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Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 177 points 1 year ago (12 children)

That sounds like a very functional and rational solution to the problem of age verification. But age verification isn't the ultimate goal, it's mass surveillance, which your solution doesn't work for.

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  • [–] 86 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

    The fact that they haven't gone for this approach that delivers age verification without disclosing ID, when it's a common and well known pattern in IT services, very strongly suggests that age verification was never the goal. The goal is to associate your real identity with all the information data brokers have on you, and make that available to state security services and law enforcement. And to do this they will gradually make it impossible to use the internet until they have your ID.

    We really need to move community-run sites behind Tor or into i2p or something similar. We need networks where these laws just can't practically be enforced and information can continue to circulate openly.

    The other day my kid wanted me to tweak the parental settings on their Roblox account. I tried to do so and was confronted by a demand for my government-issued ID and a selfie to prove my age. So I went to look at the privacy policy of the company behind it, Persona. Here's the policy, and it's without a doubt the worst I've ever seen. It basically says they'll take every last bit of information about you and sell it to everyone, including governments.

    https://withpersona.com/legal/privacy-policy

    So I explained to my kid that I wasn't willing to do this. This is a taste of how everything will be soon.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    The fact that they haven’t gone for this approach that delivers age verification without disclosing ID, when it’s a common and well known pattern in IT services, very strongly suggests that age verification was never the goal.

    I don't agree. It certainly makes it possible that it isn't the goal. But I genuinely believe that, at least here in Australia (where our recent age-gating law is not about porn, but about social media platforms, with an age limit of 16), the reason behind the laws being designed as they are is (1) optics: despite what those of us here say, keeping young children off of harmful social media algorithms is very politically popular and they wanted to pass a bill that banned it as quickly as they could. No time for serious discussion about methods. And (2) a complete lack of knowledge. Because they wanted the optics, they passed the bill extremely quickly and without a serious amount of consultation. And I don't trust that even if they had done consultation, they would have known who is more reliable to listen to, the actual experts and privacy advocates, or the big AI companies with big money promising facial recognition will somehow solve this. Because politicians are, by and large, really fucking stupid at technology.

    What is it they say? Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    First, Mastodon is talking about Mississippi in the US.

    Second, why can't people parent their own kids? What if I don't agree with the government and want my kid to see stuff the government has decided to block? The government isn't the parent of your child and you shouldn't be treating them as such. If you child is doing something you don't want, it's your job as their parent to stop it.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    The article says "Mississippi and elsewhere", so I assumed all sorts of bans were fair game for discussion.

    As for your second point, I genuinely don't really care all that much. Take my solution and require platform vendors provide a parental controls API and require websites and apps call it. From there, whether you legally required parents to set up parental controls, you strongly suggest they do it, or you just leave it there as an option doesn't matter as much. Maybe different places can have different laws.

    The important thing is that parents should at least be given the tools necessary to be able to do this.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    "What if I WANT my kids watching porn???"

    Really bold stratagy you got there.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    Where the hell did I say porn? You think they can't block anything else?

    Also, so what if I did? Shouldn't that be a parents decision? Say I'm fine with them watching it at 16yo. Shouldn't that be up to the parent, not the government?

    People who give up their freedom to the government are going to lose far more freedom than they're OK with losing. It starts with something you might agree with, but it never stops there.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago*

    That argument suggests you bought the lie of what the age verification is for. When every service is required to perform age verification, it quickly becomes not about porn but control.

    They're trying to close the Pandora's box that is the internet decades after the fact, and they're learning the hard way how impossible and unpopular that is

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    "Promoting homosexuality" was illegal in state schools for half my childhood. Imagine the ignorant, hateful people arguing against same-sex sexual education - they would probably say "YOU want to show PORN to CHILDREN" too. It's a bad-faith character assassination that shouldn't have merit.

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