15 ms·

The KIDS Act would require age checks to get online

649 points by bilsbie 4mo ago

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-force-age-checks-online https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-force-age-che...

linzhangrun 4mo ago
toy story 5
Avicebron 4mo ago
Who wants this?
- Simulacra 4mo ago
  Government
  - Avicebron 4mo ago
    We need opt-out clauses in taxes, so we can vote with our wallets if regular voting isn't working..
    - greenavocado 4mo ago
      Tax opt outs are written in blood
- hackingonempty 4mo ago
  The GOP. This is part of Project 2025. They want to outlaw porn. > Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FOREWORD.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.pr...
  - jm4 4mo ago
    A lot of it would go away if they just stopped consuming it. They consume it at least as much as anybody else. The only difference is the self loathing and belief that they need to be - and are qualified to be - the moral police.
  - mrtksn 4mo ago
    IIRC the onlyfans creators were deemed the desired kind of immigrants. What’s the plan here, lure them in and throw them in jail?
  - Avicebron 4mo ago
    Unfortunately I don't think it's that cut and dried. Here is the list of cosponsors in case anyone was curious if their "representative" is on the list https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors
  - hoppp 4mo ago
    Why not just outlaw sex? If looking at sex is illegal they might as well go all the way.
    - throw9398449 4mo ago
      [flagged]
      - hoppp 4mo ago
        What you mean no way to consent? We can talk or use non-verbal communication. Marriage is by itself not consent for sex and you can't sue somebody to get them to have sex with you either
        microgpt 4mo ago
        It's a redpill/misogynist/incel/Tate-style talking point, they have this meme that women just file rape charges against everyone they ever regret having sex with.
- wewewedxfgdf 4mo ago
  All governments in the world, both sides of politics. It's for the kids, you understand - to protect the kids. There is no more noble purpose than to protect the kids. Only a monster would not want to protect the kids.
  - mdp2021 4mo ago
    It's by the kids (the goats).
  - Bender 4mo ago
    Think of the children [1] [1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Children/ https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...
  - ivanjermakov 4mo ago
    Kids want it themselves. All popular people want it too. Imagine if we don't do this for the kids? Either this or kids will get hurt. All my friends want it too. One eastern country didn't protect their kids and look where it's at. This is the only way to save kids and we need to act fast! You should rather be against child labor than this. Tried to collect more logical fallacies here.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    "kids" is just another word for "people" by the way - everyone is a kid, and everyone is an adult, except for people who die very young. We should not make the mistake of thinking of them as two separate independent categories of people.
- newsclues 4mo ago
  Anyone who wants to centralize power: so big tech, big government, big corporations, and big dummies who think this is progress
- felooboolooomba 4mo ago
  Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870
  - brettgo1 4mo ago
    They're lobbying FOR it?! I thought this would hinder them along with everyone else
    - hoppp 4mo ago
      They lobby for because then they can collect biometrics from kids and then reject them. So they don't serve underage kids , no fines but they do get data.
      - baby_souffle 4mo ago
        And it's another non-trivial barrier to entry for any potential upstart that may eventually grow to be a problem for meta
      - haunter 4mo ago
        > then they can collect biometrics from kids They will collect it from everyone to prove your age. The question only that is it worth the gamble by Meta, as in how many people would rather leave the sites (from Whatsapp to Insta to Facebook) than give them their ID
    - shomp 4mo ago
      If Facebook knows your precise age they can market to you "better."
    - microgpt 4mo ago
      They want to know all the children are 18+ to remove liability for what they do to them.
    - felooboolooomba 4mo ago
      Meta has a long history of breaking the law. I have no doubts Meta will have access to the personal details once you've "verified your age". They'll know WHO you are, as accurately as possible. Can you imagine how much that it worth to Meta, history's largest harvester of personal data? A whole lot more than $2B. Now, based on their ruthless disregard for the law, do you think they're just going to use it to sell your ads?
- microgpt 4mo ago
  Parents who want to raise healthy children. Politicians who want to track everyone all the time. The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children. Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development. Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time. The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist). App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
- stackedinserter 4mo ago
  These people are around you. Watch this "regulate 3d printers because of children" hearing: https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285 https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285 Normal people that call themselves good names like "moms for actions" drag us into this totalitarian hell.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
gunapologist99 4mo ago
Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term: This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!! Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not: * of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE * of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn) * or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids. Really, why doesn't actually matter too much. The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news. They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind) We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices. How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons. These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.
- gjsman-1000 4mo ago
  Sounds great. What have you done?
athrowaway3z 4mo ago
Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics. It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better. It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.
- api 4mo ago
  EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it. Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd. I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need. In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it. Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops." Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective. Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764." That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so. I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers. Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.
hoppp 4mo ago
Just put the age verification in the browser already. Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.
- Aspos 4mo ago
  USB anal probe can be integrated the same way.
  - hoppp 4mo ago
    Exactly! Websites should be able to tell apart lgbtqa+ people by probing their anus for traces of cum lol /Sarcasm
    - cindyllm 4mo ago
      [dead]
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- Zambyte 4mo ago
  Or we could have UBI and parents could parent their kids without corporations babysitting for them.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    Wouldn't corporations still declare war on parents over their kids?
    - Zambyte 4mo ago
      Parents would have a better chance at fighting back. Both with the time gained to communicate their disapproval, and a better relationship with their kids to be more likely to disapprove of it.
shomp 4mo ago
call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this
- none2585 4mo ago
  Then donate millions in campaign contributions to ensure they actually care at all what you think!
  - vegetablepotpie 4mo ago
    Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
    - none2585 4mo ago
      From your linked Wikipedia articles many corporations including Google were part of that opposite campaign. Exactly the type of people donating untold millions to our legislatures. Had nothing to do with any kind of grassroots pressure.
    - anigbrowl 4mo ago
      Woohoo, what about this great success (checks notes) 14 years ago?! You think political counterparties don't adapt and refine their tactics?
  - noosphr 4mo ago
    Money is a poor substitute for people who care. The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.
    - verisimi 4mo ago
OutOfHere 4mo ago
What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.
- nullbio 4mo ago
  Yep, it'll either be connected through your own internet passport, or it'll be connected through a separate permit which is tied to your own passport. In the end the monopolies will be the big winners. I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on? The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway. Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.
jappgar 4mo ago
I'll see your "government wants biometric surveillance" conspiracy theory and raise you a "pedofiles want to keep kids on social media" theory.
- wizzwizz4 4mo ago
  Age verification makes it easier for the bad guys to identify and groom children without adults finding out. Sting operations are that much harder if you have to convince the surveillance capitalism machine that you're an actual child, not just your target.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    Only if the bad guys are the ones you're verifying to, isn't it?
    - wizzwizz4 4mo ago
      The information leaks: everything causally downstream of the verification is potentially a source of information. Examples include targetted advertising, activity in age-gated communities, etcetera. Children in adult spaces who do not reveal that they are children are rarely targeted by child abusers; but if children are corralled into "child spaces" (which are functionally ghettos, given how much of society now takes place online), it will be easier to locate and identify them. Children are far from helpless, when it comes to online threats. For example, when abusive comments are posted on scratch.mit.edu, you will see a flood of warnings and chaff to try to protect other children from the abusive material, while the Scratch Team work through the moderation queue. However, many social media sites are designed to disempower users, so we don't see this kind of thing there: I suspect separating children from adults in those spaces makes children less safe, not more safe.
dogcatdog 4mo ago
That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification. The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.
- gustavus 4mo ago
  I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
  - dogcatdog 4mo ago
    Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too. At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
    - trashb 3mo ago
      A lot of countries have limits on how long CCTV footage may be stored (often there is a minimum and maximum limit). I believe in the US it is regulated on a per state level.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    they literally do that though. They don't all just look at your ID any more, some scan it with a scanner or phone and that literally does what you just said. Paying with a card also does it.
PinkSheep 4mo ago
btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- kakacik 4mo ago
  same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up
  - echelon 4mo ago
    Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children. They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984. Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy. Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID. Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases. All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit. What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
    - kakacik 4mo ago
      Look, I'll do my part with my kids (as in no social e-life before 16, which anyway somewhat aligns with various state bans flying all around the world, if there will be peer pressure then so be it new Commodore flip phone looks ideal for that), I know what sort of cancer to young developing defenseless mind screens have. I can see it all around. Child psychologists all agree, but few parents want to hear that. But its unfair to kids who have shitty weak lazy parents, and screens are like fentanyl to young mind, there is literally nothing more attention-grabbing in the world for them. Their potential lost to... nothing worth mentioning, just empty dopamine kicks one after another. Its a miniscule fringe situation you say? More than half of kids before 2 are exposed to hours of screens (I see similar articles almost daily these days). This is mankind's future, your pensions, the society that will be taking care of you (and trust me you will need it, the only way to avoid that is to die young). But this isn't about selfish take-care-of-me situation, I just care and worry about how subpar lives such addicts have, spread across whole mankind. Compared to life filled with nature, hobbies, passions, physical social interactions. I've seen it personally many times, I had kids in my early 40s so most of peers are a solid decade ahead. What began as boasting of having 'digital kids' when younger is now just a sad story of hard addictions thats actively avoided in any conversation, after few drinks parents end up 'what should we do when we have bad kids' sort of questions. When I look at given parents the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, how could it, after all its just genes and parental upbringing that define people's personalities more than anything else.
EGreg 4mo ago
Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need? On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID? Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system. To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  It can't, because the government doesn't know shit about technology. Someone who knows tech, is close to the government, and isn't corrupt, would have to propose it and explain what this zorro-proof knowy doohicky is. The government knows ID checks because you get checked at bars.
  - newAccount2025 4mo ago
    Horse shit. The government has extremely deep expertise in computer science readily available on their payroll and at their beck and call. They literally have DARPA, for instance.
    - microgpt 4mo ago
      The politicians who think this is a good idea are not calling up DARPA just in case DARPA has a better idea.
  - elric 4mo ago
    Never been ID checked at a bar in my life. The whole concept is alien to me.
  - slantaclaus 4mo ago
    Zorro proof!
throw0101d 4mo ago
We're approaching forty years of this: > The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools. > The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
- microgpt 4mo ago
  sometimes it's true. We ruined the brains of a whole generation of people. Should we stop doing that? If so, how?
  - bluefirebrand 4mo ago
    Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?
  - preg_match 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - subscribed 4mo ago
    Which generation of people and with what? Kazaa or porn? I presume the former because the latter is about as old as the civilisations.
    - microgpt 4mo ago
      infinite scroll dopamine glitch, actually
- 4mo ago
shevy-java 4mo ago
So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else. This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to crush those lobbyists that push for this. By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information? Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged. The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.
- echelon 4mo ago
  > This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else. This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information. Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet. If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests. Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success. Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies. Within two generations we're living in 1984.
  - 20after4 4mo ago
    We're already living in 1984.
    - verisimi 4mo ago
      We were already living in 1984 when Orwell/Blair wrote the book.
- dzhiurgis 4mo ago
  [flagged]
andai 4mo ago
[dead]
alex_young 4mo ago
[flagged]
- rsoto2 4mo ago
  agreed
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    Why is it flagged?
SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 4mo ago
[flagged]
- Mountain_Skies 4mo ago
  Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  You're distorting pretty hard about what happened there (mister random numbered throwaway account) but even if you weren't, that is not the definition of fascism.
aklemm 4mo ago
It’s quickly being understood as a ploy for mass surveillance.
lebuffon 4mo ago
I like to look back in history for parallels. In 1912 the USA required that all radio transmitters be licensed. There were classifications established for commercial and amateur stations. So at that time Feds understood the power of giving citizens the ability to communicate with the masses. Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world. The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.
- subscribed 4mo ago
  You still got CB, FRS, GMRS, LORA, several ISM bands, etc. There's no big conspiracy here, just a limited amount of the spectrum.
- Mountain_Skies 4mo ago
  There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.
  - lebuffon 3mo ago
    It's not a technology limitation as you say. The issue is a psychology problem. How do you keep a nation all playing on the same team, so to speak, when there are an infinite number of contradictory voices screaming at them? My observation is that a society is based on some common ideas, many times myths, but without those common threads you can't make a civilization. This is why dictatorial regimes shut down open internet access rather quickly. They know it will undermine and/or destroy their control of the masses.
- verisimi 4mo ago
  > It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this As others have said, there is a coordinated push to drive this legislation everywhere. There is no fight in nation states. Just capitulation.
duxup 4mo ago
I remember when the advice was to NOT give out your personal information online. Now it's "present your personal info when demanded or else".
- kgwxd 4mo ago
  There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised just one of those things simultaneously.
  - duxup 4mo ago
    I don't know what that means.
    - mondomondo 4mo ago
      [dead]
    - KajMagnus 3mo ago
      I think they meant that different people can give you different and conflicting advice. Also, check out the Goomba fallacy. (The way you wrote "the advice was... now it is...")
  - bastawhiz 4mo ago
    There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised any one thing at all, ever.
  - saghm 4mo ago
    There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.
- Aeolun 4mo ago
  Yeah, I remember when I finally had my own address and could stop entering nonsense. Felt like a rite of passage.
jschveibinz 4mo ago
I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?
- reactordev 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. Sustained.
    - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
      You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
      - helterskelter 4mo ago
        Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
        loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
        lol :) good point
- kgwxd 4mo ago
  The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
- 4mo ago
vorticalbox 4mo ago
Isn’t this already a thing because it requires an adult and a payment method to get a connection to your house. I’ve already stated who I am when I paid.
- alt227 4mo ago
  It really should be as simple as that, which proves all these regulations are really there for something else.
ghusto 4mo ago
If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.
- minitech 4mo ago
  Alternative what? Government?
- Borealid 4mo ago
  I was a bit upset to see vitriolic opposition online to systemd adding a field to store, entirely locally to a Linux system, the user's age. I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
- urbnspacecowboy 4mo ago
  Here's my working and cheap alternative that respects privacy: Don't do it! Seriously now, if you give in to demanding people, they will just demand more. Appeasement does not work.
  - ghusto 3mo ago
    To be even more specific then: Working and cheap alternative to the very real problem that this solves. It's not a made up problem, even though the current proposed solution was just shopping for a problem to solve so it could sell itself.
- trashb 3mo ago
  Isn't knowing if someone is above or below a certain age already privacy invasive if one chooses they don't want to share that? At least under GDPR age is protected as an indirect identifier.
GeekyBear 4mo ago
Parents already have the ability to lock down Android or iOS devices for their own children, if they choose to do so.
- anjiro 4mo ago
  Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1]. 1. https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-controls-need-improvement.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-cont...
  - archagon 4mo ago
    You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way. More technological solutions to social problems.
  - j-bos 4mo ago
    Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
    - the_mitsuhiko 4mo ago
      Those things are still illegal for minors. I find that to be a rather weak argument.
      - saghm 4mo ago
        They're implemented in a way that people who don't ever buy alcohol or cigarettes get effected by though. I can't feasibly opt out of the entire internet that I use to pay bills, schedule doctors appointments, file taxes, etc. because hypothetical children could use them to access completely unrelated things to those boring parts of my everyday life. The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of my house just in case I might decide to buy alcohol later.
anthk 4mo ago
Dear goverments, if you care about KIDS, provide them a separete internet outside of ICANN with mandatory ID. Let the rest of the people create an anonymous, adult internet with no ID's.
- giancarlostoro 4mo ago
  So Tor?
  - anthk 4mo ago
    No. Separate of ICANN. Their own network. Like Yggdrasil, but ID checked.
kelseyfrog 4mo ago
The ongoing refusal for parents to parent necessitates a shift in their legal liabilities. Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.
paulsutter 4mo ago
The right way to age-restrict is for parents to configure certain devices as kids devices, and then it would be easy for any service to know if they are communicating with one of those devices. This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.
monksy 4mo ago
So.. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/cosponsors https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757... Find your rep on congress.gov, and write them. Sponsors: Brett Guthrie (R-KY) CoSponsors: Frank Pallone (D-NJ) Find and write your congress member: https://www.congress.gov/ https://www.congress.gov/ Guthrie is sponsored by: (Alpahbit is the biggest) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie /us_congress/summary?mpid=1048046 Frankie: (AIPAC, Anthropic and Comcast) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/summary?mpid=1106330 https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/s...
- halyconWays 4mo ago
  More info on AIPAC endorsements: Guthrie (4th out of 7): $42k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky Pallone (7th out of 10): $241k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey
bArray 4mo ago
Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?
- jeroenhd 4mo ago
  Facebook has been documented for sponsoring these bills in the USA. But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives. I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.
  - sph 4mo ago
    That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it. It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278
    - rockskon 4mo ago
      Meta is publicly posting ads in Europe promoting age verification, so yes Meta is a part of the problem.
      - sph 3mo ago
        What does Meta get out of enacting mass surveillance of the entire Western world (not even for their personal benefit)? That they can avoid spending 6 months implementing ID checks like porn sites have done? Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant
        Telaneo 3mo ago
        This article[1] gives some examples, but annoyingly, no relevant pictures. > Denmark’s digital affairs minister criticized Meta for an advertising campaign promoting regulations on age checks for social media in an interview with POLITICO. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-digital-minister-slams-meta-campaign-children-social-media/ https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-digital-minister-sla...
frugalmail 4mo ago
This is something that is the parent's responsibility. We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.
1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago
Maybe www users do not need "platforms" run by third parties, usually in Silicon Vallley, who conduct data collection, surveillance and advertising services as a "business model" What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms" No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services" There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online" Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1 If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies 1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service
- krater23 4mo ago
  Just a story from Germany in early 2000. I had a website and just installed a php script to have a forum on my website and just forgot about it. Today, I could do the same, but I had a 24/7 job to monitor everything someone writes there because it could bring me personally into jail. The same with the comment section of my blog. Thats the reason why this big platforms exist and are used. Because no one other than they want to take the risk. At least in Germany are not much people that want to do that.
deleted 4mo ago
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pdonis 4mo ago
Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E): "Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations." Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".
- antonvs 4mo ago
  It’s not just “social media”. Any site that’s funded by advertising fits that description.
  - __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
    Only if it's targeted.
    - antonvs 4mo ago
      True, but in practice, the vast majority of advertising-funded sites use targeted advertising, because they use standard ad networks. There are very few ads networks that don’t do targeted ads.
      - __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
        Right but if we could kill that business model by making platforms chose between age verification and non-targeted ads, that would be a win right? That's not so say I'm in favor of age verification, just pointing out the silver lining.
        4mo ago
enzar 4mo ago
This would be amazing .
- enzar 4mo ago
  Folks saying "kids will find a way" yes but the social norm of them being looked down upon certain online content would make it so they view it less as its not a norm. Kinda how NSFW content is right now, nobody whips that out unless they are in private...
stego-tech 4mo ago
Once again banging my “there’s already an age check to get online and it’s the adult paying the ISP bill” drum. Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.
GenericDev 4mo ago
[dead]
kelseyfrog 4mo ago
Parents won't parent without a change in incentives. That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.
- tcoff91 4mo ago
  Comparing Social Media to Heroin seems quite hyperbolic to me as someone who has had people in my life die of opioid addiction. Social Media isn't even as bad as Tobacco I'd say let alone Heroin.
- Grombobulous 4mo ago
  Age restriction puts the burden and punishment on citizens. Your proposal to punish parents does the same. How about a solution that puts burden on corporations for once?
  - yunnpp 4mo ago
    Bingo. And now GP should go look who is behind age verification and ponder why they'd be pushing for this if it didn't benefit them.
  - kelseyfrog 4mo ago
    Because corporations don't have children? Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
    - idle_zealot 4mo ago
      I don't know, if the biggest companies in the world were setting up outside schools and in cul-de-sacs and aggressively selling colorful heroin with cartoon mascots my first reaction wouldn't be to blame parents for failing to prevent the childhood heroin addiction epidemic and call for arresting them. I think it would be more fair and useful to focus enforcement on the parties with power making intentional decisions to make the world a worse place. I guess that makes me anti-agency and anti-responsibility though.
RaiyanYahya 4mo ago
Anything to protect identities online is valid. I wonder how many apps and websites will have to do or implement age verifications ? And how ?
- winrid 4mo ago
  Your ISP will eventually require a new protocol that can hold your digital ID in every packet to access certain content and you'll have to upgrade/migrate your OS if you want to view p0rn etc.
Terr_ 4mo ago
And all age-checks will be identity-checks. Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.
nullbio 4mo ago
This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with AI. And to be fair to them, I don't really know of a better solution for what is coming... As much as I hate it. How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise. The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.
- nyanmatt 4mo ago
  If it has nothing to do with children, then why is it named the KIDS Act? Are we being bamboozled? And you are IN SUPPORT OF that? Am I taking crazy pills?
fivetenpen 4mo ago
The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity
- alt227 4mo ago
  > The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
  - efreak 3mo ago
    What you're describing isn't a cancer to children but a danger to _people_, children or not. Children being children, they're sometimes less able to recognize danger ahead of time, and they're also more likely to get their kicks from sending each other there (I know I did). This is also not inherent to the Internet, however. "Stranger danger" warning exists for a reason. What we need to do is teach children that just like you wouldn't follow a random stranger into their house, you also shouldn't click random links. You also have to make the safe place dedicated for kids into a place that they actually _want_ to be (think neopets in the 00s), and then you don't have to put your resources into preventing them from leaving.
mawadev 4mo ago
Remember the guy who had an entire island and all his friends literally have had no consequences? You really think the age checks will do what is advertised? Lmao
Humorist2290 4mo ago
In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups. An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.
- bluescrn 4mo ago
  Motor vehicles are very dangerous too, including higher-power e-bikes. Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.
- ruffrey 3mo ago
  It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it. It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.
  - EmbarrassedHelp 3mo ago
    I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.
  - Humorist2290 3mo ago
    Yeah the suggestion is mostly facetious and I realize impracticable. As the other commenter mentioned -- it's a poison pill. If such a rider were added to the KIDS Act it would be dead in the water, without a doubt. Though I think it's worth noting that age verification _without_ identity verification is basically as impracticable, and arguably more dangerous.
- BeetleB 3mo ago
  Fun fact: Most firearms don't have a manual safety that you disengage.
buffer_overlord 4mo ago
No age checks on bbs
verytrivial 3mo ago
I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity. Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"? I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the world's social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here either.
degecko 3mo ago
One could implement this at browser account level or even at OS-level, but no, let's just ask all the websites to implement a new service for ID check. Or let's ask all the websites to spam users with the never-read cookie usage request. We are such a smart species.
- StingyJelly 3mo ago
  Or not implement it at all...
odyssey7 3mo ago
History rhymes. They killed Socrates to protect the youth of Athens.
Funes- 3mo ago
One step closer to the great exile from the clearnet. I'd say "accelerate".
tosti 3mo ago
TFA: > We’ve seen this movie before. ...which one? 1984? The Terminator? The Truman Show? The Matrix? Minority Report? The Social Network?
cricketsandmops 3mo ago
This should be up to parents to parent. If their child has social media, or viewing sites that are for adults then the parents should be fined. In the US every weekend teens are shooting each other, i think we have bigger concerns than them being online
xbar 3mo ago
Do bother to write your representatives.
pembrook 3mo ago
Theres this new form of technology that is allowing decentralized actors to publish information without government oversight. It’s called the Printing press. And yes, there was a giant moral panic about it at the time that basically split Europe in half. Yet, today, we would find it absurd to ban children from reading printed words. Book bans are often the most opposed policies by all sides when polled. The fact we’re looking to block children from the modern equivalent is the most classic example of a moral panic I’ve seen. The “social media” millennials remember from their youth where they saw all the parties they didn’t get invited to…doesn’t even exist anymore. The social graph is dead, it’s all just short form TV now. The stupidity of this panic narrative is tremendous. Instead of attacking/regulating the algorithms (the problem) we’re banning children from all information and creating a global surveillance dragnet for all adults.

649 points by bilsbie 4mo ago

https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-force-age-checks-online https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-don-t-force-age-che...

linzhangrun 4mo ago

toy story 5

Avicebron 4mo ago

Who wants this?

Simulacra 4mo ago
Government
- Avicebron 4mo ago
  We need opt-out clauses in taxes, so we can vote with our wallets if regular voting isn't working..
  - greenavocado 4mo ago
    Tax opt outs are written in blood
hackingonempty 4mo ago
The GOP. This is part of Project 2025. They want to outlaw porn. > Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered. https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FOREWORD.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20241103190346/https://static.pr...
- jm4 4mo ago
  A lot of it would go away if they just stopped consuming it. They consume it at least as much as anybody else. The only difference is the self loathing and belief that they need to be - and are qualified to be - the moral police.
- mrtksn 4mo ago
  IIRC the onlyfans creators were deemed the desired kind of immigrants. What’s the plan here, lure them in and throw them in jail?
- Avicebron 4mo ago
  Unfortunately I don't think it's that cut and dried. Here is the list of cosponsors in case anyone was curious if their "representative" is on the list https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/s1748/cosponsors
- hoppp 4mo ago
  Why not just outlaw sex? If looking at sex is illegal they might as well go all the way.
  - throw9398449 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - hoppp 4mo ago
      What you mean no way to consent? We can talk or use non-verbal communication. Marriage is by itself not consent for sex and you can't sue somebody to get them to have sex with you either
      - microgpt 4mo ago
        It's a redpill/misogynist/incel/Tate-style talking point, they have this meme that women just file rape charges against everyone they ever regret having sex with.
wewewedxfgdf 4mo ago
All governments in the world, both sides of politics. It's for the kids, you understand - to protect the kids. There is no more noble purpose than to protect the kids. Only a monster would not want to protect the kids.
- mdp2021 4mo ago
  It's by the kids (the goats).
- Bender 4mo ago
  Think of the children [1] [1] - https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Children/ https://nochan.net/b/Internet-Crap/20230829-Think-Of-The-Chi...
- ivanjermakov 4mo ago
  Kids want it themselves. All popular people want it too. Imagine if we don't do this for the kids? Either this or kids will get hurt. All my friends want it too. One eastern country didn't protect their kids and look where it's at. This is the only way to save kids and we need to act fast! You should rather be against child labor than this. Tried to collect more logical fallacies here.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  "kids" is just another word for "people" by the way - everyone is a kid, and everyone is an adult, except for people who die very young. We should not make the mistake of thinking of them as two separate independent categories of people.
newsclues 4mo ago
Anyone who wants to centralize power: so big tech, big government, big corporations, and big dummies who think this is progress
felooboolooomba 4mo ago
Meta has spent $2B lobbying for this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47410870
- brettgo1 4mo ago
  They're lobbying FOR it?! I thought this would hinder them along with everyone else
  - hoppp 4mo ago
    They lobby for because then they can collect biometrics from kids and then reject them. So they don't serve underage kids , no fines but they do get data.
    - baby_souffle 4mo ago
      And it's another non-trivial barrier to entry for any potential upstart that may eventually grow to be a problem for meta
    - haunter 4mo ago
      > then they can collect biometrics from kids They will collect it from everyone to prove your age. The question only that is it worth the gamble by Meta, as in how many people would rather leave the sites (from Whatsapp to Insta to Facebook) than give them their ID
  - shomp 4mo ago
    If Facebook knows your precise age they can market to you "better."
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    They want to know all the children are 18+ to remove liability for what they do to them.
  - felooboolooomba 4mo ago
    Meta has a long history of breaking the law. I have no doubts Meta will have access to the personal details once you've "verified your age". They'll know WHO you are, as accurately as possible. Can you imagine how much that it worth to Meta, history's largest harvester of personal data? A whole lot more than $2B. Now, based on their ruthless disregard for the law, do you think they're just going to use it to sell your ads?
microgpt 4mo ago
Parents who want to raise healthy children. Politicians who want to track everyone all the time. The rare few politicians who want it to be easier to raise healthy children. Tech CEOs who don't want to be liable for harming children's development. Tech CEOs who want to track everyone all the time. The rare few tech CEOs who want to improve the world (by not harming children's development) and whose business model doesn't require it or who compete with one that does (e.g. operators of edutainment websites if those even still exist). App coders who don't want to train a neural network to check IDs themselves.
stackedinserter 4mo ago
These people are around you. Watch this "regulate 3d printers because of children" hearing: https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285 https://youtu.be/sue88CXzPcQ?t=2285 Normal people that call themselves good names like "moms for actions" drag us into this totalitarian hell.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

gunapologist99 4mo ago

Wouldn't it be great if we could just legislate fixes for everything? /s This seems to be a result of what people call the uniparty system, but that's not really an accurate term: This actually embodies what the establishment on both sides of the aisle want: CONTROL They want this for many different reasons: they have an unbridled lust for power, or perhaps they are willing to burn down fair elections for the good of all mankind, but actually let's be more generous!! Most likely because they are afraid, unjustly or not: * of real terrorists that they think, sometimes correctly, are using E2EE * of children's immature minds having neural pathways being changed by things they're not quite ready for, or perhaps becoming addicted to the very real and powerful nature of porn) * or, you know, whatever! Maybe they're parents and want to protect their kids and everyone else's kids. Really, why doesn't actually matter too much. The fact is that they just don't understand the technology and the FUNDAMENTAL TRADE-OFF BETWEEN TECHNOLOGY AND FREEDOM, that tension between privacy/human rights/dignity and technological "bad things" that are always in the news. They get told one simple thing by lobbyists or even well-meaning constituents, and then they form their worldview around it. And THEN they write legislation (or, more likely, get handed ready-made legislation by lobbyists with an axe to grind) We, the knowledgeable in this area (regardless of our party persuasion -- I'll work on my people, you work on yours!) should start to educate our non-technical legislators. We have to be the trusted voice of reason when it comes to tech, because they're hearing a lot of things from a lot of different voices. How? By getting involved. Get involved at the LOCAL level, because THOSE people are the ones that serve as the feedramp for national or international politics. After 20 years, your education might percolate upwards to the people who are actually writing new laws. You don't need to be a "crazy" sounding activist or conspiracy theorist: in fact, that works against you (usually). Just be an adult, try to understand what they're trying to accomplish, and explain how they can accomplish it or that it can't be done that way for specific and reasonable reasons. These are all just my opinions as I see increasing amounts of this sort of legislation being pushed by Meta and other actors. This comment also has a very US-centric bias, so please correct me if you're in another country where things work differently.

gjsman-1000 4mo ago
Sounds great. What have you done?

athrowaway3z 4mo ago

Targeting the kids is so infuriatingly successful tactics. It gives the adults the option to be apathetic. In reality, anyone who is a kid now will never know any better. It just means we're the last generations that had the luxury of a world that remembered what privacy was.

api 4mo ago
EDIT: about half to two thirds of the responders didn't catch "I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions." I am not saying I like these solutions. I am trying to explain why they have support among the general public. Many of these responses are the usual "shoot the messenger" response you get online when you point out what the "other side" thinks and why they think it even if you don't necessarily agree. On this issue I think there's a need, but I have yet to see a good proposal to address it. Once again, the response in places like this pretends everyone is an upper middle class or above tech-savvy nerd. I'm not a fan of these proposed solutions, which do invade privacy and remove freedom, but the problems are real. These solutions are being pushed because our industry is doing nothing to police itself or provide parents with the tools they need. In many cases we are doing less than nothing, because the profit motive is to prevent parents from having this control. "Social" media, gambling-adjacent gaming, and other addictionware, which is a huge profit center for our industry, wants to addict kids early. Gotta get those cigarettes into their hands, which means preventing parents from stopping it. Right now if you are not a tech-savvy parent your choices are: (1) deny children access to devices or severely limit that access, or (2) allow your kids to be raised by super-addictive infinite scroll brain rot feeds, brainwashed by propaganda and influencer bullshit, and placed on an on-ramp to future gambling addiction via mobile games with engineered "compulsion loops." Now imagine you are a non-tech-savvy household with two parents who work. You can't really limit access since you can't supervise it enough, so your choice is now binary: no access, kids raised by brain rot and propaganda. Pick one. You have no control, no ability to whitelist, because not only do you not have time to deal with this but the tools often cost money and are imperfect and ineffective. Then you catch your 11 year old son watching extreme fetish porn that he lacks the maturity to contextualize, or hear him spouting off Nazi ideology or talking about how he's an "alpha male" and women should be his slaves. Or your daughter becomes anorexic by following influencers. Or you have a child who is questioning their sexual orientation or identity and is targeted by an online bullying ring. These are the commonplace examples. There's a lot of much worse shit too, like sextortion of kids. Search for "764." That's why this push exists. It's not a conspiracy. It's because we -- our industry -- is an amoral shitshow that engineers addiction and refuses to police itself or provide parents with good tools to do so. I'd also like to note that for the non-tech-savvy privacy is dead and has been dead for over ten years at least. If you are not tech-savvy your devices are recording everything about you and transmitting it to two dozen ad networks and data brokers. Only nerds have privacy today and only if they invest the time to police their tech environment. If you're not a nerd there's nothing to lose. You already lost it long ago. We -- our industry -- took it away.

hoppp 4mo ago

Just put the age verification in the browser already. Then introduce some new headers the browser sends to servers with some proof that the user was verified and the browser would need a response (like CORS) for it to work.

Aspos 4mo ago
USB anal probe can be integrated the same way.
- hoppp 4mo ago
  Exactly! Websites should be able to tell apart lgbtqa+ people by probing their anus for traces of cum lol /Sarcasm
  - cindyllm 4mo ago
    [dead]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
Zambyte 4mo ago
Or we could have UBI and parents could parent their kids without corporations babysitting for them.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  Wouldn't corporations still declare war on parents over their kids?
  - Zambyte 4mo ago
    Parents would have a better chance at fighting back. Both with the time gained to communicate their disapproval, and a better relationship with their kids to be more likely to disapprove of it.

shomp 4mo ago

call and email your congresspeoples, and tell them not to go through with this

none2585 4mo ago
Then donate millions in campaign contributions to ensure they actually care at all what you think!
- vegetablepotpie 4mo ago
  Coordinated opposition campaigns against misinformed and dangerous legislation has been effective in stopping bad laws [1]. After a website blackout, including a Wikipedia shutdown, lawmakers in Washington decided not to proceed with the Stop Online Privacy Act in 2012. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act
  - none2585 4mo ago
    From your linked Wikipedia articles many corporations including Google were part of that opposite campaign. Exactly the type of people donating untold millions to our legislatures. Had nothing to do with any kind of grassroots pressure.
  - anigbrowl 4mo ago
    Woohoo, what about this great success (checks notes) 14 years ago?! You think political counterparties don't adapt and refine their tactics?
- noosphr 4mo ago
  Money is a poor substitute for people who care. The only people who think otherwise are terminally online losers who have never organized anything larger than a birthday party.
  - verisimi 4mo ago

OutOfHere 4mo ago

What about services for AI agents? I don't mean services where the agents use a human's account, but one where they use a permissionless or a dedicated account that they self-registered. By politician grade logic, I guess it won't be long before AI agents are mandated to have a separate annual registration, permit, and fee, not that we should agree to any of it.

nullbio 4mo ago
Yep, it'll either be connected through your own internet passport, or it'll be connected through a separate permit which is tied to your own passport. In the end the monopolies will be the big winners. I'm sure the perspective is something like: If we don't do this, the web just gets flooded with bots and nobody ever knows if they're speaking to a human or not. How do you trust reviews, social media posts, advertiser statistics, and so on? The issue with this approach, though, is that there's such a large blackmarket for stolen identities that all of the actors who already do this sort of activity will be able to continue doing it anyway. Doesn't really seem like there are any good solutions to be found. Every solution involves some loss of freedoms.

jappgar 4mo ago

I'll see your "government wants biometric surveillance" conspiracy theory and raise you a "pedofiles want to keep kids on social media" theory.

wizzwizz4 4mo ago
Age verification makes it easier for the bad guys to identify and groom children without adults finding out. Sting operations are that much harder if you have to convince the surveillance capitalism machine that you're an actual child, not just your target.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  Only if the bad guys are the ones you're verifying to, isn't it?
  - wizzwizz4 4mo ago
    The information leaks: everything causally downstream of the verification is potentially a source of information. Examples include targetted advertising, activity in age-gated communities, etcetera. Children in adult spaces who do not reveal that they are children are rarely targeted by child abusers; but if children are corralled into "child spaces" (which are functionally ghettos, given how much of society now takes place online), it will be easier to locate and identify them. Children are far from helpless, when it comes to online threats. For example, when abusive comments are posted on scratch.mit.edu, you will see a flood of warnings and chaff to try to protect other children from the abusive material, while the Scratch Team work through the moderation queue. However, many social media sites are designed to disempower users, so we don't see this kind of thing there: I suspect separating children from adults in those spaces makes children less safe, not more safe.

dogcatdog 4mo ago

That sounds like a reasonable aim. Online services should be responsible for implementing age verification checks on content that children shouldn't be accessing, just like vendors of alcohol and nicotine products are responsible for age verification. The EFF likes to frame everything that might even slightly rein in online service providers as being a terrible assault on online freedom and therefore, in their view, shouldn't be done. But I don't see them coming up with any better solutions. Just endless complaints, while soliciting donations to keep generating these endless complaints.

gustavus 4mo ago
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
- dogcatdog 4mo ago
  Most stores already have continuously-recording CCTV, which effectively does that too. At least online there can be a separation between the age verification provider and the online content provider, so that the latter doesn't learn anything from the former except that the user's age is above or below a specific cut-off point. So it can actually be more privacy-preserving than purchasing age-restricted goods over the counter.
  - trashb 3mo ago
    A lot of countries have limits on how long CCTV footage may be stored (often there is a minimum and maximum limit). I believe in the US it is regulated on a per state level.
- microgpt 4mo ago
  they literally do that though. They don't all just look at your ID any more, some scan it with a scanner or phone and that literally does what you just said. Paying with a card also does it.

PinkSheep 4mo ago

btw, what have schools done in the past 2 decades to educate children about content consumption?

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
kakacik 4mo ago
same thing most parents did, and here we are... don't expect miracles from massively underpaid profession which should be the opposite, literally the way to prepare the future of the nation, or fuck it up
- echelon 4mo ago
  Frankly, our liberty and privacy do not deserve to die because of children. They are going to track everything everyone does, and the next generation will turn that tracking into coercion and control. This is everything we were warned about in 1984. Kill products that advertise to kids before you kill privacy. Make it illegal to advertise to children instead of making people submit their state-issued ID. Fine parents for letting children online instead of tracking adults in databases. All of this moral hand-wringing is a lie anyway. They do not care about children. If they did, the kids would get $3 school meals for free instead of 30 million of them going into nutritional deficit. What hurts a kid more - not getting the necessary nutrition, or them being exposed to porn? I know my friends sent me shock sites when I was a preteen - that didn't turn me into a murdering lunatic. Whereas if I hadn't eaten and grown up healthily, perhaps I wouldn't have made it into a stable career.
  - kakacik 4mo ago
    Look, I'll do my part with my kids (as in no social e-life before 16, which anyway somewhat aligns with various state bans flying all around the world, if there will be peer pressure then so be it new Commodore flip phone looks ideal for that), I know what sort of cancer to young developing defenseless mind screens have. I can see it all around. Child psychologists all agree, but few parents want to hear that. But its unfair to kids who have shitty weak lazy parents, and screens are like fentanyl to young mind, there is literally nothing more attention-grabbing in the world for them. Their potential lost to... nothing worth mentioning, just empty dopamine kicks one after another. Its a miniscule fringe situation you say? More than half of kids before 2 are exposed to hours of screens (I see similar articles almost daily these days). This is mankind's future, your pensions, the society that will be taking care of you (and trust me you will need it, the only way to avoid that is to die young). But this isn't about selfish take-care-of-me situation, I just care and worry about how subpar lives such addicts have, spread across whole mankind. Compared to life filled with nature, hobbies, passions, physical social interactions. I've seen it personally many times, I had kids in my early 40s so most of peers are a solid decade ahead. What began as boasting of having 'digital kids' when younger is now just a sad story of hard addictions thats actively avoided in any conversation, after few drinks parents end up 'what should we do when we have bad kids' sort of questions. When I look at given parents the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree, how could it, after all its just genes and parental upbringing that define people's personalities more than anything else.

EGreg 4mo ago

Oh for goodness’ sake, can’t the government (federal or states) create a service that will simply give out a token when someone has passed the age they want (eg 18), and provably goes through a multipart mixer, or just give you a zero-knowledge proof on the device of your choice, anytime you need? On a related note, if they will require a specific kind of ID to vote, can’t they just make sure everyone can receive that ID? Of course they can. They don’t want to. And they pretend like they don’t know how to. What this government is lacking, is a distribution system. To be fair, they will need digital IDs or NFC chips in IDs since deepfakes can now fake the physical IDs next to your face in real time.

microgpt 4mo ago
It can't, because the government doesn't know shit about technology. Someone who knows tech, is close to the government, and isn't corrupt, would have to propose it and explain what this zorro-proof knowy doohicky is. The government knows ID checks because you get checked at bars.
- newAccount2025 4mo ago
  Horse shit. The government has extremely deep expertise in computer science readily available on their payroll and at their beck and call. They literally have DARPA, for instance.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    The politicians who think this is a good idea are not calling up DARPA just in case DARPA has a better idea.
- elric 4mo ago
  Never been ID checked at a bar in my life. The whole concept is alien to me.
- slantaclaus 4mo ago
  Zorro proof!

throw0101d 4mo ago

We're approaching forty years of this: > The term was coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. May referred to "child pornographers, terrorists, drug dealers, etc.".[1] May used the phrase to express disdain for what he perceived as "think of the children" argumentation by government officials and others seeking to justify limiting the civilian use of cryptography tools. > The phrase is a play on Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Digital rights activist Cory Doctorow frequently cites "software pirates, organized crime, child pornographers, and terrorists".[2][3] Other sources use slightly different descriptions, but generally refer to similar activities. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...

microgpt 4mo ago
sometimes it's true. We ruined the brains of a whole generation of people. Should we stop doing that? If so, how?
- bluefirebrand 4mo ago
  Can you elaborate on what you think ruined the brains of a generation of young people? Actually, can you even tell us which generation you're referring to so we know what era of the internet you're unhappy with?
- preg_match 4mo ago
  [dead]
- subscribed 4mo ago
  Which generation of people and with what? Kazaa or porn? I presume the former because the latter is about as old as the civilisations.
  - microgpt 4mo ago
    infinite scroll dopamine glitch, actually
4mo ago

shevy-java 4mo ago

So, the mafia now reveals its evil face. It wants to censor young people's way to access information, without conforming to an "age check". This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else. This is the biggest attack on personal freedom since decades. It is time to crush those lobbyists that push for this. By the way, even ignoring the propaganda by the lobbyists here, at which point did the "discussion" suddenly become to deny young people access to information? Because this is implied here. Some people were underage when wikipdia first emerged. The age sniffing here tries to undermine and revert all of that.

echelon 4mo ago
> This is the first step, the next is to require of this of everyone else. This is the threat day one. They get both groups' information. Next, they'll start to purge information they don't like because it has been corralled off from the rest of the internet. If they get lucky to trap a politician or billionaire in their net (and they will), they'll use that information to control how they vote or fund interests. Next, they'll start to clamp down of people in the group they don't like. They'll lose jobs, banking, get extra audits, and have friction applied to their lives and chances of success. Over time the fundamentalist group embraces government monitoring and control. The youth are brought up on it. The oligarchy use it to remove their enemies. Within two generations we're living in 1984.
- 20after4 4mo ago
  We're already living in 1984.
  - verisimi 4mo ago
    We were already living in 1984 when Orwell/Blair wrote the book.
dzhiurgis 4mo ago
[flagged]

andai 4mo ago

[dead]

alex_young 4mo ago

[flagged]

rsoto2 4mo ago
agreed
- microgpt 4mo ago
  Why is it flagged?

SE5pc3JhY2lzdA 4mo ago

[flagged]

Mountain_Skies 4mo ago
Everything that happened during the pandemic period is an embarrassment most would like to forget. The authoritarians however remember everything and see how little friction there is against them expanding their power, especially if they can wrap it up in a threat.
microgpt 4mo ago
You're distorting pretty hard about what happened there (mister random numbered throwaway account) but even if you weren't, that is not the definition of fascism.

aklemm 4mo ago

It’s quickly being understood as a ploy for mass surveillance.

lebuffon 4mo ago

I like to look back in history for parallels. In 1912 the USA required that all radio transmitters be licensed. There were classifications established for commercial and amateur stations. So at that time Feds understood the power of giving citizens the ability to communicate with the masses. Fast forward to the 1990s and politicians were clueless about what the internet was doing or would do in future. So what is the correct response when every citizen has the power to, using the archaic term, "broadcast" to the world. The genie is out of the bottle and needs to be managed for the common good, which is always going to piss off some individuals. It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this.

subscribed 4mo ago
You still got CB, FRS, GMRS, LORA, several ISM bands, etc. There's no big conspiracy here, just a limited amount of the spectrum.
Mountain_Skies 4mo ago
There's a limited amount of radio spectrum, so it has to be managed. Though technically not unlimited in the strictest sense, internet communications don't have a real limit on how many people can communicate with each other, except limits artificially created.
- lebuffon 3mo ago
  It's not a technology limitation as you say. The issue is a psychology problem. How do you keep a nation all playing on the same team, so to speak, when there are an infinite number of contradictory voices screaming at them? My observation is that a society is based on some common ideas, many times myths, but without those common threads you can't make a civilization. This is why dictatorial regimes shut down open internet access rather quickly. They know it will undermine and/or destroy their control of the masses.
verisimi 4mo ago
> It's going to be interesting watching nation states fight over how best to do this As others have said, there is a coordinated push to drive this legislation everywhere. There is no fight in nation states. Just capitulation.

duxup 4mo ago

I remember when the advice was to NOT give out your personal information online. Now it's "present your personal info when demanded or else".

kgwxd 4mo ago
There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised just one of those things simultaneously.
- duxup 4mo ago
  I don't know what that means.
  - mondomondo 4mo ago
    [dead]
  - KajMagnus 3mo ago
    I think they meant that different people can give you different and conflicting advice. Also, check out the Goomba fallacy. (The way you wrote "the advice was... now it is...")
- bastawhiz 4mo ago
  There's not a single point in history where everyone on the planet advised any one thing at all, ever.
- saghm 4mo ago
  There has also never been a single point in history when everyone in the planet was over the age of 70, but there are also a lot more people who are over 70 now than 1000 years ago. I don't understand why you think that all fractions between 0 and 1 are equivalent.
Aeolun 4mo ago
Yeah, I remember when I finally had my own address and could stop entering nonsense. Felt like a rite of passage.

jschveibinz 4mo ago

I just listened to a radio program on my local NPR station about the topic of kids and social media. From what was presented, the research shows (longitudinal study) that there is very little evidence of social media impacting mental health--which is shocking because a majority of adults think there is a connection and the politicians are pushing that narrative. I have not personally vetted the research. Has anyone else?

reactordev 4mo ago
[flagged]
- amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
  Objection! Assumes facts not in evidence. Sustained.
  - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
    You can’t sustain your own objection, counselor.
    - helterskelter 4mo ago
      Yeah but if you say "sustained" at the end of your own objection you might really confuse whoever is reading the transcript and get a free appeal.
      - loloquwowndueo 4mo ago
        lol :) good point
kgwxd 4mo ago
The kids are fine. The adults that are genuinely worried about the kids need to keep these specific adults out of the kids lives as much as possible.
4mo ago

vorticalbox 4mo ago

Isn’t this already a thing because it requires an adult and a payment method to get a connection to your house. I’ve already stated who I am when I paid.

alt227 4mo ago
It really should be as simple as that, which proves all these regulations are really there for something else.

ghusto 4mo ago

If you want to stop this instance of "think of the children", build a working and cheap alternative that respects privacy. It is technically possible, so if you feel as strongly about it as your words suggest, do it. Once it's ready, spread awareness through old-media, new-media, politicians, everything and every means.

minitech 4mo ago
Alternative what? Government?
Borealid 4mo ago
I was a bit upset to see vitriolic opposition online to systemd adding a field to store, entirely locally to a Linux system, the user's age. I think opponents to these bills frame it as current state vs complete, invasive third-party identity verification. That's a very unfortunate framing because, as you say, it would be possible to take the wind out of the identity-verification proponents' sails by implementing better on-device controls.
urbnspacecowboy 4mo ago
Here's my working and cheap alternative that respects privacy: Don't do it! Seriously now, if you give in to demanding people, they will just demand more. Appeasement does not work.
- ghusto 3mo ago
  To be even more specific then: Working and cheap alternative to the very real problem that this solves. It's not a made up problem, even though the current proposed solution was just shopping for a problem to solve so it could sell itself.
trashb 3mo ago
Isn't knowing if someone is above or below a certain age already privacy invasive if one chooses they don't want to share that? At least under GDPR age is protected as an indirect identifier.

GeekyBear 4mo ago

Parents already have the ability to lock down Android or iOS devices for their own children, if they choose to do so.

anjiro 4mo ago
Super awesome as long as your kids never go anywhere they could access a non-locked-down device. And assuming that device parental controls work, which (at least on iOS) they don't [1]. 1. https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-controls-need-improvement.html https://www.macworld.com/article/2305919/apple-parental-cont...
- archagon 4mo ago
  You can’t patch every hole. Kids will always find a way. More technological solutions to social problems.
- j-bos 4mo ago
  Same applies to alcohol at a friend's house, cigarette's behind the shop, and any other sort of restrictions when away from parents. Ultimately kid's will either take to heart their parent's guidnace or they won't.
  - the_mitsuhiko 4mo ago
    Those things are still illegal for minors. I find that to be a rather weak argument.
    - saghm 4mo ago
      They're implemented in a way that people who don't ever buy alcohol or cigarettes get effected by though. I can't feasibly opt out of the entire internet that I use to pay bills, schedule doctors appointments, file taxes, etc. because hypothetical children could use them to access completely unrelated things to those boring parts of my everyday life. The equivalent would be if I got carded every time I stepped out of my house just in case I might decide to buy alcohol later.

anthk 4mo ago

Dear goverments, if you care about KIDS, provide them a separete internet outside of ICANN with mandatory ID. Let the rest of the people create an anonymous, adult internet with no ID's.

giancarlostoro 4mo ago
So Tor?
- anthk 4mo ago
  No. Separate of ICANN. Their own network. Like Yggdrasil, but ID checked.

kelseyfrog 4mo ago

The ongoing refusal for parents to parent necessitates a shift in their legal liabilities. Giving kids access to social media should have the same criminal penalties as giving them heroin. We have to direct the monopoly on violence against parent who neglect their responsibility. We cannot expect parents to resume their obligations without shifting the incentive landscape to make distribution and access to social media as painful as possible. If parents won't parent, we must force their hand.

paulsutter 4mo ago

The right way to age-restrict is for parents to configure certain devices as kids devices, and then it would be easy for any service to know if they are communicating with one of those devices. This gives parents control, and honestly would work great.

monksy 4mo ago

So.. https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/cosponsors https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757... Find your rep on congress.gov, and write them. Sponsors: Brett Guthrie (R-KY) CoSponsors: Frank Pallone (D-NJ) Find and write your congress member: https://www.congress.gov/ https://www.congress.gov/ Guthrie is sponsored by: (Alpahbit is the biggest) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/brett-guthrie /us_congress/summary?mpid=1048046 Frankie: (AIPAC, Anthropic and Comcast) https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/summary?mpid=1106330 https://www.opensecrets.org/profiles/n00000781/us_congress/s...

halyconWays 4mo ago
More info on AIPAC endorsements: Guthrie (4th out of 7): $42k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky https://www.trackaipac.com/states/kentucky Pallone (7th out of 10): $241k https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey https://www.trackaipac.com/states/newjersey

bArray 4mo ago

Anybody else think it is weird that suddenly all Western countries suddenly want to lockdown the internet to "protect the children"? There is surely an international special interest group lobbying for this?

jeroenhd 4mo ago
Facebook has been documented for sponsoring these bills in the USA. But we also have years of research about how social media and other internet phenomena are ruining kids' lives. I don't disagree with the principle of a lot of these laws, but many implementations are too flawed to be a mistake.
- sph 4mo ago
  That Facebook story is an AI generated attempt at astroturf that has gone viral, but we shouldn’t probably continue perpetuating it. It is not Meta working across the globe because they’re too lazy to implement age verification. Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708278
  - rockskon 4mo ago
    Meta is publicly posting ads in Europe promoting age verification, so yes Meta is a part of the problem.
    - sph 3mo ago
      What does Meta get out of enacting mass surveillance of the entire Western world (not even for their personal benefit)? That they can avoid spending 6 months implementing ID checks like porn sites have done? Also can I see an example of those ads? Google isn’t surfacing anything relevant
      - Telaneo 3mo ago
        This article[1] gives some examples, but annoyingly, no relevant pictures. > Denmark’s digital affairs minister criticized Meta for an advertising campaign promoting regulations on age checks for social media in an interview with POLITICO. [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-digital-minister-slams-meta-campaign-children-social-media/ https://www.politico.eu/article/denmark-digital-minister-sla...

frugalmail 4mo ago

This is something that is the parent's responsibility. We all know what this is really about. It's not okay to arm the government against it's own Citizens to prevent any sort of criticism, I don't care what side of the isle you're on.

1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo ago

Maybe www users do not need "platforms" run by third parties, usually in Silicon Vallley, who conduct data collection, surveillance and advertising services as a "business model" What if after "age checks" are put in place many www users stop using these "platforms" No doubt EFF would try to argue that's somehow bad But such argument is total nonsense. It's as if EFF has ties to Silicon Valley Less use of these third party "platforms" is a huge win for internet privacy and privacy in general The internet isn't going away. By and large, it's financed by internet subscribers paying monthly bills to telecoms. It's provided by those telecoms in return for those fees. It's not provided by so-called "tech" companies in Silicon Valley running "platforms" offering "free services" There is no "age check" to open an account for internet service.^1 Yet EFF argues there will be an "age check" to "get online" Would EFF argue that having internet service does not constitute "being online" and that an "account" with a so-called "tech" company performing data collection, surveillance and ad services is necessary to "be online"^1 If so, that's really quite strange considering the issue we are supposedly debating is internet privacy. The "business model" of these "platforms" and the concept of internet privacy are in direct conflict The ridiculous arguments EFF is making around age verification seem to be aimed at trying to preserve the Silicon Valley status quo, to protect the surveillance "business model" of Silicon Valley, whilst "minimising" its harmful effects, including the effects of these companies relentlesslly challenging peoples' personal boundaries to the point where "age checks" sound reasonable The legislation is aimed at certain companies in Silicon Valley conducting data collection, mass surveillance and pushing content at kids to drive ad services revenue. It's not aimed at internet service or anyone's ability to "get online". EFF's opposition looks like support for these companies 1. The California bill specifically excludes telecommunications services and broadband internet service

krater23 4mo ago
Just a story from Germany in early 2000. I had a website and just installed a php script to have a forum on my website and just forgot about it. Today, I could do the same, but I had a 24/7 job to monitor everything someone writes there because it could bring me personally into jail. The same with the comment section of my blog. Thats the reason why this big platforms exist and are used. Because no one other than they want to take the risk. At least in Germany are not much people that want to do that.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

pdonis 4mo ago

Would this website (HN) be a "covered platform" according to the bill? As far as I can tell, the answer is no, because it doesn't do what's described in Section 201 (E): "Uses the personal information of the user to advertise, market, or make content recommendations." Neither does, for example, my bank's website, or someone's personal blog, or many other discussion sites like this one. So from what I can see, while the set of covered platforms is certainly not negligible, it's still a lot smaller than "basically every website on the Internet that anyone cares about". So the title of the EFF article is overstating the case; the thing the bill would require age checks for (in effect, if not by the explicit language of the bill) is not "get online" but something more like "get on social media".

antonvs 4mo ago
It’s not just “social media”. Any site that’s funded by advertising fits that description.
- __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
  Only if it's targeted.
  - antonvs 4mo ago
    True, but in practice, the vast majority of advertising-funded sites use targeted advertising, because they use standard ad networks. There are very few ads networks that don’t do targeted ads.
    - __MatrixMan__ 4mo ago
      Right but if we could kill that business model by making platforms chose between age verification and non-targeted ads, that would be a win right? That's not so say I'm in favor of age verification, just pointing out the silver lining.
      - 4mo ago

enzar 4mo ago

This would be amazing .

enzar 4mo ago
Folks saying "kids will find a way" yes but the social norm of them being looked down upon certain online content would make it so they view it less as its not a norm. Kinda how NSFW content is right now, nobody whips that out unless they are in private...

stego-tech 4mo ago

Once again banging my “there’s already an age check to get online and it’s the adult paying the ISP bill” drum. Seriously, enough with mandating compliance with the surveillance economy. Build a society where parents can actually take care of their kids instead of hiding a surveillance state behind the guise of “protecting children” and blaming adults who want to preserve privacy or anonymity in the last space it exists within.

GenericDev 4mo ago

[dead]

kelseyfrog 4mo ago

Parents won't parent without a change in incentives. That's why giving children access to social media must be punished to the same degree as giving children heroin. If it's a parent's responsibility, it must be made a parent's liability. Anything without the full threat of the government's monopoly on violence is just a pretty slogan. We should see access to social media as the neglect that it is.

tcoff91 4mo ago
Comparing Social Media to Heroin seems quite hyperbolic to me as someone who has had people in my life die of opioid addiction. Social Media isn't even as bad as Tobacco I'd say let alone Heroin.
Grombobulous 4mo ago
Age restriction puts the burden and punishment on citizens. Your proposal to punish parents does the same. How about a solution that puts burden on corporations for once?
- yunnpp 4mo ago
  Bingo. And now GP should go look who is behind age verification and ponder why they'd be pushing for this if it didn't benefit them.
- kelseyfrog 4mo ago
  Because corporations don't have children? Incentivizing parents to parent aligns the obligation, agency, and responsibility. People who don't want that level of responsibility can not have children.
  - idle_zealot 4mo ago
    I don't know, if the biggest companies in the world were setting up outside schools and in cul-de-sacs and aggressively selling colorful heroin with cartoon mascots my first reaction wouldn't be to blame parents for failing to prevent the childhood heroin addiction epidemic and call for arresting them. I think it would be more fair and useful to focus enforcement on the parties with power making intentional decisions to make the world a worse place. I guess that makes me anti-agency and anti-responsibility though.

RaiyanYahya 4mo ago

Anything to protect identities online is valid. I wonder how many apps and websites will have to do or implement age verifications ? And how ?

winrid 4mo ago
Your ISP will eventually require a new protocol that can hold your digital ID in every packet to access certain content and you'll have to upgrade/migrate your OS if you want to view p0rn etc.

Terr_ 4mo ago

And all age-checks will be identity-checks. Oh, sure, you can imagine a system where they aren't, but is bill isn't going to get us that? Nope! It's going to get us something stupid and ripe for abuse, and the mere presence of what comes next will poison the environment against any better option.

nullbio 4mo ago

This has nothing to do with children and everything to do with AI. And to be fair to them, I don't really know of a better solution for what is coming... As much as I hate it. How else do we stop the web becoming a wasteland of deceptive AI bots? Do you use the web to research products, look at reviews? Do you use analytics on your website or products to improve them? When we cannot tell the difference between a human and a bot, none of that is useful anymore. Somehow, we need to filter out the noise. The other concerning issue is that I don't think this will actually work. There's already a large blackmarket for stolen identities, and unscrupulous actors will have no qualms with using them to carry out the blackhat activity they already conduct.

nyanmatt 4mo ago
If it has nothing to do with children, then why is it named the KIDS Act? Are we being bamboozled? And you are IN SUPPORT OF that? Am I taking crazy pills?

fivetenpen 4mo ago

The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health until social media engagement algorithms. The real solution is to ban any and all engagement algorithms that are designed to get people addicted. Age checks, aka identity checks, are just another blatant attempt to siphon more personal data by linking your real identity to all of your web activity

alt227 4mo ago
> The internet was never a danger to children’s mental health I dont think thats entirely true. There were always horror stories about kids getting seriously troubled by watching beheadings on rotten dot com, 4chan bullying and suicides have been happening for decades etc. It was just easier to ignore when it was a few young freaks that we could label as reclusive anyway. Now its just compounded more because its mainstream and the entire population engages.
- efreak 3mo ago
  What you're describing isn't a cancer to children but a danger to _people_, children or not. Children being children, they're sometimes less able to recognize danger ahead of time, and they're also more likely to get their kicks from sending each other there (I know I did). This is also not inherent to the Internet, however. "Stranger danger" warning exists for a reason. What we need to do is teach children that just like you wouldn't follow a random stranger into their house, you also shouldn't click random links. You also have to make the safe place dedicated for kids into a place that they actually _want_ to be (think neopets in the 00s), and then you don't have to put your resources into preventing them from leaving.

mawadev 4mo ago

Remember the guy who had an entire island and all his friends literally have had no consequences? You really think the age checks will do what is advertised? Lmao

Humorist2290 4mo ago

In many states, children under some age are prohibited from using firearms. There is substantial evidence to show that firearms pose a real and present harm to individual children and large groups. An excellent rider to the KIDS act would be to mandate the installation of age (that is, identity) verification to all firearms in order to disable the safety.

bluescrn 4mo ago
Motor vehicles are very dangerous too, including higher-power e-bikes. Lock those out too unless you can provide digital ID (and a high enough social credit score) each time you attempt to start them.
ruffrey 3mo ago
It is hard to tell if this is a joke based on the username. There are people with this perspective though I assume. Thus I will respond to it. It's worth noting OP's proposed technology is impossibly far from existing in practice. Importantly, there are at least half a billion citizen-owned firearms in the USA without this theoretical technology, already. Therefore we should focus on something more effective. Such as better mental health treatment, bullying prevention, gang prevention, or any other precursors to violent behavior.
- EmbarrassedHelp 3mo ago
  I think they may have meant it as a poison pill.
- Humorist2290 3mo ago
  Yeah the suggestion is mostly facetious and I realize impracticable. As the other commenter mentioned -- it's a poison pill. If such a rider were added to the KIDS Act it would be dead in the water, without a doubt. Though I think it's worth noting that age verification _without_ identity verification is basically as impracticable, and arguably more dangerous.
BeetleB 3mo ago
Fun fact: Most firearms don't have a manual safety that you disengage.

buffer_overlord 4mo ago

No age checks on bbs

verytrivial 3mo ago

I'm finding this really strange. These laws as formulated are just straight-up universal identity checks for all Internet users, not ages checks, right? The end of anonymity and pseudonymity. Adults somehow feel that they are excluded from showing papers because the laws "target children"? I mean it is technically possible to prove things using blind attestation etc. but very few of the world's social problems have so far been solved by first choosing two large prime numbers, so I don't expect it will help here either.

degecko 3mo ago

One could implement this at browser account level or even at OS-level, but no, let's just ask all the websites to implement a new service for ID check. Or let's ask all the websites to spam users with the never-read cookie usage request. We are such a smart species.

StingyJelly 3mo ago
Or not implement it at all...

odyssey7 3mo ago

History rhymes. They killed Socrates to protect the youth of Athens.

Funes- 3mo ago

One step closer to the great exile from the clearnet. I'd say "accelerate".

tosti 3mo ago

TFA: > We’ve seen this movie before. ...which one? 1984? The Terminator? The Truman Show? The Matrix? Minority Report? The Social Network?

cricketsandmops 3mo ago

This should be up to parents to parent. If their child has social media, or viewing sites that are for adults then the parents should be fined. In the US every weekend teens are shooting each other, i think we have bigger concerns than them being online

xbar 3mo ago

Do bother to write your representatives.

pembrook 3mo ago

Theres this new form of technology that is allowing decentralized actors to publish information without government oversight. It’s called the Printing press. And yes, there was a giant moral panic about it at the time that basically split Europe in half. Yet, today, we would find it absurd to ban children from reading printed words. Book bans are often the most opposed policies by all sides when polled. The fact we’re looking to block children from the modern equivalent is the most classic example of a moral panic I’ve seen. The “social media” millennials remember from their youth where they saw all the parties they didn’t get invited to…doesn’t even exist anymore. The social graph is dead, it’s all just short form TV now. The stupidity of this panic narrative is tremendous. Instead of attacking/regulating the algorithms (the problem) we’re banning children from all information and creating a global surveillance dragnet for all adults.