Discussion
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 happened to "never tell anyone your age on the Internet"?
@Em0nM4stodon
Correct, it's throwing the onus on the end user, whereas governments should be controlling the extremeties of social media, as in political bias, miss information and child porn
@Em0nM4stodon I disagree.
As a society, we have decided to age -gate some things. I, personally, think it's a good thing to slow down the pervasiveness of social media, as I think it's a good thing to slow down most addictive things.
@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.
@Em0nM4stodon Plus... do adults not matter? Regulating social media would make it healthier for everyone, child or adult. 2/2
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 the first person project could solve a lot of these things in a privacy preserving way - but it is a hard technical, social problem to solve. http://firstperson.network/ - I think we need the trust layer of the internet - but in a way that also solves privacy.
@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
@Azarilh Showing ID in person to another human is very different. It doesn't require to collect and keep a copy of it digitally, and therefore is an entirely different situation that isn't even comparable. It also doesn't gatekeep portals of information in the same way that digital age verification on the internet does.
@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.
@Em0nM4stodon@infosec.exchange @Azarilh@mastodon.social what are your thoughts on bad faith whining?
@0x4d6165 @Em0nM4stodon How is it bad faith? I am genuinely confused at why it's ok to have age checks in person but not online. The Internet might not be physical, but it's still real life with real people.
@Azarilh@mastodon.social because showing a bouncer your ID is very obviously different from sending a picture of your ID to some random company's database where it can be stolen or used by authoritarian governments???
@Em0nM4stodon At least in the Netherlands there is a privacy friendly solution. https://yivi.app/en/
@Em0nM4stodon all governments control their cattle. Even "democratic" countries have police, intelligence, counter-intelligence, secret services and prisons. Shocker.
This indeed! 👆
@Em0nM4stodon The only technical problem to solve is to find ways to hack and sabotage surveillance systems.
@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.
@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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