7 ms·

No, we're talking about stopping children having social media accounts.

jonathankoren 3y ago
And how do you know they're not a child? Bars do it by having you show an id. Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id. Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id. How does Florida expect a site to do it? This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?
- Brybry 3y ago
  There's really no need for ID checking. Most porn sites already self-regulated by marking their content adult with meta tags/headers. Parental control software picks up on that. [1] Social media could do the same thing: make a social media adults-only meta tag for parental control software to use. For the parents that care, and use parental control software, the ID laws won't stop their kids running into porn. The porn their kids are going to encounter is going to be on non-porn sites like twitter or reddit (or small sites that don't care about these laws anyway). Maybe we needed a bigger push for more awareness or better parental control software but the ID law push is weird and unamerican to me. [1] https://www.rtalabel.org/ https://www.rtalabel.org/
  - wvenable 3y ago
    > Parental control software picks up on that. [1] That's client side. This law specifically makes this a server-side issue; the service cannot let a minor make an account. How do you do that without ID?
    - Brybry 3y ago
      By not having this law and doing it client side. My opinion is the law is bad.
      - wvenable 3y ago
        This law might have never come up if we had better parental controls at every level of the software and hardware stack. I'm a parent I have parent controls setup on my child's devices but it's very hard to dial it in properly and cover all the bases. It should be far more straight forward to manage than it is now. I'm obviously pretty tech savvy and I would say 99% of parents are not going to get this right.
        scarface_74 3y ago
        I can’t speak for PCs or Android devices. But iOS devices already have parental controls built in as do Macs
        wvenable 3y ago
        iOS parental controls are awful. The only way to get any decent control for my concerns that the moment is using the downtime features all day long. Effectively I've told iOS that he should be in bed for 23 hours and 55 minutes a day. It's ridiculous and extremely limiting. Microsoft's parental controls are sort of ok. I also have separate control software for Windows and I have controls at the router. Of course, none of things can talk to each other to create a coordinated plan (say giving X number of screen time hours per day).
        scarface_74 3y ago
        iOS controls effectively block adult sites and you can manually add sites to block and not allow apps being installed without your permission. What else do you need?
        wvenable 3y ago
        Some control over when certain apps can be used.
        3y ago
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    My sibling in the universe, we are talking about an actual LAW. WRT Texas, a law that is on the books and enforced TODAY. Get informed.
- oliwarner 3y ago
  I've just answered in a sibling thread. I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25. Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you were in a bar. Don't want to? Don't maintain a social media account. Don't have that drink. The alternative is setting up a government-maintained 0Auth-style hand-off. They know who you are. The social media site could open a verification ticket, you authenticate with your government and they sign your ticket without the social media site getting any of your details. The trade-off with that is cost and your government now knows you're on TikTok. For some people that last one matters. If you paired these laws with strong PII protection (see GDPR) to stop social media sites storing this stuff indefinitely, using your data against you, it might be an easier sell.
  - jonathankoren 3y ago
    Thank you for answering. You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan. I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.
    - oliwarner 3y ago
      The reason I have faith in a pure-technology solution is because setting up ID-linked database APIs will take time and querying it will cost social networks real money. When this was discussed in the UK, we were looking at 10p per check. That's $1m for Florida alone plus engineering to get it in. They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too. My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo. But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.
ziddoap 3y ago
How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID? Do you have another method to prove age? One that doesn't require ID, and can be implemented as of today?
- oliwarner 3y ago
  > How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID? Emphasis mine. It's that that which I'm disputing. This law does not require you to have an account to go onto a website. It is a law that requires you are age-checked to hold an account on social media platforms. These are different things. Holding an account —broadly speaking— allows you to post, like, comment, follow and be profiled in an enduring fashion. Some of these can have life-long implications that 12 year olds aren't equipped to evaluate. How many adults can identify unhealthy social media usage and do something to stop it? I don't know how age verification will work in practice. Checking a government ID is one way but if you're handing that off to a third party service, it's expensive. They don't need to know who you are for certain. A similar check is when you buy alcohol. If you look young, you're asked for ID. When I buy alcohol, I'm not because I look like a man with kids nearing his forties. It would be far cheaper for Facebook to have an AI watch a video of you speaking to camera, with ID as a fallback. Many social media platforms are ingesting gigabytes of our faces every day so. They probably already know the rough ages of their users. But going on a website (eg Youtube) doesn't require you have a profile. Going on Facebook business pages doesn't require it. If anything, laws like this might mean that things like Instagram have to be more open to preserve their reach. Not a bad outcome, IMO.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    When you buy alcohol, it’s very easy to see whether they are taking and storing your picture. You can also buy alcohol with cash leaving no digital footprint. And is AI the new blockchain that will magically solve every problem? And most children over 14 don’t have government IDs either. If you don’t want your kids to be on Facebook, use parental controls. It’s the parents responsibility. I live in Florida for context. The same government officials talk out of the left side of their mouths about “parental choice” and now this law says children can’t be on social media even with parental consent.

And how do you know they're not a child? Bars do it by having you show an id. Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id. Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id. How does Florida expect a site to do it? This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?

Brybry 3y ago
There's really no need for ID checking. Most porn sites already self-regulated by marking their content adult with meta tags/headers. Parental control software picks up on that. [1] Social media could do the same thing: make a social media adults-only meta tag for parental control software to use. For the parents that care, and use parental control software, the ID laws won't stop their kids running into porn. The porn their kids are going to encounter is going to be on non-porn sites like twitter or reddit (or small sites that don't care about these laws anyway). Maybe we needed a bigger push for more awareness or better parental control software but the ID law push is weird and unamerican to me. [1] https://www.rtalabel.org/ https://www.rtalabel.org/
- wvenable 3y ago
  > Parental control software picks up on that. [1] That's client side. This law specifically makes this a server-side issue; the service cannot let a minor make an account. How do you do that without ID?
  - Brybry 3y ago
    By not having this law and doing it client side. My opinion is the law is bad.
    - wvenable 3y ago
      This law might have never come up if we had better parental controls at every level of the software and hardware stack. I'm a parent I have parent controls setup on my child's devices but it's very hard to dial it in properly and cover all the bases. It should be far more straight forward to manage than it is now. I'm obviously pretty tech savvy and I would say 99% of parents are not going to get this right.
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        I can’t speak for PCs or Android devices. But iOS devices already have parental controls built in as do Macs
        wvenable 3y ago
        iOS parental controls are awful. The only way to get any decent control for my concerns that the moment is using the downtime features all day long. Effectively I've told iOS that he should be in bed for 23 hours and 55 minutes a day. It's ridiculous and extremely limiting. Microsoft's parental controls are sort of ok. I also have separate control software for Windows and I have controls at the router. Of course, none of things can talk to each other to create a coordinated plan (say giving X number of screen time hours per day).
        scarface_74 3y ago
        iOS controls effectively block adult sites and you can manually add sites to block and not allow apps being installed without your permission. What else do you need?
        wvenable 3y ago
        Some control over when certain apps can be used.
        3y ago
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  My sibling in the universe, we are talking about an actual LAW. WRT Texas, a law that is on the books and enforced TODAY. Get informed.
oliwarner 3y ago
I've just answered in a sibling thread. I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25. Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you were in a bar. Don't want to? Don't maintain a social media account. Don't have that drink. The alternative is setting up a government-maintained 0Auth-style hand-off. They know who you are. The social media site could open a verification ticket, you authenticate with your government and they sign your ticket without the social media site getting any of your details. The trade-off with that is cost and your government now knows you're on TikTok. For some people that last one matters. If you paired these laws with strong PII protection (see GDPR) to stop social media sites storing this stuff indefinitely, using your data against you, it might be an easier sell.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Thank you for answering. You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan. I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.
  - oliwarner 3y ago
    The reason I have faith in a pure-technology solution is because setting up ID-linked database APIs will take time and querying it will cost social networks real money. When this was discussed in the UK, we were looking at 10p per check. That's $1m for Florida alone plus engineering to get it in. They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too. My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo. But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.

ziddoap 3y ago

How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID? Do you have another method to prove age? One that doesn't require ID, and can be implemented as of today?

oliwarner 3y ago
> How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID? Emphasis mine. It's that that which I'm disputing. This law does not require you to have an account to go onto a website. It is a law that requires you are age-checked to hold an account on social media platforms. These are different things. Holding an account —broadly speaking— allows you to post, like, comment, follow and be profiled in an enduring fashion. Some of these can have life-long implications that 12 year olds aren't equipped to evaluate. How many adults can identify unhealthy social media usage and do something to stop it? I don't know how age verification will work in practice. Checking a government ID is one way but if you're handing that off to a third party service, it's expensive. They don't need to know who you are for certain. A similar check is when you buy alcohol. If you look young, you're asked for ID. When I buy alcohol, I'm not because I look like a man with kids nearing his forties. It would be far cheaper for Facebook to have an AI watch a video of you speaking to camera, with ID as a fallback. Many social media platforms are ingesting gigabytes of our faces every day so. They probably already know the rough ages of their users. But going on a website (eg Youtube) doesn't require you have a profile. Going on Facebook business pages doesn't require it. If anything, laws like this might mean that things like Instagram have to be more open to preserve their reach. Not a bad outcome, IMO.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  When you buy alcohol, it’s very easy to see whether they are taking and storing your picture. You can also buy alcohol with cash leaving no digital footprint. And is AI the new blockchain that will magically solve every problem? And most children over 14 don’t have government IDs either. If you don’t want your kids to be on Facebook, use parental controls. It’s the parents responsibility. I live in Florida for context. The same government officials talk out of the left side of their mouths about “parental choice” and now this law says children can’t be on social media even with parental consent.