4 ms·

I have been saying this all along. You can't prevent kids from getting around restrictions. All you can do is try to help them understand what they find on the

I have been saying this all along. You can't prevent kids from getting around restrictions. All you can do is try to help them understand what they find on the other side and what some options are. Age-gating is just a way to push forward a surveillance agenda. The fact thats happening everywhere all at once proves my point.

dylan604 8mo ago
>You can prevent kids from getting around restrictions I'm guessing you meant can't
- trinsic2 8mo ago
  Yes. Fixed
heavyset_go 8mo ago
It's pushed both by those with surveillance agendas and AI companies like Anthropic, who donated millions to PACs and politicians that are pushing online age verification and surveillance laws[1]. The goal for the AI side is that they get to be censors and gatekeepers of all user-generated content on the internet, their models will rank/grade/censor content for age-appropriateness and they will have the pleasure of being paid to train on all new content uploaded to the internet in real-time, in perpetuity. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162956
bruceb 8mo ago
You can. Most children are not going to end up on HN when they are older. The stories you read here about hacking system at 11 are outliers.
- leni536 8mo ago
  And the outliers brag about them, then help out their classmates.
  - hellojesus 8mo ago
    Lol I remember back in the day when we used to replace the windows logo during boot with our own bitmaps (if I can appropriately remember the file format) at school. We showed kids and suddenly every computer was booting with unexpected media. Admins were not pleased. But the real fun began when we showed people how to set bios passwords and that cascaded into kids rendering an entire classroom of computers unbootable. And then there was the time I thought I was really clever because I realized I could open arbitrary files in notepad, so I attempted to edit save files for a learn-to-type program by replacing the score with my own. It seemed to work so I told my friends and then they started copying the same save file into their program files. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I do know the UI update did not propagate to the actual scores and also it introduced a bug into the prodgram which would cause it to crash at distant future epochs, so we destroyed the program for everyone, not just our user profiles. There was an investigation and I think they gave up because the same bad file somehow was on everyone's computer and everyone just told them they got the file from someone else and there was no root of the chain. This is all to say, any bypass will be identified and implemented at the speed of virality.
stephbook 8mo ago
What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco, to gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get around restrictions anyway
- budududuroiu 8mo ago
  > What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco, to gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get around restrictions anyway This is false equivalence. All of the above are vices that objectively carry more harm than good. There's no inherent harm in using a computer, there's a subset of ways in which using a computer can be harmful, which kids can be taught how to avoid or navigate, there's no subset of meth use that isn't harmful
  - heavyset_go 8mo ago
    Desoxyn (methamphetamine) is prescribed for ADHD and is indicated for children
  - gzread 8mo ago
    Well then it's good then computer will have the option to disable the harmful stuff, so a parent can let a kid use the good stuff without the harmful stuff.
gzread 8mo ago
It's basically the same as forbidding bars from serving minors. Minors can still get alcohol, but we still do it.

dylan604 8mo ago

>You can prevent kids from getting around restrictions I'm guessing you meant can't

trinsic2 8mo ago
Yes. Fixed

heavyset_go 8mo ago

It's pushed both by those with surveillance agendas and AI companies like Anthropic, who donated millions to PACs and politicians that are pushing online age verification and surveillance laws[1]. The goal for the AI side is that they get to be censors and gatekeepers of all user-generated content on the internet, their models will rank/grade/censor content for age-appropriateness and they will have the pleasure of being paid to train on all new content uploaded to the internet in real-time, in perpetuity. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47162956

bruceb 8mo ago

You can. Most children are not going to end up on HN when they are older. The stories you read here about hacking system at 11 are outliers.

leni536 8mo ago
And the outliers brag about them, then help out their classmates.
- hellojesus 8mo ago
  Lol I remember back in the day when we used to replace the windows logo during boot with our own bitmaps (if I can appropriately remember the file format) at school. We showed kids and suddenly every computer was booting with unexpected media. Admins were not pleased. But the real fun began when we showed people how to set bios passwords and that cascaded into kids rendering an entire classroom of computers unbootable. And then there was the time I thought I was really clever because I realized I could open arbitrary files in notepad, so I attempted to edit save files for a learn-to-type program by replacing the score with my own. It seemed to work so I told my friends and then they started copying the same save file into their program files. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I do know the UI update did not propagate to the actual scores and also it introduced a bug into the prodgram which would cause it to crash at distant future epochs, so we destroyed the program for everyone, not just our user profiles. There was an investigation and I think they gave up because the same bad file somehow was on everyone's computer and everyone just told them they got the file from someone else and there was no root of the chain. This is all to say, any bypass will be identified and implemented at the speed of virality.

stephbook 8mo ago

What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco, to gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get around restrictions anyway

budududuroiu 8mo ago
> What you're saying is we should allow kids to buy tobacco, to gamble, to purchase Meth and Heroine because Kids get around restrictions anyway This is false equivalence. All of the above are vices that objectively carry more harm than good. There's no inherent harm in using a computer, there's a subset of ways in which using a computer can be harmful, which kids can be taught how to avoid or navigate, there's no subset of meth use that isn't harmful
- heavyset_go 8mo ago
  Desoxyn (methamphetamine) is prescribed for ADHD and is indicated for children
- gzread 8mo ago
  Well then it's good then computer will have the option to disable the harmful stuff, so a parent can let a kid use the good stuff without the harmful stuff.

gzread 8mo ago

It's basically the same as forbidding bars from serving minors. Minors can still get alcohol, but we still do it.