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Ah yes, the most pressing issue of our times. Mandatory surveillance of every person's activities is a reasonable solution to the critical issue of teenagers wa

Ah yes, the most pressing issue of our times. Mandatory surveillance of every person's activities is a reasonable solution to the critical issue of teenagers watching porn, who totally won't be able to bypass this by... grabbing Dad's phone. Obviously, it's not about the children. It was never about the children. If I had my way every one of these people would be taken to a gulag, because they are evil, have evil intentions, and blatantly lie to further their evil goals. I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated, and by allowing this to fester we are headed for a much worse totalitarian dystopia.

donmcronald 6mo ago
All accounts and that are important to kids have are being tied to their real identity and they won’t be able to get a new one if they’re banned. The potential for social engineering is insane. All of these ID laws are going to make it more dangerous for kids online IMO. “Hi I’m a Roblox moderator. Your account was reported for X and you’ve been temp banned. Come to platform Y to appeal. Start by submitting all your personal info and a selfie.” And it’ll be completely normalized by big tech. Seriously. WTF are they thinking?
- microtonal 6mo ago
  First, I should say that I am against online age identification. But if we are going to get age verification because the larger population wants it, I definitely prefer the EU's privacy-preserving age verification that uses zero knowledge proofs (yes, they have issues too) over private companies doing age verification, requiring uploading scans of your ID, filming your face, etc. For the reasons that you mention (people can easily be tricked into giving information to the wrong people), but also because I simply do not want my data to be in the hands of random private companies that will sell the data, give it to Palantir, etc. That makes this fight so annoying, we have to fight age identification, while at the same time also promoting privacy-preserving age verification for the case it happens anyway.
  - applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
    I think this is folly. You cannot communicate this level of nuance at scale, especially when faced with opposition that actively lies to achieve their goals. Quoting an older post... > In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves via parental controls. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. That level of nuance is far too much to ask of millions of people who are not technically-informed, and idealism needs to give way to pragmatism if we wish to avoid the worst-case scenario.
    - microtonal 6mo ago
      In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses I do not (completely) agree with this. This seems like the very typical US-centric view of politics. A lot of members of the European Parliament are not corporate puppets and have ideals (even if they often do not align with mine). Why would the EU come with a ZKP-based verification reference app if they were sock puppets? The corporate sock-puppet politician would just push the narrative that age verification should be left to the market (which is probably what happens in the US, where most politicians are sock-puppets due campaign sponsoring, etc.). You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. We do not have to convince the population. We have to convince regulators and if it becomes necessary the EU/national-level courts that handle human rights violations. Also, in the case of the EU, they made a reference implementation of ZKP age verification and asked national governments to roll this out in their apps. One of the large issues though is that the reference implementation relies on Google Play Integrity for device attestation (+ the iOS counterpart), so if national software development agencies use the reference implementation as-is, it shuts out competing systems. They should have used AOSP device attestation, which is also supported by GrapheneOS, etc. So, besides protesting age verification, I'm trying to get the message to politicians that how device attestation is done in the reference implementation is an issue. The thing that might help here is that sovereignty is also high on the agenda.
tgv 6mo ago
> grabbing Dad's phone That will only very rarely happen. Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? For more than one minute? People are so addicted to their phones. > it's not about the children It's also about the children, but there surely are parties which use the process to further their own goals. > I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated That's not the right quote for this case.
- applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
  > Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? They don't ask for it, they take it when you're busy or sleeping. Teens certainly weren't asking for Dad's VHS tapes or magazines when I was a kid. I suppose this problem is solveable, too, though. Mandatory biometric locks on every device capable of accessing the internet, why not? > That's not the right quote for this case. It is. These people are fascists. Their goal is to create a society where the government has a permanent record of everything every person is doing, monitored 24/7 so nobody can defy it. The point about tolerating intolerance is that by abiding such people, you allow them to create an intolerant society, thus it is prudent even in a tolerant society to be intolerant specifically towards those whose goal is intolerance.
  - eloisant 6mo ago
    By your logic, my kids are going to find a way to smoke weed anyway so I might as well give them some, right?
    - applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
      Can you not be disingenuous beyond belief? That is not even remotely close to what I said. What I take issue with is that the solution is worse than the problem (and does not even solve the problem). We can solve all problems of society if we lock everyone in an isolated prison cell 24/7 except under strict supervision when working or studying. That, obviously, is a fucking insane idea. Yet it is what we are creeping towards when you defend government surveillance of every person's device usage. A solution to a problem should not be 100x worse than the problem it allegedly solves, and this is doubly true when it doesn't even solve the problem. Obviously, not all solutions have to be 100% solutions to problems. Indeed such solutions very rarely exist in the real world. But they do need to be less of a problem than the original problem, and the more invasive they are, the more you'd better expect they solve a serious problem as comprehensively as possible rather than barely addressing a trivial problem.

donmcronald 6mo ago

All accounts and that are important to kids have are being tied to their real identity and they won’t be able to get a new one if they’re banned. The potential for social engineering is insane. All of these ID laws are going to make it more dangerous for kids online IMO. “Hi I’m a Roblox moderator. Your account was reported for X and you’ve been temp banned. Come to platform Y to appeal. Start by submitting all your personal info and a selfie.” And it’ll be completely normalized by big tech. Seriously. WTF are they thinking?

microtonal 6mo ago
First, I should say that I am against online age identification. But if we are going to get age verification because the larger population wants it, I definitely prefer the EU's privacy-preserving age verification that uses zero knowledge proofs (yes, they have issues too) over private companies doing age verification, requiring uploading scans of your ID, filming your face, etc. For the reasons that you mention (people can easily be tricked into giving information to the wrong people), but also because I simply do not want my data to be in the hands of random private companies that will sell the data, give it to Palantir, etc. That makes this fight so annoying, we have to fight age identification, while at the same time also promoting privacy-preserving age verification for the case it happens anyway.
- applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
  I think this is folly. You cannot communicate this level of nuance at scale, especially when faced with opposition that actively lies to achieve their goals. Quoting an older post... > In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves via parental controls. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. That level of nuance is far too much to ask of millions of people who are not technically-informed, and idealism needs to give way to pragmatism if we wish to avoid the worst-case scenario.
  - microtonal 6mo ago
    In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses I do not (completely) agree with this. This seems like the very typical US-centric view of politics. A lot of members of the European Parliament are not corporate puppets and have ideals (even if they often do not align with mine). Why would the EU come with a ZKP-based verification reference app if they were sock puppets? The corporate sock-puppet politician would just push the narrative that age verification should be left to the market (which is probably what happens in the US, where most politicians are sock-puppets due campaign sponsoring, etc.). You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. We do not have to convince the population. We have to convince regulators and if it becomes necessary the EU/national-level courts that handle human rights violations. Also, in the case of the EU, they made a reference implementation of ZKP age verification and asked national governments to roll this out in their apps. One of the large issues though is that the reference implementation relies on Google Play Integrity for device attestation (+ the iOS counterpart), so if national software development agencies use the reference implementation as-is, it shuts out competing systems. They should have used AOSP device attestation, which is also supported by GrapheneOS, etc. So, besides protesting age verification, I'm trying to get the message to politicians that how device attestation is done in the reference implementation is an issue. The thing that might help here is that sovereignty is also high on the agenda.

tgv 6mo ago

> grabbing Dad's phone That will only very rarely happen. Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? For more than one minute? People are so addicted to their phones. > it's not about the children It's also about the children, but there surely are parties which use the process to further their own goals. > I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated That's not the right quote for this case.

applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
> Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? They don't ask for it, they take it when you're busy or sleeping. Teens certainly weren't asking for Dad's VHS tapes or magazines when I was a kid. I suppose this problem is solveable, too, though. Mandatory biometric locks on every device capable of accessing the internet, why not? > That's not the right quote for this case. It is. These people are fascists. Their goal is to create a society where the government has a permanent record of everything every person is doing, monitored 24/7 so nobody can defy it. The point about tolerating intolerance is that by abiding such people, you allow them to create an intolerant society, thus it is prudent even in a tolerant society to be intolerant specifically towards those whose goal is intolerance.
- eloisant 6mo ago
  By your logic, my kids are going to find a way to smoke weed anyway so I might as well give them some, right?
  - applfanboysbgon 6mo ago
    Can you not be disingenuous beyond belief? That is not even remotely close to what I said. What I take issue with is that the solution is worse than the problem (and does not even solve the problem). We can solve all problems of society if we lock everyone in an isolated prison cell 24/7 except under strict supervision when working or studying. That, obviously, is a fucking insane idea. Yet it is what we are creeping towards when you defend government surveillance of every person's device usage. A solution to a problem should not be 100x worse than the problem it allegedly solves, and this is doubly true when it doesn't even solve the problem. Obviously, not all solutions have to be 100% solutions to problems. Indeed such solutions very rarely exist in the real world. But they do need to be less of a problem than the original problem, and the more invasive they are, the more you'd better expect they solve a serious problem as comprehensively as possible rather than barely addressing a trivial problem.