4 ms·

That's a completely unhelpful, overly simplistic straw man argument. We restrict certain activities and places in the real world from certain people all the ti

by jmyeet 3mo ago

That's a completely unhelpful, overly simplistic straw man argument. We restrict certain activities and places in the real world from certain people all the time. For example, not allowing people under 18 or 21 (depending on your country) into casinos. What we have now is essentially unrestricted access to pretty much anything and a fair assessment is that there is societal harm from that. We're creating gambling addicts (which is arguably the most harmful form of addiction), allowing predators to interact with children,, manipulating children through advertising and algorithms, flaming harmful behaviors like eating disorders, allowing mass cyberbullying and so on. So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. The only question from here is what to d we do about it. You can say "nothing" but that's a losing argument. I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors. This will take away the financial incentive for these platforms to create addictive behaivors in minors. And most of these tech platforms have already built the infrastructure to do this. You don't allow advertisers to target an audience based on (actual or inferred) ages under 18. You extend that to proxies for age, like an interest in Minecraft. And you make advertising to children illegal. Arguably, I'd go further and restrict certain features for minors, such as comments on Youtube and an algorithmic feed. At the moment nobody is solving anything because it's simply a fight to move liability to someone else. Meta wants hardware vendors to be responsible because, guess what?, they have no hardware platform. Apple and Google likely want app to have to deal with it for the complete opposite reason. I believe we should shift that liability to advertising.

xg15 3mo ago
What you're saying is correct - but it's used to push a much more comprehensive lockdown of devices that has absolutely nothing to do with protection of minors. It's as if the government first let businesses install slot machines at every street corner, then suddenly went "I'm shocked, shocked! that we have a massive epidemic of gambling addiction here, we have to mandate anti-gambling shock collars for everyone to tackle this urgent problem! There is no alternative!"
- jmyeet 3mo ago
  This is the slippery slope fallacy and people in tech seem to love this argument. And you can argue in whichever direction you want with it. For example, "unfettered Internet access is just a series of tubes (shout out to Ted Stevens for that one) for pedophiles to rape your children." So now what? Is it your hyperbole against mine? The problem is that people are operating under a myth that they have anonymity. You don't. You're one subpoena away from being unmasked online and individuals can do it (eg [1]). When governments do it, they can do it in secret. National Security Letters, pen registers, FISA warrants, etc. So the idea that "age verification is the first step to a more comprehensive" is flawed in both logical construction (being a fallacy) and that ship has already sailed. [1]: https://chambers.com/articles/internet-harassment-lawyer https://chambers.com/articles/internet-harassment-lawyer
  - xg15 3mo ago
    But in this case, the slipping just happened. This thread is about how an app that will be required for using a vast fraction of all websites will require hardware attestation and likely only run on closed, non-rooted mobile OSes. That's not a hypothetical scenario, it's literally what this thread is about.
  - throw-the-towel 2mo ago
    Maybe it's reasonable to argue a slope is slippery if you've just seen someone lubricate it.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
jolmg 3mo ago
> We restrict certain activities and places in the real world from certain people all the time. For example, not allowing people under 18 or 21 (depending on your country) into casinos. These are not equivalent. Restricting access to a casino just requires showing an ID to a person. A few seconds later and that person has completely forgotten everything about you. They will not keep a record of your home address, etc. Perfectly privacy preserving. You have no such guarantee when you upload government IDs to a server. I don't think anyone here minds restricting access, but that doesn't require completely destroying ownership rights over our own devices nor internet and device privacy. All that really needs to be done is for servers to publish what type of content they show from a parental perspective in a machine-readable format and for devices to have parental controls that only allow access to servers that publish such info and which content is allowed by the parental settings. This should be even more effective than solutions requiring uploading IDs since there's still going to be servers out there in other jurisdictions that simply don't care for such things.
- knollimar 3mo ago
  do parents not control routers and cell plans? I feel like it would be easy to look here for header based solutions. They probably exist tbh. Then just ban your kid from VPNs.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
- monk_grilla 3mo ago
  Any time I've been in an age-restricted venue here in Australia they have taken a picture of me and my ID at the door.
  - deleted 3mo ago
    [deleted]
  - hellojesus 2mo ago
    Even so, they likely aren't recording everything your eyes see and for how long they linger. They likely aren't recording your entire traversal through the venue, what you do, what you say, what times you go there, from where you connect, etc. Simply being at a public place is one data point. A full history of your entire interaction is a magnitude different.
catlikesshrimp 3mo ago
>> "We're creating gambling addicts (which is arguably the most harmful form of addiction)" --- I will need a source, because "arguably" is a very broad umbrella. "Arguably" heroin addiction is the most harmful addiction because heroin is the most addictive substance, clouds judgement and drives the addict to all manners of sociopathic behaviour (not only theft or prostitition)
- jimbob45 3mo ago
  Fentanyl, no?
  - catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
    Fentanyl is another opioid, like heroin; it also has a very high addictive potential. But, if I am not mistaken, the real problem with fentanyl is that dealers contaminate other drugs with fentanyl, which becomes lethal when not done correctly (and dealers aren't very responsible)
- jmyeet 3mo ago
  One big difference is that heroin is mostly illegal or, if not outright illegal, decriminalized for personal use. Gambling is legal in most places, can be advertised quite freely and restrictions can be easily circumvented with crypto. Crypto casinos have little to no age verification and typically operate extrajudicially (from the victim). Gambling addiction has a high outcome of suicide and tends to leave financial ruin affecting not just that person but their entire family. Heroin addiction was largely created by the criminialization of cannabis (the first so-called War on Drugs under Nixon) as a tool to persecute black people and war protesters and the overprescription of opioids (eg the Sacklers/Purdue).
  - catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
    That last sentence is neither here not there. I don't think gambling is good; I would have it gone from the internet and reserved to casinos. There is no MORAL justification to push for government control so gambling online can be legal.
akersten 3mo ago
What's simplistic and unhelpful is falling for the narrative that infinite scroll, boobies, and algorithmic feeds are somehow more harmful than ubiquitous government surveillance of the most powerful communication tool on earth. The Internet, more or less, has been around 30+ years and the Something awful and 4chan generations are now in charge. We're not much worse off. The Internet is actually way tamer these days than it used to be. We can all agree that yeah sure this social media stuff isn't great, but that's the whole point of freedom. Fast food isn't great either but lawmakers aren't pushing for a junk food attestation framework to make sure you don't consume it more than twice a week. In other words, your best interest is not interesting to them at all. They are happy that you think it is somehow self evident that we should subject ourselves to undue surveillance through! So, wonder why they're pushing for this so hard. I'll take the brainrot if it means criticism and ideas can spread without permanently being associated with a trackable, unchanging identity.
- SecretDreams 3mo ago
  Don't know about boobies, but I would guess META/other infinite scroll products are this generation's cigarettes in terms of long term harm and we do a severe disservice to all young people that are exposed to this product. Moreover, asking parents to intervene is obviously not going to work because they, themselves, have been partially ruined by it and lack the critical thinking required to intervene and the prowess to execute. Same reason why we needed government to intervene for cigarettes. I am not endorsing removing all anonymity from being online, but continuing the status quo with social media is a non starter for humanity. So tell me how we can help kids not get ruined by the internet without a mechanism specifically identifying that they're online in the first place?
  - 0x000xca0xfe 3mo ago
    Then the solution could be just like the solution to tobacco addiction: tax social media companies HARD, tax all advertising on social media 10x, 20x, or ban advertising on/for social media outright, ban advertising of kids products, ban showing use of social media in movies not rated 18, ... the problem will vanish just like cigarettes. But no, that's not what governments are doing. They want control and surveillance.
protocolture 3mo ago
>So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. How has it failed? Whats the measure of a successful freedom vs an unsuccessful one. >The only question from here is what to d we do about it. You can say "nothing" but that's a losing argument. No its the positive case for action that remains to be justified.
smallerize 3mo ago
We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.
txrx0000 3mo ago
> So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. The market failure to provide an adequate solution wasn't natural. It was engineered by the tech companies and you are playing right into their hands. There is still a way to fix this from the root with software antitrust: force hardware vendors to ship their devices without an operating system. Here's a more detailed explanation in a past comment about how the problem came to be in the first place, and why software antitrust can solve it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578
matheusmoreira 3mo ago
> So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. Absolute bullshit. This "unfettered access" is the whole reason why I am who I am today, why I am here. Not only did it not fail, it's in fact so successful it threatens the powers that be, and that's the real reason why they want to ban it. > I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors. Now this I agree with. I would be even more radical. It's not just advertising "to minors", all advertising needs to get banned straight up. Advertising is mind rape. Ban it and all the problems with the web will be fixed literally overnight, including the problems "mandated hardware attestation" aims to solve. There is no need whatsoever for this attestation nonsense.
thmryth 2mo ago
[flagged]
StrLght 2mo ago
> I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors. Well then, let's regulate this instead? Advertising companies already make a pretty good guess about a person's age. It doesn't require 3rd parties and age verification. But we won't — this isn't why identity checks are getting lobbied. > I believe we should shift that liability to advertising. I am confused. Are you saying that advertising companies should handle these identity checks? So let's just hand out a unique identifier to the companies who have monetary interest in this? Surely this will end well.

by jmyeet 3mo ago

xg15 3mo ago

What you're saying is correct - but it's used to push a much more comprehensive lockdown of devices that has absolutely nothing to do with protection of minors. It's as if the government first let businesses install slot machines at every street corner, then suddenly went "I'm shocked, shocked! that we have a massive epidemic of gambling addiction here, we have to mandate anti-gambling shock collars for everyone to tackle this urgent problem! There is no alternative!"

jmyeet 3mo ago
This is the slippery slope fallacy and people in tech seem to love this argument. And you can argue in whichever direction you want with it. For example, "unfettered Internet access is just a series of tubes (shout out to Ted Stevens for that one) for pedophiles to rape your children." So now what? Is it your hyperbole against mine? The problem is that people are operating under a myth that they have anonymity. You don't. You're one subpoena away from being unmasked online and individuals can do it (eg [1]). When governments do it, they can do it in secret. National Security Letters, pen registers, FISA warrants, etc. So the idea that "age verification is the first step to a more comprehensive" is flawed in both logical construction (being a fallacy) and that ship has already sailed. [1]: https://chambers.com/articles/internet-harassment-lawyer https://chambers.com/articles/internet-harassment-lawyer
- xg15 3mo ago
  But in this case, the slipping just happened. This thread is about how an app that will be required for using a vast fraction of all websites will require hardware attestation and likely only run on closed, non-rooted mobile OSes. That's not a hypothetical scenario, it's literally what this thread is about.
- throw-the-towel 2mo ago
  Maybe it's reasonable to argue a slope is slippery if you've just seen someone lubricate it.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]

jolmg 3mo ago

> We restrict certain activities and places in the real world from certain people all the time. For example, not allowing people under 18 or 21 (depending on your country) into casinos. These are not equivalent. Restricting access to a casino just requires showing an ID to a person. A few seconds later and that person has completely forgotten everything about you. They will not keep a record of your home address, etc. Perfectly privacy preserving. You have no such guarantee when you upload government IDs to a server. I don't think anyone here minds restricting access, but that doesn't require completely destroying ownership rights over our own devices nor internet and device privacy. All that really needs to be done is for servers to publish what type of content they show from a parental perspective in a machine-readable format and for devices to have parental controls that only allow access to servers that publish such info and which content is allowed by the parental settings. This should be even more effective than solutions requiring uploading IDs since there's still going to be servers out there in other jurisdictions that simply don't care for such things.

knollimar 3mo ago
do parents not control routers and cell plans? I feel like it would be easy to look here for header based solutions. They probably exist tbh. Then just ban your kid from VPNs.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
monk_grilla 3mo ago
Any time I've been in an age-restricted venue here in Australia they have taken a picture of me and my ID at the door.
- deleted 3mo ago
  [deleted]
- hellojesus 2mo ago
  Even so, they likely aren't recording everything your eyes see and for how long they linger. They likely aren't recording your entire traversal through the venue, what you do, what you say, what times you go there, from where you connect, etc. Simply being at a public place is one data point. A full history of your entire interaction is a magnitude different.

catlikesshrimp 3mo ago

>> "We're creating gambling addicts (which is arguably the most harmful form of addiction)" --- I will need a source, because "arguably" is a very broad umbrella. "Arguably" heroin addiction is the most harmful addiction because heroin is the most addictive substance, clouds judgement and drives the addict to all manners of sociopathic behaviour (not only theft or prostitition)

jimbob45 3mo ago
Fentanyl, no?
- catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
  Fentanyl is another opioid, like heroin; it also has a very high addictive potential. But, if I am not mistaken, the real problem with fentanyl is that dealers contaminate other drugs with fentanyl, which becomes lethal when not done correctly (and dealers aren't very responsible)
jmyeet 3mo ago
One big difference is that heroin is mostly illegal or, if not outright illegal, decriminalized for personal use. Gambling is legal in most places, can be advertised quite freely and restrictions can be easily circumvented with crypto. Crypto casinos have little to no age verification and typically operate extrajudicially (from the victim). Gambling addiction has a high outcome of suicide and tends to leave financial ruin affecting not just that person but their entire family. Heroin addiction was largely created by the criminialization of cannabis (the first so-called War on Drugs under Nixon) as a tool to persecute black people and war protesters and the overprescription of opioids (eg the Sacklers/Purdue).
- catlikesshrimp 2mo ago
  That last sentence is neither here not there. I don't think gambling is good; I would have it gone from the internet and reserved to casinos. There is no MORAL justification to push for government control so gambling online can be legal.

akersten 3mo ago

What's simplistic and unhelpful is falling for the narrative that infinite scroll, boobies, and algorithmic feeds are somehow more harmful than ubiquitous government surveillance of the most powerful communication tool on earth. The Internet, more or less, has been around 30+ years and the Something awful and 4chan generations are now in charge. We're not much worse off. The Internet is actually way tamer these days than it used to be. We can all agree that yeah sure this social media stuff isn't great, but that's the whole point of freedom. Fast food isn't great either but lawmakers aren't pushing for a junk food attestation framework to make sure you don't consume it more than twice a week. In other words, your best interest is not interesting to them at all. They are happy that you think it is somehow self evident that we should subject ourselves to undue surveillance through! So, wonder why they're pushing for this so hard. I'll take the brainrot if it means criticism and ideas can spread without permanently being associated with a trackable, unchanging identity.

SecretDreams 3mo ago
Don't know about boobies, but I would guess META/other infinite scroll products are this generation's cigarettes in terms of long term harm and we do a severe disservice to all young people that are exposed to this product. Moreover, asking parents to intervene is obviously not going to work because they, themselves, have been partially ruined by it and lack the critical thinking required to intervene and the prowess to execute. Same reason why we needed government to intervene for cigarettes. I am not endorsing removing all anonymity from being online, but continuing the status quo with social media is a non starter for humanity. So tell me how we can help kids not get ruined by the internet without a mechanism specifically identifying that they're online in the first place?
- 0x000xca0xfe 3mo ago
  Then the solution could be just like the solution to tobacco addiction: tax social media companies HARD, tax all advertising on social media 10x, 20x, or ban advertising on/for social media outright, ban advertising of kids products, ban showing use of social media in movies not rated 18, ... the problem will vanish just like cigarettes. But no, that's not what governments are doing. They want control and surveillance.

protocolture 3mo ago

>So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. How has it failed? Whats the measure of a successful freedom vs an unsuccessful one. >The only question from here is what to d we do about it. You can say "nothing" but that's a losing argument. No its the positive case for action that remains to be justified.

smallerize 3mo ago

We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this.

txrx0000 3mo ago

> So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. The market failure to provide an adequate solution wasn't natural. It was engineered by the tech companies and you are playing right into their hands. There is still a way to fix this from the root with software antitrust: force hardware vendors to ship their devices without an operating system. Here's a more detailed explanation in a past comment about how the problem came to be in the first place, and why software antitrust can solve it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49118578

matheusmoreira 3mo ago

> So saying "we should allow unfettered access to the internet" or even "it's the parents' responsibility" is naive, dismissive and has failed. Absolute bullshit. This "unfettered access" is the whole reason why I am who I am today, why I am here. Not only did it not fail, it's in fact so successful it threatens the powers that be, and that's the real reason why they want to ban it. > I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors. Now this I agree with. I would be even more radical. It's not just advertising "to minors", all advertising needs to get banned straight up. Advertising is mind rape. Ban it and all the problems with the web will be fixed literally overnight, including the problems "mandated hardware attestation" aims to solve. There is no need whatsoever for this attestation nonsense.

thmryth 2mo ago

[flagged]

StrLght 2mo ago

> I personally believe that the easiest thign to attack is advertising to minors. Well then, let's regulate this instead? Advertising companies already make a pretty good guess about a person's age. It doesn't require 3rd parties and age verification. But we won't — this isn't why identity checks are getting lobbied. > I believe we should shift that liability to advertising. I am confused. Are you saying that advertising companies should handle these identity checks? So let's just hand out a unique identifier to the companies who have monetary interest in this? Surely this will end well.