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We have had the need to prove age for hundreds of years. To buy alcohol. To drive a car. To vote. We depend on government-issued documents to do this. Not sure

We have had the need to prove age for hundreds of years. To buy alcohol. To drive a car. To vote. We depend on government-issued documents to do this. Not sure why anyone would really expect this to change just because it's online now.

nkrisc 4mo ago
Proving your age is a relatively new phenomenon. My grandmother, born in Chicago in the 1920s didn't even know her exact age. That is not at all uncommon for her generation.
saltwatercowboy 4mo ago
Very obviously because privacy advocates are concerned by the effects of mass deanonymization. I find it doubtful that you don't grasp that.
- athrowaway3z 4mo ago
  I bought a bag of chips without having to show my ID. There is a big difference between: Government demands every website to have age verification, and government supported scheme by which service can opt into age verification. As of now, American private spyware is actively filling the demand. I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case. I don't see it. The only viable solution for the future of privacy is to not be dependent on the giant platforms in the first place.
  - SoftTalker 4mo ago
    Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children. Yes parents have a role here but we live in a society and we depend on/demand everyone doing their part. We (the tech sector) made our own bed here.
    - simoncion 4mo ago
      > Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children. Nah. Parental Controls are baked into every major consumer OS. If government cared about giving guardians the tools needed to care for the vulnerable ones they're responsible for, they'd require those parental controls to be beefed up [0] and that it be a requirement that online services and both local and remote software be required to honor the restrictions required by those Parental Controls. Instead, what we get proposed is a system that cares very much about how old you are, and not one bit about the things that one's guardian understands one needs to be protected from. This system will work for some under-eighteens, but it will fail for many others, as well as every single dementia-damaged elder or brain-damaged/developmentally-stunted adult. What's being proposed is absolutely not about protecting people... if it were, the mandate would be to beef up the existing fully-anonymous systems, rather than requiring identifying information from users. [0] ...I mention this because I often hear in Internet discussion that these controls are insufficient, not because I have personal knowledge that they're inadequate.
      - SoftTalker 4mo ago
        I agree... the government's plan (as usual) misses the mark and probably won't solve the problem. But the reason the government is getting involved is precisely because parental controls (if any) that were delivered by the platforms were too hidden, too complicated, and had to be set for every app or website instead of once on the device and have that enforced on everything.
        simoncion 4mo ago
        > But the reason the government is getting involved is... Nope.
        joquarky 4mo ago
        That is the superficial reason that government is getting involved. If you want the real reason, I'll provide a hint: it aligns with the underlying goal of DOGE.
  - izacus 4mo ago
    > I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case. The issue is that a lot of voices you hear are from a big country which voted for fascists and those people now somehow think that technology will save them from the government they created. But that's not how it works unfortunately.
- intended 4mo ago
  Privacy is losing ground, despite people understanding the stakes. Privacy advocacy is losing the battle, because it is being framed as a choice between privacy and the status quo, and people vehemently dislike the status quo.
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  That's a separate concern from depending on government entities to issue proof of identity/age.
elevation 4mo ago
Older systems were imperfect and were understood to be. I've meet veterans who joined the Navy at 14 or 16. I've met many College students who can pass as old enough to buy alcohol, especially with a fake id. Dead people are sometimes registered to vote. We know this and have systems to try to catch these exceptions. But cellphone access is different; it's assumed to be perfect, but it's increasingly being moderated by machine learning heuristics that serve as judge, jury, and executioner, severing your services if a couple of your actions trigger a fuzzy approximation to some of the training data. AI moderation helps suppress spammers, but it's also punishing false positives, and there is just no recourse. Any ID system that piggybacks on "Apple | Google" is effectively shunning some non trivial portion of society. Governments of the people need to provision their own tech systems that are accessible to all citizens, even those who have run afoul of an AI moderation system.
- elevation 4mo ago
  This year, an octogenarian friend got locked out of his android phone permanently. He had never had a PIN on his Samsung phone. It started when he signed up at a new bank, giving them his phone number. Somehow the bank enrolled his in their online banking system, which notified Samsung, who remotely initiated the "let's give your phone a pin" flow, presumably to protect him during online banking. (This happened without his knowledge -- he had not installed the bank's phone app.) Later that day, when his phone went into a modal "let's setup a pin" screen, he panicked, assuming an attacker had gained control of his phone, since this was not something he initiated. No button would let him exit the screen, so he powered it down. Now, when he powers it up, it demands a pin, but he doesn't know what pin that would be. The only way to get the phone back would be to factory reset it, meaning he'd be wiping his data. He had the money to replace his phone, but that may not be true of every citizen, especially at his age. People assume digital auth systems are perfect. But you don't hear from consumers who can't get online to tell you "I've lost access." I've shared some other similar stories: a widow who got banned for life from facebook within minutes of making an account from an apple device on a consumer ISP with her real cell phone number. A coworker attempted to sell his son's sporting goods on facebook marketplace and was banned for life with no appeal because AI thought it was "weapons." Some high school students each made a gmail address from the same laptop one afternoon, only to be banned the next day. Each supplied their own cellphone number, but the accounts got shut down, presumably because multiple accounts were being created from the same device too rapidly. AI moderation means there are a ton of unwritten rules, and private companies will keep you out of their platforms if you break them. That's fine, but it means governments have no business serving their citizens from these exclusive platforms. > e signed up at a new bank, giving them his phone number. Somehow
leonvoss 4mo ago
Hundreds? 200 years ago most people did not even have birth certificates. I can think of multiple famous examples of people who lived in Europe 500 to 800 years ago where we don't know their real age. In existing countries with poor state capacity, a lot of people don't have legitimate birth certificates and there is some evidence that they make up their age to some degree. For example on surveys in such countries there are too many people reporting round number ages. My experience in such countries is that you can find very young looking males riding motorcycles late at night around the city and anybody can buy alcohol. That's how it was in the United States "hundreds" of years ago. Please read a book.
wat10000 4mo ago
Maybe hundred of years, singular. And reading/watching stuff in our own homes has never required any proof of age.

nkrisc 4mo ago

Proving your age is a relatively new phenomenon. My grandmother, born in Chicago in the 1920s didn't even know her exact age. That is not at all uncommon for her generation.

saltwatercowboy 4mo ago

Very obviously because privacy advocates are concerned by the effects of mass deanonymization. I find it doubtful that you don't grasp that.

athrowaway3z 4mo ago
I bought a bag of chips without having to show my ID. There is a big difference between: Government demands every website to have age verification, and government supported scheme by which service can opt into age verification. As of now, American private spyware is actively filling the demand. I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case. I don't see it. The only viable solution for the future of privacy is to not be dependent on the giant platforms in the first place.
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children. Yes parents have a role here but we live in a society and we depend on/demand everyone doing their part. We (the tech sector) made our own bed here.
  - simoncion 4mo ago
    > Government is demanding age verification because the websites and platforms completely punted on the issue of keeping inappropriate content from children. Nah. Parental Controls are baked into every major consumer OS. If government cared about giving guardians the tools needed to care for the vulnerable ones they're responsible for, they'd require those parental controls to be beefed up [0] and that it be a requirement that online services and both local and remote software be required to honor the restrictions required by those Parental Controls. Instead, what we get proposed is a system that cares very much about how old you are, and not one bit about the things that one's guardian understands one needs to be protected from. This system will work for some under-eighteens, but it will fail for many others, as well as every single dementia-damaged elder or brain-damaged/developmentally-stunted adult. What's being proposed is absolutely not about protecting people... if it were, the mandate would be to beef up the existing fully-anonymous systems, rather than requiring identifying information from users. [0] ...I mention this because I often hear in Internet discussion that these controls are insufficient, not because I have personal knowledge that they're inadequate.
    - SoftTalker 4mo ago
      I agree... the government's plan (as usual) misses the mark and probably won't solve the problem. But the reason the government is getting involved is precisely because parental controls (if any) that were delivered by the platforms were too hidden, too complicated, and had to be set for every app or website instead of once on the device and have that enforced on everything.
      - simoncion 4mo ago
        > But the reason the government is getting involved is... Nope.
      - joquarky 4mo ago
        That is the superficial reason that government is getting involved. If you want the real reason, I'll provide a hint: it aligns with the underlying goal of DOGE.
- izacus 4mo ago
  > I get the feeling some privacy advocates are approaching the choice as a tier system, with government being the worst case. The issue is that a lot of voices you hear are from a big country which voted for fascists and those people now somehow think that technology will save them from the government they created. But that's not how it works unfortunately.
intended 4mo ago
Privacy is losing ground, despite people understanding the stakes. Privacy advocacy is losing the battle, because it is being framed as a choice between privacy and the status quo, and people vehemently dislike the status quo.
SoftTalker 4mo ago
That's a separate concern from depending on government entities to issue proof of identity/age.

elevation 4mo ago

Older systems were imperfect and were understood to be. I've meet veterans who joined the Navy at 14 or 16. I've met many College students who can pass as old enough to buy alcohol, especially with a fake id. Dead people are sometimes registered to vote. We know this and have systems to try to catch these exceptions. But cellphone access is different; it's assumed to be perfect, but it's increasingly being moderated by machine learning heuristics that serve as judge, jury, and executioner, severing your services if a couple of your actions trigger a fuzzy approximation to some of the training data. AI moderation helps suppress spammers, but it's also punishing false positives, and there is just no recourse. Any ID system that piggybacks on "Apple | Google" is effectively shunning some non trivial portion of society. Governments of the people need to provision their own tech systems that are accessible to all citizens, even those who have run afoul of an AI moderation system.

elevation 4mo ago
This year, an octogenarian friend got locked out of his android phone permanently. He had never had a PIN on his Samsung phone. It started when he signed up at a new bank, giving them his phone number. Somehow the bank enrolled his in their online banking system, which notified Samsung, who remotely initiated the "let's give your phone a pin" flow, presumably to protect him during online banking. (This happened without his knowledge -- he had not installed the bank's phone app.) Later that day, when his phone went into a modal "let's setup a pin" screen, he panicked, assuming an attacker had gained control of his phone, since this was not something he initiated. No button would let him exit the screen, so he powered it down. Now, when he powers it up, it demands a pin, but he doesn't know what pin that would be. The only way to get the phone back would be to factory reset it, meaning he'd be wiping his data. He had the money to replace his phone, but that may not be true of every citizen, especially at his age. People assume digital auth systems are perfect. But you don't hear from consumers who can't get online to tell you "I've lost access." I've shared some other similar stories: a widow who got banned for life from facebook within minutes of making an account from an apple device on a consumer ISP with her real cell phone number. A coworker attempted to sell his son's sporting goods on facebook marketplace and was banned for life with no appeal because AI thought it was "weapons." Some high school students each made a gmail address from the same laptop one afternoon, only to be banned the next day. Each supplied their own cellphone number, but the accounts got shut down, presumably because multiple accounts were being created from the same device too rapidly. AI moderation means there are a ton of unwritten rules, and private companies will keep you out of their platforms if you break them. That's fine, but it means governments have no business serving their citizens from these exclusive platforms. > e signed up at a new bank, giving them his phone number. Somehow

leonvoss 4mo ago

Hundreds? 200 years ago most people did not even have birth certificates. I can think of multiple famous examples of people who lived in Europe 500 to 800 years ago where we don't know their real age. In existing countries with poor state capacity, a lot of people don't have legitimate birth certificates and there is some evidence that they make up their age to some degree. For example on surveys in such countries there are too many people reporting round number ages. My experience in such countries is that you can find very young looking males riding motorcycles late at night around the city and anybody can buy alcohol. That's how it was in the United States "hundreds" of years ago. Please read a book.

wat10000 4mo ago

Maybe hundred of years, singular. And reading/watching stuff in our own homes has never required any proof of age.