Age Verification isn't a technical problem to solve.
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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 And it's also a workaround for governments that are too coward to face platform owners and demand them not to use addictive and exploitative algorithms as their main business model.
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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 It is big tech that's pushing for age verification, not governments. It already knows everything about the adult population, all of the time. But digital IDs will allow it to harvest all of our children's data too, from birth. The digital safety of our children is the responsibility of their parents, not big tech or government. Parents need look up from their own phones occasionally and look deeply at what their children are doing.
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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 a trillion times yes, 100%
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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 Hear hear!
I'm so tired of everyone like it's normal to upload official identification to every app and website. Without any proper background checks on those services!
This is literally how you get your identity stolen. So the exploitation isn't just happening at the panopticon level, these policies leave us all more vulnerable.
Even people who know better have to comply to function in this society. It's horrendous.
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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
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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
Hey parents, your kids are in danger! But don't worry about it. We'll take care of it for you.All we need to do is just check their ages. It'll be just like getting ID'd in a shop. You remember that don't you? Nothing to worry about.
[quietly]
We'll just take a photo of your children and their ID, put them in a database, track their every movement, record who their friends are, what they think, their every hope, dream and aspiration.
[back to normal volume]
So don't you worry, your children are safe with us and our billionaire backers, whoops, I mean with us, just us. We'll take care of everything. You can get back to feeding your own dopamine addictions, we'll claim your children are safer now, and big tech will have their giant, totally not sinister databases of real world identities that surely aren't going to come back to bite us later. Anyway that'll be for a different government to deal with.
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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 The only technical problem to solve is to find ways to hack and sabotage surveillance systems.
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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
But keep in mind as well, the proposed technical implementations are key to understanding and explaining how far from 'age verification' the goal is; how far down the surveillance road this all goes.
Age verification is a 'boolean' message to the relying party (or maybe a number of years old), not identity based at all.
If the requirement is 'you have to identify yourself (whispers "for age verification purposes") then the proposal is a requirement to remove privacy, not age verification.
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@Em0nM4stodon It is big tech that's pushing for age verification, not governments. It already knows everything about the adult population, all of the time. But digital IDs will allow it to harvest all of our children's data too, from birth. The digital safety of our children is the responsibility of their parents, not big tech or government. Parents need look up from their own phones occasionally and look deeply at what their children are doing.
@ben@mastodon.scot UK has Online Safety Act in place and was one the majority reason why there's a massive conversation about Age Verification so I don't where you got it from that the government wasn't responsible for this mess.
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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
This indeed!
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@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange There are technical solutions without mass surveillance.
But I am not optimistic enough to believe those will be demanded.
Specifically because of the lack of surveillance, and the lack of monopoly protection for big tech.
Pretty sure big tech lobbyists are making sure the worst approaches possible get put into law. Not because they are evil per se, but because it strengthens their monopolies.Any technology is generally insufficient when it comes to resolve social deficits.
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Frankly. looking at my fellow citizens, and how they hate each other, I don't want them to police society either. And I don't want crimes go unpoliced.
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@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange There are technical solutions without mass surveillance.
But I am not optimistic enough to believe those will be demanded.
Specifically because of the lack of surveillance, and the lack of monopoly protection for big tech.
Pretty sure big tech lobbyists are making sure the worst approaches possible get put into law. Not because they are evil per se, but because it strengthens their monopolies.@divVerent @Em0nM4stodon No there are not. This is a fundamental fact of mathematical logic. Given a proposed age verification system you can prove that it's either trivially bypassed (doesn't actually verify age) or violates key privacy properties.
Em's point is spot-on. If you think of this as a problem to be solved, you are going to be wrong and you are going to be a useful fool for fascists.
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But keep in mind as well, the proposed technical implementations are key to understanding and explaining how far from 'age verification' the goal is; how far down the surveillance road this all goes.
Age verification is a 'boolean' message to the relying party (or maybe a number of years old), not identity based at all.
If the requirement is 'you have to identify yourself (whispers "for age verification purposes") then the proposal is a requirement to remove privacy, not age verification.
@john_philip_bell @Em0nM4stodon The message being boolean is irrelevant. Fools are acting like revealing yourself to the party that boolean message is sent to is the threat. It's revealing yourself to the *sender* of that message that's the threat.
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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 At least in the Netherlands there is a privacy friendly solution. https://yivi.app/en/
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@divVerent @Em0nM4stodon No there are not. This is a fundamental fact of mathematical logic. Given a proposed age verification system you can prove that it's either trivially bypassed (doesn't actually verify age) or violates key privacy properties.
Em's point is spot-on. If you think of this as a problem to be solved, you are going to be wrong and you are going to be a useful fool for fascists.
@dalias@hachyderm.io @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange My approach is actually one of the former category - "trivially" bypassable.
By making the parents responsible. They can set up youth protection software on the device on their children's devices if they feel they need to. Just like now.
The only technical thing I'd ask for is that social networks describe themselves in some form of XML file, and that they respect a Do-Not-Track-like header.
All else is on the client software. Which the parents may or may not install. And if the kids are old enough to have the kind of money to buy their own phone and pay for their own internet connection, they can of course trivially bypass it and I don't care.
And sorry for being a fascist. I don't want platforms like Roblox, TikTok and X to keep harming children. Honestly, I'd rather have them banned entirely (and also every single short video platform or platform feature). But as that's not gonna happen, let's keep at least children out of there. Or else we'll be raising more fascists. -
@dalias@hachyderm.io @Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange My approach is actually one of the former category - "trivially" bypassable.
By making the parents responsible. They can set up youth protection software on the device on their children's devices if they feel they need to. Just like now.
The only technical thing I'd ask for is that social networks describe themselves in some form of XML file, and that they respect a Do-Not-Track-like header.
All else is on the client software. Which the parents may or may not install. And if the kids are old enough to have the kind of money to buy their own phone and pay for their own internet connection, they can of course trivially bypass it and I don't care.
And sorry for being a fascist. I don't want platforms like Roblox, TikTok and X to keep harming children. Honestly, I'd rather have them banned entirely (and also every single short video platform or platform feature). But as that's not gonna happen, let's keep at least children out of there. Or else we'll be raising more fascists.@divVerent You said the solution to your actual problem right there: ban these abusive platforms entirely. Or at least regulate them into not being able to do the really harmful things they do - to people of all ages. None of that has anything to do with policing children or policing whether users are adults.
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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 do you think of age verification in bars before they give you the alcohol? Or age verification before they let you in a sex convention. /gen
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@divVerent You said the solution to your actual problem right there: ban these abusive platforms entirely. Or at least regulate them into not being able to do the really harmful things they do - to people of all ages. None of that has anything to do with policing children or policing whether users are adults.
@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). -
@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 If you don't want them confronted with this, but it still exists, all you're doing is setting them up not to be equipped to deal with it once they do. And either way they're still stuck living in a world ruled by adults whose brains are rotted on this stuff. I get that this is all very unpleasant and people want an easy solution, but there is none short of attacking the root problem.
If you think hiding it from children (not with trojan internet passport schemes, which are a non starter, but as a parent or whatever) is best, you do you. I think educating and conveying values to them so that they can see the rot for what it is and be ready to protect themselves and fight it is probably better.
