5 ms·

It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course. My 10 y/o hit me with a request yesterday to play Among Us where the age verification

by ray_v 7mo ago

It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course. My 10 y/o hit me with a request yesterday to play Among Us where the age verification system wanted my full name, address, email, AND the last 4 digits of my SSN. I refused.

AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
> It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course. So put the content tag at the granularity of the content.
- valleyer 7mo ago
  Honestly, <span content-filter-level="adult">fuck</span> that.
- onli 7mo ago
  Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. Around 20 years ago, Germany actually made a law that would have enforced such a system. I still have a chart in my blog that explained it, https://www.onli-blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html https://www.onli-blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html. Content for people over 16 would have to be marked accordingly or be put offline before 22:00, plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten). Result: It was seen as a big censor machine and I saw many sites and blogs shut down. You maybe can make that law partly responsible for how far behind german internet enterprises still are. Only a particular kind of bureaucrat wants to make business in an environment that makes laws such as this. Later the law wasn't actually followed. Only state media still has a system that blocks films for adults (=basically every action movie) from being accessed without age verification if not past 22:00.
  - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
    > Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. You have that with any form of any of these things. They're almost certainly going to be set up so that you get in trouble for claiming that adult content isn't but not for having non-adult content behind the adult content tag. Then you would be able to avoid legal questions by labeling your whole site as adult content, with the obvious drawback that then your whole site is labeled as adult content even though most of it isn't. But using ID requirements instead doesn't get you out of that. You'd still need to either identify which content requires someone to provide an ID before they can view it, or ID everyone. That's an argument for not doing any of these things, but not an argument for having ID requirements instead of content tags.
    - onli 7mo ago
      Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only for adults was also punishable, though that might have been in context of a different law. That would be censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German bureaucracy. But you are right. It's an argument that the "just mark content accordingly" is also not a better solution, not that ID requirements are in any way better. The only solution is not to enable this censorship infrastructure, because no matter which way it's done, it will always function as one.
      - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
        > Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only for adults was also punishable, though that might have been in context of a different law. That would be censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German bureaucracy. That's how you get the thing where instead of using different equipment to process the food with and without sesame seeds, they just put sesame seeds in everything on purpose so they can accurately label them as containing sesame seeds.
        LinXitoW 7mo ago
        An internet where every wikipedia article has like a picture of boobs as fine print would be very funny.
  - close04 7mo ago
    > Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. The alternative is that "just to be safe" you'll mark your entire site as needing age (identity, stool sample, whatever) verification. A single piece of sensitive content sets the requirements for the entire site.
  - like_any_other 7mo ago
    > plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten). That is pretty much what the UK Online Safety Act requires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 Many small forums had to simply shut down, as was widely reported on HN at the time.
cwillu 7mo ago
That's an argument for “let the service inform the parent and let the parent decide”, not against it.
alexfoo 7mo ago
There's a good chance that they're never going to verify any of the information you give them, in which case it's another download for Mr M Mouse of 1375 E Buena Vista Dr, 32830, with a SSN that ends in 1234.
- b112 7mo ago
  Giving fake info feeds the machine. It means you still consume, and a bad actor profits.
  - thbb123 7mo ago
    I disagree. Giving fake info adds noise to the mechanism, makes it useless. Ultimately I'm inclined to believe that privacy through noise generation is a solution. If I ever find some idle time, I'd like to make an agent that surfs the web under my identity and several fake ones, but randomly according to several fake personality traits I program. Then, after some testing and analysis of the generated patterns of crawl, release it as freeware to allow anyone to participate in the obfuscation of individuals' behaviors.
    - noam_k 7mo ago
      You might want to take a look at differential privacy. It takes an unintuitive amount of noise to make the system useless. You also need to account for how "easy" it is to de-anonymize a profile. (Sorry I don't have links to sources handy.)
      - aleph_minus_one 7mo ago
        > You might want to take a look at differential privacy Differential privacy is just a bait to make surveillance more socially acceptable and to have arguments to silence critics ("no need to worry about the dangers - we have differential privacy"). :-(
    - fsflover 7mo ago
      Sounds a bit like AdNauseam Firefox extension.
iso1631 7mo ago
It feels to me that parental controls are seen as another profit centre. If we want to put laws in place, we should be putting in laws to empower parents.
VLM 7mo ago
I would assume its fake and an attempt at identify theft at some level of the system. Is their PC infected at the OS level or just a fraudulent browser extension or something more like a popup ad masquerading as a system dialogue? A less trusting person would assume any request made by a computer is totally non-fraudulent and would gladly submit any requested private information. "Dad, I can't do my math homework, a pop up says you need to provide a copy of your bank statement, your mom's maiden name, and a copy of your birth certificate, SS card, and drivers license, and can you hurry up Dad, my homework is due tomorrow morning." And people will fall for this once they get used to the system being absurd enough. The fraud machine must be kept fed...
just6979 7mo ago
If the content is mixed, it makes even more sense to have the content supply the age data. This is how it has worked with broadcast media pretty much forever. TV shows and movies gain their ratings based on the worst case on display. IE: a show doesn't have to consist entirely of swearing to gain a "language" warning, it just has to have some. Definitively mixed content. I think your example exemplifies this. Among Us is not inherently adult-only, but since it's multiplayer, they don't control what other player say and do. Definitively mixed content. They should not be asking you to verify, they should be telling you and letting you decide if your kid can play. I kinda can't beleive their lawyers decided to go that route and assume all the PII responsibility that comes with collecting that data, instead of just making the "it's online and there might be d-bags on our servers" rating much more obvious and explicit.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  They can profit off of the personal data they collect, so it's no surprise they'd take any opportunity and use any available excuse to collect more of it. From their perspective there is effectively zero responsibility to secure that data properly and handle it safely because there are effectively zero consequences for companies when they fail to.

by ray_v 7mo ago

AnthonyMouse 7mo ago

> It may often times be trickier than that - content often mixed of course. So put the content tag at the granularity of the content.

valleyer 7mo ago
Honestly, <span content-filter-level="adult">fuck</span> that.
onli 7mo ago
Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. Around 20 years ago, Germany actually made a law that would have enforced such a system. I still have a chart in my blog that explained it, https://www.onli-blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html https://www.onli-blogging.de/1026/JMStV-kurz-erklaert.html. Content for people over 16 would have to be marked accordingly or be put offline before 22:00, plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten). Result: It was seen as a big censor machine and I saw many sites and blogs shut down. You maybe can make that law partly responsible for how far behind german internet enterprises still are. Only a particular kind of bureaucrat wants to make business in an environment that makes laws such as this. Later the law wasn't actually followed. Only state media still has a system that blocks films for adults (=basically every action movie) from being accessed without age verification if not past 22:00.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
  > Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. You have that with any form of any of these things. They're almost certainly going to be set up so that you get in trouble for claiming that adult content isn't but not for having non-adult content behind the adult content tag. Then you would be able to avoid legal questions by labeling your whole site as adult content, with the obvious drawback that then your whole site is labeled as adult content even though most of it isn't. But using ID requirements instead doesn't get you out of that. You'd still need to either identify which content requires someone to provide an ID before they can view it, or ID everyone. That's an argument for not doing any of these things, but not an argument for having ID requirements instead of content tags.
  - onli 7mo ago
    Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only for adults was also punishable, though that might have been in context of a different law. That would be censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German bureaucracy. But you are right. It's an argument that the "just mark content accordingly" is also not a better solution, not that ID requirements are in any way better. The only solution is not to enable this censorship infrastructure, because no matter which way it's done, it will always function as one.
    - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
      > Funnily enough, marking content that's harmless as only for adults was also punishable, though that might have been in context of a different law. That would be censorship, blocking people under 18 from accessing legal content, was the reasoning. Welcome to German bureaucracy. That's how you get the thing where instead of using different equipment to process the food with and without sesame seeds, they just put sesame seeds in everything on purpose so they can accurately label them as containing sesame seeds.
      - LinXitoW 7mo ago
        An internet where every wikipedia article has like a picture of boobs as fine print would be very funny.
- close04 7mo ago
  > Awesome. Now you have a system where every blog entry, every Facebook post needs a lawyer consultation. The alternative is that "just to be safe" you'll mark your entire site as needing age (identity, stool sample, whatever) verification. A single piece of sensitive content sets the requirements for the entire site.
- like_any_other 7mo ago
  > plus, if your site has a commercial character - which according to german courts is every single one in existence - you would need to hire a someone responsible for protecting teenagers and children (Jugenschutzbeauftragten). That is pretty much what the UK Online Safety Act requires: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_Safety_Act_2023 Many small forums had to simply shut down, as was widely reported on HN at the time.

cwillu 7mo ago

That's an argument for “let the service inform the parent and let the parent decide”, not against it.

alexfoo 7mo ago

There's a good chance that they're never going to verify any of the information you give them, in which case it's another download for Mr M Mouse of 1375 E Buena Vista Dr, 32830, with a SSN that ends in 1234.

b112 7mo ago
Giving fake info feeds the machine. It means you still consume, and a bad actor profits.
- thbb123 7mo ago
  I disagree. Giving fake info adds noise to the mechanism, makes it useless. Ultimately I'm inclined to believe that privacy through noise generation is a solution. If I ever find some idle time, I'd like to make an agent that surfs the web under my identity and several fake ones, but randomly according to several fake personality traits I program. Then, after some testing and analysis of the generated patterns of crawl, release it as freeware to allow anyone to participate in the obfuscation of individuals' behaviors.
  - noam_k 7mo ago
    You might want to take a look at differential privacy. It takes an unintuitive amount of noise to make the system useless. You also need to account for how "easy" it is to de-anonymize a profile. (Sorry I don't have links to sources handy.)
    - aleph_minus_one 7mo ago
      > You might want to take a look at differential privacy Differential privacy is just a bait to make surveillance more socially acceptable and to have arguments to silence critics ("no need to worry about the dangers - we have differential privacy"). :-(
  - fsflover 7mo ago
    Sounds a bit like AdNauseam Firefox extension.

iso1631 7mo ago

It feels to me that parental controls are seen as another profit centre. If we want to put laws in place, we should be putting in laws to empower parents.

VLM 7mo ago

I would assume its fake and an attempt at identify theft at some level of the system. Is their PC infected at the OS level or just a fraudulent browser extension or something more like a popup ad masquerading as a system dialogue? A less trusting person would assume any request made by a computer is totally non-fraudulent and would gladly submit any requested private information. "Dad, I can't do my math homework, a pop up says you need to provide a copy of your bank statement, your mom's maiden name, and a copy of your birth certificate, SS card, and drivers license, and can you hurry up Dad, my homework is due tomorrow morning." And people will fall for this once they get used to the system being absurd enough. The fraud machine must be kept fed...

just6979 7mo ago

If the content is mixed, it makes even more sense to have the content supply the age data. This is how it has worked with broadcast media pretty much forever. TV shows and movies gain their ratings based on the worst case on display. IE: a show doesn't have to consist entirely of swearing to gain a "language" warning, it just has to have some. Definitively mixed content. I think your example exemplifies this. Among Us is not inherently adult-only, but since it's multiplayer, they don't control what other player say and do. Definitively mixed content. They should not be asking you to verify, they should be telling you and letting you decide if your kid can play. I kinda can't beleive their lawyers decided to go that route and assume all the PII responsibility that comes with collecting that data, instead of just making the "it's online and there might be d-bags on our servers" rating much more obvious and explicit.

autoexec 7mo ago
They can profit off of the personal data they collect, so it's no surprise they'd take any opportunity and use any available excuse to collect more of it. From their perspective there is effectively zero responsibility to secure that data properly and handle it safely because there are effectively zero consequences for companies when they fail to.