our Legislative Framework to Protect Children and Teens Online. The Framework outlines some principles for laws seeking to improve online experiences and keep children and teens safer when using the internet. We hope that sharing our experiences and perspectives will advance the work of the policymakers and experts addressing these issues, and we look forward to engaging constructively with them. in essence, they want to push out more government sanctioned age verification (or "age assurance" as Google calls it), similar to COPPA.

Vriska1 3y ago

[dead]

tzs 3y ago

It is possible to do an age verification system with the following properties: 1. The site that wants to verify your age learns that your age meets their criteria but does not learn anything else from the verification system except as noted in #2. 2. The site that you present ID information to in order to prove your age does not learn what site the verification is for. The site in #1 will learn what site you presented ID to but not when you presented it. 3. Someone who obtains all the records from both sites is not able to tell whether or not you visited the site in #1. It seems inevitable that age verification is going to become a requirements at many sites. Instead of just trying to stop that from happening those who want to maintain the ability to browse anonymously should probably also put some effort into trying to insure that if/when it does happen sites are required to accept a system with those three properties.

raxxorraxor 3y ago
4. A third party knows which service you frequent and can also deny the service 5. With device tracking and fingerprinting and leaked data, establishing your real ID should ironically be childs play. You only look at the cryptographically relevant data of resource and auth provider, but there is contemporary data that makes including a third party a security issue. Otherwise #3 is wrong in any practical case. Age verification is already implemented for some services. I don't use them anymore. There are better alternatives.

teeray 3y ago

I guarantee this will do nothing to achieve its stated goals. Kids are far more resourceful than adults give them credit for and have an abundance of time to apply to obstacles put in their way. Never underestimate a hard drive of torrented porn circulating on the bus.

mcmoor 3y ago
Actually given recent reports on how kids these days only know how to tap at mobile and nothing else, we may need to stringent these restrictions just to teach them how to hack network like good old days.

avery17 3y ago

Repeat after me. Personal responsibility.

k310 3y ago

I couldn’t see where to put this in the thread, so let me reply to the OP. SOME parents think that some literature, as in book bans, is harmful, and this, in the opinion of very many, including myself, is wrong. Kids deserve the opportunity to access books of all kinds if they are to grow. Let’s not forget about this, and let’s not think that violent and hateful material is “OK” for parents. Kids kill almost entirely by accident. Parents kill almost entirely by intent. (And drunk driving)

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riow 3y ago

"...for many companies this is a good idea. But just because something is a good idea for companies to do does not mean that it should be mandated by law."