Apologies if this isnāt the right place to ask this, but I thought actual developers with a deep understanding of how technology actually works would be the people to ask!
If you were tasked with setting up a safe and secure way to do this, how would you do it differently than what the UK government is proposing? How could it be done such that I wouldnāt have to worry about my privacy and the threat of government suppression? Is it even theoretically possible to accomplish such a task at such a scale?
Cheers!
EDIT: Just to be clear: Iām not in favour of age verification laws. But theyāre on their way regardless. My question is purely about the implementation and technology of the thing, rather than the ethics or efficacy of it. Can this seemingly-inevitable privacy hellscape be done in a non-hellscapish way?
No, we cannot. At a societal level, we canāt do any of it.
Protecting a child from content on the internet requires a massive invasion of the childās privacy. That degree of privacy invasion should not be granted to society in general. It should not be granted to the operators of a pornography site. It should certainly not be granted to the groomers.
The only place where that degree of privacy invasion is reasonable and acceptable is between parent and child. If you want to protect the children, you give parents the tools to regulate content. You donāt provide those privacy-invading tools to the content providers and you certainly donāt expect them to take a parental role over your kids, let alone your neighbors and yourself.
Well, we can protect them as societies and villages and we do.
This notion that somehow groomers are neutralized if we abandon any attempt at protecting children at large is absurdā¦talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. Imagine a world where we just ignore the source of the issueā¦the groomers would have a hay day. āSorry kidā¦you should have had better parentsā.
Putting it all on the parents just means that a small portion of rich and savvy parents will be able to āprotectā their kids, usually with draconian practices that put kids far more at risk. Pardon meā¦but you donāt know what youāre talking about.
No, here in reality we should continue to institute and advocate for effective measures.
No. I never suggested that. My argument is that using age verification makes it easier for groomers. That is a harm that arises from age verification. The harm to children from age verification greatly exceeds the benefit to children.
Correct. And I described how we can do that: By providing parents with the means to do it. Not pornographers. Not groomers. Not society in general. Providing these means to anyone except the parents is an unacceptable invasion into the privacy. Even to the parents, these measure deprive the child of a certain degree of privacy, but children have no broad expectation of privacy from their parents. Itās OK for parents to invade their childās privacy; it is not OK for anyone else.
Iām not āputtingā it on the parents: Itās already on the parents. That responsibility should stay with the parents, because nobody else is qualified to wield it. Pornographers, groomers, politicians, and you will not invade the privacy of my children, and I should not be empowered to invade your childās privacy either.
A small portion of parents use draconian practices that put far more kids at risk? What the hell are you even talking about?
Age verification is not an āeffective measureā. The only person who needs to know the userās age is the parents.
With āage verificationā, we are supposed to place our trust in the pornographer and the groomer. Most of them arenāt even in the same legal jurisdiction and are immune to criminal prosecution or civil judgment. Yet, we are supposed to grant them the power to invade our childrensā privacy, as well as our own. That is by no means an āeffectiveā measure.
An effective measure would be creating a free, publicly available blacklist of adult content, and any number of free apps to implement that blacklist to block content on the childās device. Which we already have. Hundreds of them. They are extremely effective at protecting children, without invading their privacy or enabling grooming.
Youād need to demonstrate that age verification protects groomers v childrenā¦all the data says the opposite. On a basic level, we know anonymous age-gating worksā¦but it goes nowhere near far enough.
Your only strategy canāt be tools for parents. Thatās one, albeit important, pillar. Youāre essentially giving tools to the people who need them the least, and leaving the children at risk out in the cold. The majority of parents arenāt savvy enough, aware of, or have the time to use the tools.
Iām talking about the real world outcomes of āleaving it to the parentsā. The most common way for parents to try to protect children is prohibitionā¦and we know that prohibition puts kids more at risk. This isnāt an edge caseā¦this is well meaning parents putting their children in danger because they donāt understand the realities of danger. Againā¦draconian prohibition is currently the most commonĀ strategy - thatās what Iām talking about. These parents most often the same parents who want to restrict sex education in schools, by the way.
You have a strange and incorrect understanding of how age verification functions, or can function. Youāre creating this straw man scenario where children are broadcasting their age publiclyā¦thatās not really a thing. Thereās an array of private ways to verify who a person isā¦we do it all the time when weāre protecting money assets or for other security. The only problem here is the expense of instituting these methods on a large scale, and requiring that the data isnāt harvested or sold or used in any other way. Itās bizarre to suggest that because a tiny portion of is vulnerableā¦we should stop looking at data. The harm reduction option is definitely not āleave it to the parentsā.
I highly recommend educating yourself about the methods of restricting adult contentā¦which arenāt limited to age verification by the way. It really seems like you have a specific and personal axe to grind with internet restrictions that youāre not talking about.
All I need to show is that groomers can use the tools to distinguish between adults and children. The California law requires your OS announce your age to a ādeveloperā before downloading an āapplicationā. The way the law is crafted, though, ādeveloperā = āweb serverā, and āapplicationā = āweb pageā.
Furthermore, the way the law is written, groomers arenāt just allowed to get your age; they are required to get your age if they offer web services to Californians.
Youād be hard pressed to find an adult who was successfully isolated from pornography as a minor. From that, we can conclude that the overwhelming majority of children arenāt actually harmed by porn. Quite the contrary, instilling the idea in them that seeking pornography is somehow sinful or disobedient is quite harmful on multiple levels. But I digressā¦
The fact that fucking everyone has seen porn before their 18th birthday --without harm-- demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of kids donāt actually need the tools. You see parents not using the tools as not knowing they exist or how to use them; I see parents trusting their kids. I see parents feigning ignorance of such tools in order to keep puritanical nitwits off our backs.
No, that puts fewer kids at risk. Only the kids of those draconian parents are put at risk by those prohibitions. Age verification expands that to every kid. Youāve got the test backwards.
While those draconian parents are putting their kids at risk, their normal peers are inoculating them with sanity. Expand their insane bullshit to the rest of society, and that sanity is replaced with puritanical dogma.
Read the California law. That is a thing, effective January 1st, 2027. There are provisions against requiring data for other purposes or giving it to third parties, but those provisions require first-party groomers to have their webservers collect that data on every page load.
I see, yes, youāre reacting to specific family of regulations that I already criticized earlier in this thread. Just like I donāt think putting it on on the parents is a good thing, I donāt think having companies regulate themselves is a good thing. This is what I was talking about when I said I donāt believe we should take an approach that protects companies profits.
The alternative to self-regulation isnāt to just give up (put it in the parents hands) - itās to have a multi pillared approach that includes everything that works, including (but not limited to) education, user tools, age gating etc. But thatās basically what weāre doing nowā¦and instead of coming up with a comprehensive plan to regulate data at the sourceā¦weāre putting in a patchwork of company friendly virtue signals that make us less safe at the end of the day. Again: removing consumer age-gating and replacing it with nothing is a bad idea.
Nah, I have it exactly right. The current model is primarily prohibition and nothing for the rest of usā¦.thatās very dangerous. Your fear mongering scenario isnāt a thing. Youāre speaking as if all children must publicly announce their ageā¦when you know very well thatās not how the laws function. Youāre arguing that if itās possible for groomers to get the dataā¦then itās not worth getting the data at all. Meanwhile Iām reality the groomers require an additional step that any system would be vulnerable to. Certainly the groomers are much happier if you win your case and we do nothingā¦then they have access to every kid with the exception of the few savvy parents who can use the tools effectively.
Youāre not making an argument I can take seriously. You canāt just call every company who collects data a groomer, thatās absurd. As I said beforeā¦you need an actual groomer working within the systemā¦and groomers are much happier working without a system than with one.
I completely agree that the law is lazy and doesnāt put enough oversight or privacy safeguards in place. I donāt agree that returning the internet to an unregulated hellhole with only user tools is the answer.
Putting it in the parents hands isnāt āgiving upā. Thatās where the responsibility should be. There is no other entity capable of performing this task without undue invasion of privacy.
This isnāt a case where throwing everything at the problem makes it better. It doesnāt. Every effort we take is another invasion into our privacy; into the privacy of children. Everything we do makes the privacy problem worse, and most of what we can do will also make it easier to identify and target children for additional harm.
We arenāt āremovingā anything. Consumer age gating does not exist. It has never existed. It never needs to exist. Age gating isnāt just virtue signalling. Age gating is actively enabling harm.
The current model is not āprohibitionā. The current model is āparental supervisionā.
No. Iām arguing that groomers are now required to collect the data. We used to be able to prosecute suspicious people for needlessly invading the privacy of others. With the current crop of laws, we require them to identify children.
Strawman. I didnāt claim that. What I claimed is that every groomer who happens to provide a web service to Californians will be required to collect childrenās age data as of January 1, 2027.
Supplanting user tools with centralized regulation is exactly what made the internet a hellhole.
If you believe parents are the only people who can helpā¦then Iām glad youāre not in charge because that would doom us. As I said aboveā¦most parents arenāt savvy enough or donāt have the time. If parents could be the solutionā¦it would have been solved already.
Yes, I get itā¦youāre saying that the groomers are the people collecting that data. Simply not true, like it or lump it those terrible laws will helpā¦even if theyāre a terrible invasion of privacy and donāt go far enough in some respects. Iām sorry, I canāt engage with somebody so wildly out of touch any more. Iām a front line worker in at risk childrenā¦and poor and at risk childrenā¦the children who are majority of children groomedā¦would be left out in the cold by your simplistic approach.
Parents (and persons serving in loco parentis: guardians, caregivers, etc.) are the only ones who can responsibly impose on the privacy rights of a child. The government needs a warrant to do the same. Society in general includes the pornographers and groomers and others who would do harm to the child, and cannot be broadly trusted with such a responsibility. Any solution for a particular child has to pass through the parents/guardians of that child. The parents/guardians must be the ones implementing it, and they should only be allowed to implement it for their own children/wards. You indicate later that you work with at-risk kids; you might be considered a āguardianā of those kids, and you would be charged with providing this role to your kids. But not to society in general.
You have yet to read or fully comprehend the California law (in particular) if youāre making that claim. Go back and read it. When you do, remember that groomers will be making āapplicationsā. Some of the developers receiving āage signalsā from childrensā operating systems will be groomers. Re-read the law again, but this time substitute āgroomer developerā for ādeveloperā, and āgroomer applicationā for āapplicationā. This law explicitly requires groomer-developers to collect this data.
Violating everyoneās privacy is not a replacement for properly supervising children. The poor and at risk kids youāre talking about shouldnāt exist: Their needs should be properly met, so that nobody is āat riskā. Age verification doesnāt do anything to help at-risk kids. It does make it easier for groomers to identify them as at-risk kids.
Australia adopted age restrictions on social media. They found that the net effect of their ban was to isolate at-risk kids from support. Kids felt compelled to hide their internet activities from adults and authorities. The act of reporting abuse also served to incriminate the kid for bypassing the bans, so kids tend to conceal both. Their ban is introducing greater harm.
Youāre not helping kids by supporting these laws. Youāre putting them at greater risk. As a āfront line worker in at risk childrenā, you really should know better.