Age Verification isn't a technical problem to solve.
-
Age Verification isn't a technical problem to solve. If you think that, you're missing the point.
It's a social problem used by authoritarian governments as an excuse for population control and censorship.
It's a fundamental attack on free speech and democracy.
It must not be accommodated.
It must be stopped.#MassSurveillance #AgeVerification #Privacy #Democracy #HumanRights
It is all about surveillance. Protecting children from serious harm on the Internet involves stopped malicious adults accessing child services, not stopping children accessing adult services.
-
@Em0nM4stodon What about an open source solution that doesn't collect anything, and it simply tells the website "yes" or "no"?
@Azarilh There would still be a need for this open-source app to collect "something" in order to answer this question. When I say it's not possible, I do not say this lightly. I have been researching this issue for a very long time.
-
It is all about surveillance. Protecting children from serious harm on the Internet involves stopped malicious adults accessing child services, not stopping children accessing adult services.
-
I'd rather trust a senior IT engineer than someone that just shouts "authoritarianism".
I understand your distrust, but you are blowing it out of proportion. It is possible to design an infrastructure that is safe. The only concern now is how will they use it, what will they block behind ID checks, and that is more concerning and rightfully so.
But we can't outright ban ID checks either. I'd rather not have children get addicted to smoking at 10.
-
I'd rather trust a senior IT engineer than someone that just shouts "authoritarianism".
I understand your distrust, but you are blowing it out of proportion. It is possible to design an infrastructure that is safe. The only concern now is how will they use it, what will they block behind ID checks, and that is more concerning and rightfully so.
But we can't outright ban ID checks either. I'd rather not have children get addicted to smoking at 10.
And BTW, we already had ID checks for a very long time. The only difference with such infrastructure would be "safer".
Countries blocking social media to children is a different problem altogether, and i disagree with it for the most part.
Online shops can require your ID, so can video platforms like YouTube or CornHub. For official EU petitions, you need your eID to verify you are actually a EU citizen.
-
@Azarilh There would still be a need for this open-source app to collect "something" in order to answer this question. When I say it's not possible, I do not say this lightly. I have been researching this issue for a very long time.
RE: https://federate.social/@jik/116115336623105287
What about this person's response?
https://mastodon.social/@jik@federate.social/116115336650467751
-
@Azarilh There would still be a need for this open-source app to collect "something" in order to answer this question. When I say it's not possible, I do not say this lightly. I have been researching this issue for a very long time.
@Em0nM4stodon I appreciate the genuine conversation, by the way. I understand it can be a touchy topic for some.
-
@dalias@hachyderm.io But that's not gonna happen.
So next I at least don't want children to be confronted with this abuse.
The absolute minimum demand for technical changes to the internet I have is getting Do-Not-Track back. When set, platforms still must operate to its full extent but not perform any user behavior analysis for purposes such as content recommendation or targeted advertisement (they still should be allowed to track for abuse prevention but they must take and disclosure measures that such data is not used for any other purpose, not even used as training data for future AI models).@divVerent @dalias why isn't it going to happen?
We are in a bad spot now, but... the bubble is popping. A bubble that pretty much all of survailence capitalism is involved in.
Politically things are heating up.
The USA's control is also breaking across the world.
Pretty much all the major companies are involved with a single scandal that is shaking up leadership in several places.
People are actively pushing back against Ring and tearing down Flock cameras in a push agaiinst survailence capitalism.
With such a turbulant time, why couldn't we successfullly land in a space where abusive platforms are banned and a minimum standard of behavior is established?
-
RE: https://federate.social/@jik/116115336623105287
What about this person's response?
https://mastodon.social/@jik@federate.social/116115336650467751
@Azarilh I do not have the time to review and speak about this specific product sadly. But in general, even if the token handed to the application requesting it is fully anonymized, the application collecting the initial data is still a potential attack vector and point of failure.
If it's proprietary, then it entirely relies on blind trust. If it's open source, then it must be fully audited regularly and built and reviewed with independent experts. But even if it was perfectly secure and private, the piece of ID showing the age must be uploaded somehow. Is the whole system secure? Where is this data stored? Does it get fully purged after or is the "deleted" information only flagged as deleted but kept in a database somewhere?
If all identifiable information is fully deleted, then what shows this token is reliably only used by an adult and not shared with a child? Where is this token stored? Can it be sold to others online? People have already done that with the supposedly secure and supposedly private World App. If identifiable information is kept to prevent this, then all the other problems mentioned above remain.
And regardless of all of this, having to upload an official ID, even in the imaginary scenario where we would magically have a perfectly privacy-preserving technology, gatekeeps the use of devices and access to information and communication from many people who, for various reasons, cannot have this official ID. It closes down the internet. We should never agree to that, let alone contribute to facilitating it. More information here: https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification
-
Age Verification isn't a technical problem to solve. If you think that, you're missing the point.
It's a social problem used by authoritarian governments as an excuse for population control and censorship.
It's a fundamental attack on free speech and democracy.
It must not be accommodated.
It must be stopped.#MassSurveillance #AgeVerification #Privacy #Democracy #HumanRights
@Em0nM4stodon What i hate about age checks in social media is that they say it's to protect children from the toxicity of social media.
How about governments try to actually regulate social media instead of outright banning children? Social media can be a good source of social integration and information ( being a queer child that lives with queerphobe parents, for instance, may only get queer support from people on the internet
). 1/2 -
@Em0nM4stodon What i hate about age checks in social media is that they say it's to protect children from the toxicity of social media.
How about governments try to actually regulate social media instead of outright banning children? Social media can be a good source of social integration and information ( being a queer child that lives with queerphobe parents, for instance, may only get queer support from people on the internet
). 1/2@Em0nM4stodon Plus... do adults not matter? Regulating social media would make it healthier for everyone, child or adult. 2/2
-
@Azarilh I do not have the time to review and speak about this specific product sadly. But in general, even if the token handed to the application requesting it is fully anonymized, the application collecting the initial data is still a potential attack vector and point of failure.
If it's proprietary, then it entirely relies on blind trust. If it's open source, then it must be fully audited regularly and built and reviewed with independent experts. But even if it was perfectly secure and private, the piece of ID showing the age must be uploaded somehow. Is the whole system secure? Where is this data stored? Does it get fully purged after or is the "deleted" information only flagged as deleted but kept in a database somewhere?
If all identifiable information is fully deleted, then what shows this token is reliably only used by an adult and not shared with a child? Where is this token stored? Can it be sold to others online? People have already done that with the supposedly secure and supposedly private World App. If identifiable information is kept to prevent this, then all the other problems mentioned above remain.
And regardless of all of this, having to upload an official ID, even in the imaginary scenario where we would magically have a perfectly privacy-preserving technology, gatekeeps the use of devices and access to information and communication from many people who, for various reasons, cannot have this official ID. It closes down the internet. We should never agree to that, let alone contribute to facilitating it. More information here: https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification
@Em0nM4stodon So your point is that "no system is safe"? I would agree with that, but vaccines are not 100% safe either yet we should still take them. The importance is to make it as safe as possible, and it has to be safe enough. Everything is corruptable, with physical ID too ( they could be taking photos for all i know ).
-
@Azarilh I do not have the time to review and speak about this specific product sadly. But in general, even if the token handed to the application requesting it is fully anonymized, the application collecting the initial data is still a potential attack vector and point of failure.
If it's proprietary, then it entirely relies on blind trust. If it's open source, then it must be fully audited regularly and built and reviewed with independent experts. But even if it was perfectly secure and private, the piece of ID showing the age must be uploaded somehow. Is the whole system secure? Where is this data stored? Does it get fully purged after or is the "deleted" information only flagged as deleted but kept in a database somewhere?
If all identifiable information is fully deleted, then what shows this token is reliably only used by an adult and not shared with a child? Where is this token stored? Can it be sold to others online? People have already done that with the supposedly secure and supposedly private World App. If identifiable information is kept to prevent this, then all the other problems mentioned above remain.
And regardless of all of this, having to upload an official ID, even in the imaginary scenario where we would magically have a perfectly privacy-preserving technology, gatekeeps the use of devices and access to information and communication from many people who, for various reasons, cannot have this official ID. It closes down the internet. We should never agree to that, let alone contribute to facilitating it. More information here: https://www.eff.org/issues/age-verification
@Azarilh I would also recommend watching this amazing video by Carissa Véliz. It's short and might help you understand the dangers better: https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/116031435192287968
-
@Em0nM4stodon So your point is that "no system is safe"? I would agree with that, but vaccines are not 100% safe either yet we should still take them. The importance is to make it as safe as possible, and it has to be safe enough. Everything is corruptable, with physical ID too ( they could be taking photos for all i know ).
And i guess this would be a good reason to not over-implement it for things we don't need it. It should not be used for social media, it's so unnecessary i think.
-
@Azarilh I would also recommend watching this amazing video by Carissa Véliz. It's short and might help you understand the dangers better: https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/116031435192287968
@Em0nM4stodon I promise i will check it. Thanks.
-
@Em0nM4stodon So your point is that "no system is safe"? I would agree with that, but vaccines are not 100% safe either yet we should still take them. The importance is to make it as safe as possible, and it has to be safe enough. Everything is corruptable, with physical ID too ( they could be taking photos for all i know ).
@Azarilh No, this isn't like vaccines at all. Vaccines do not facilitate mass surveillance.
-
@Azarilh I would also recommend watching this amazing video by Carissa Véliz. It's short and might help you understand the dangers better: https://infosec.exchange/@Em0nM4stodon/116031435192287968
@Em0nM4stodon Oh, i do understand privacy concerns very well. Information is power.
-
@Em0nM4stodon I promise i will check it. Thanks.
-
@Azarilh No, this isn't like vaccines at all. Vaccines do not facilitate mass surveillance.
@Em0nM4stodon True, they don't facilitate surveillence, but someone can get a very bad reaction from it. What i meant is that it's impossible to make anything 100% safe.
-
@Em0nM4stodon What i hate about age checks in social media is that they say it's to protect children from the toxicity of social media.
How about governments try to actually regulate social media instead of outright banning children? Social media can be a good source of social integration and information ( being a queer child that lives with queerphobe parents, for instance, may only get queer support from people on the internet
). 1/2@Azarilh Exactly. Social media should simply be safer and less addictive for everyone. Adults need it to be healthier as well, and teenagers need to socialize.

