[HN Gopher] France targets Australia-style social media ban for ...
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France targets Australia-style social media ban for children next
year
Author : belter
Score : 162 points
Date : 2025-12-31 15:06 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| nephihaha wrote:
| What a coincidence.
| brewcejener wrote:
| HN readers won't be able to find online partners if this
| accelerates.
| ta9000 wrote:
| The trade war continues. We've known these shitty platforms were
| polluting kids for at least a decade.
| Insanity wrote:
| Good, social media should be considered a harmful substance. Even
| for adults it's probably a bad thing.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| It sounds like you don't like social media. With that in mind,
| why is it good to add a layer of user surveillance on the
| Internet? Where's the connection between "social media is
| harmful" and "it is good to add surveillance"?
|
| If you think social media is harmful, wouldn't it be good to
| regulate social media? What does regulating French (or
| Australian, or wherever) citizens have to do with it?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Where 's the connection between "social media is harmful"
| and "it is good to add surveillance"?_
|
| There doesn't have to be one.
|
| > _If you think social media is harmful, wouldn 't it be good
| to regulate social media?_
|
| Literally what a ban for under-15-year-olds is.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I'm not talking about theory, but what's happening in
| practice. In case you're unaware, Australian style ban is
| enforced via surveillance, such as a _a mix of methods,
| such as facial age estimation, behavioural signals and an
| option to upload government-issued ID._
|
| _Literally what a ban for under-15-year-olds is._
|
| If you're going to argue, please do so in good faith by
| taking my whole post into context. Thank you.
| DalasNoin wrote:
| Many of these "social" media websites increasingly just fling AI-
| generated disturbing videos at people. I am sure we could build a
| web that is actually pleasant to use for kids, but we are not
| building it. youtube for example:
| https://x.com/kimmonismus/status/2006013682472669589
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| If we did build it and it became popular, it would quickly be
| taken over by the same forces that are destroying the current
| internet. To get good social media sites (and a better internet
| as well), you would first have to change the economics of the
| entire system driving these forces. But as is said "It's easier
| to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism".
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| it doesn't need to be social media, it could be an entirely
| closed system with some moderators curating content.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Well, that's why we use HN. So far no ads, how long that
| lasts is anyone's guess.
| pear01 wrote:
| It's really not that dramatic. Just build it like more
| classic media. Curated content the company takes
| responsibility for, closed platform, pay upfront. Or have
| public programming, that is the oldest model there is.
|
| Ad driven online content is especially bad for kids. But
| let's not pretend the only way to find an alternative is to
| end the world.
|
| The fact is the "bad" solution is popular because consumers
| say they care about these things but then in real life they
| act like they don't. If no one watched the problem would
| solve itself. Thus, I'm not sure the solution is even to be
| found in platforms, if parents are burned out or don't have
| ways to make better choices for their kids.
|
| That's a reason for these laws, to essentially just take it
| out of people's hands.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The consumer gets bait & switched. When ad-free pay upfront
| cable tv first started, people switched over. We showed
| that yes indeed we like ad-free shows and are willing to
| pay for them. They said, well that's great, but we can make
| more money if we show you ads so they did and we ended up
| paying up front and getting obnoxious ads. Then when online
| streaming started, we all switched over. We showed that yes
| indeed we like ad-free shows and are willing to pay upfront
| for them. They said, well that's great, but we can make
| more money if we show you ads so they did and we ended up
| paying up front and getting obnoxious ads. The moment it
| become sufficient popular and the people get sufficiently
| locked in, the ads come. Every time.
| piker wrote:
| This must kill that platform.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| From my experience as a kid
|
| "Pleasant for kids to use is the polar opposite of kids finding
| it a pleasure to use"
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Video games from the 90s were actually pleasant as a kid, and
| I'm happy to see my kids enjoying them today rather than the
| slot machines that the industry makes for kids these days...
|
| (Unfortunately I'm well aware that it won't last long,
| because social pressure is impossible to fight at individual
| scale)
| Ritewut wrote:
| Social pressure is much easier to fight than you think but
| it involves being an active parent and letting your kids
| invite friends over to play. Most parents are not willing
| or are unable to do take that active role for one reason or
| another.
| onion2k wrote:
| I think that's provably untrue based on the fact Saturday
| morning cartoons were _massively_ popular as a curated
| content feed on TVs through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Kids
| (including me at the time) loved them and sank many hours
| into watching them. They were wholly approved by my parents,
| to the point where sometimes my parents would watch with me.
| Unless kids have fundamentally changed (which seems unlikely)
| the differentiating factor is _almost certainly_ that kids
| simply now have access to far more unsuitable content.
| josephg wrote:
| Yep. Kids still love engaging with decent content. As any
| parent knows. Bluey / Peppa pig / Paw patrol / etc do huge
| numbers.
|
| Children haven't changed.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| Well, one part of a proper education of a child is to teach
| them that life isn't about gratification. Neil Postman made
| this point already in _Amusing Ourselves to Death_. By
| educating kids with Sesame street you didn 't teach them to
| love education, you taught them to love television.
|
| When you make learning synonymous with fun people start to
| believe that if they aren't having fun they aren't learning.
| Which accounts I think for something that a lot of teachers
| at all levels have observed, kids are increasingly unable to
| learn if there's no immediate reward.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| Not sure why you think this has anything to do with children
| other than in name.
|
| It's ID verification.
| ruszki wrote:
| You will loose this argument because there is a real problem
| with children and AI slop. Especially because there is a
| problem with AI slop and handling it by people in general.
|
| Provide a solution which doesn't require that, like some
| other top commenter did. Otherwise, you have already lost.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| This has been going on since well before COVID:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
| casey2 wrote:
| Any kind of social media ban would mean more people consuming
| "traditional" media, which is much worse.
|
| I would rather have my kid watch nothing but AI slop then get
| even 30 seconds of FAUX news. Lost my father to actual brain
| rot, FUCK YOU NEWSCORP!
| hollow-moe wrote:
| > If a child is in a Formula One car and they turn on the engine,
| I don't want them to win the race, I just want them to get out of
| the car. I want them to learn the highway code first, and to
| ensure the car works, and to teach them to drive in a different
| car.
|
| Yet computer education in France has been severely lacking for so
| long. From middle school to even universities (except the courses
| computer focused obviously) people aren't taught correctly.
| Teachers themselves are lost to computers and lectures are bad.
|
| The goal is obviously to have tech illiterate people knowing just
| enough to use computers for the job but not worrying about the
| digital autoristarism currently being deployed.
| tonfa wrote:
| > The goal is obviously to have tech illiterate people knowing
| just enough to use computers for the job but not worrying about
| the digital autoristarism currently being deployed.
|
| If anything, without social media access, kids are more likely
| to play/hack around.
| tokai wrote:
| Its a weird analogy. Plenty of people have years of racing
| experience before they get their drivers license.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| I'd be very surprised if the overwhelming majority of F1
| drivers weren't in some sort of go-kart racing league long
| before they held government licenses.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Yeah. F1 drivers in particular start their training from the
| age of 4-5. By 6-7 they participate in competitions, at 12-13
| they are already at the professional level in karting.
| Verstappen got his F1 license at 17, which technically
| qualifies as a "child" for the law.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| So it means they got lectures and training beforehand. Which
| currently neither (the vast majority of) parents nor public
| education is properly providing for computer usage. Main
| difference being there's no licence required to access the
| internet, for the best and the worst.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Incredible. You absolutely eviscerated the argument your
| comment is founded on.
|
| Either way, you should meet some rednecks.
| hollow-moe wrote:
| What are you talking about? I keep saying people aren't
| correctly taught about computers. I don't care who
| provides the lectures.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Devil's advocate: what is the difference between "social media"
| and a website very much like this one? When can I look forward to
| having to give a DNA test to read HN?
| Pooge wrote:
| The main difference in my view is the personalized algorithm
| that determines what to feed you next.
|
| HackerNews has an algorithm but it's not personalized--i.e.
| everyone sees the same thing.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| My own website has a bulletin board that offers a
| personalized list of messages after you login: whatever
| threads you have not yet read. And so do many other websites
| of this style. So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| They are very different.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| >So this cannot be a differentiating aspect.
|
| Now explain that nuance to an 80 yr old law maker who hates
| the damn email.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| For the record, that is exactly my point . I do not want
| yet another sword of Damocles for websites, even less if
| it depends on the mood of a clueless judge.
| seszett wrote:
| Not to say that they are technically literate, but the
| average age of French lawmakers (which are just the
| members of parliament) is 50 years old.
|
| It's actually the same as the average age of voting-age
| French citizens, so they are quite representative on this
| regard.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| These 80yo lawmakers have kids and grandkids and
| advisers. They know how social media works.
|
| They hate social media because it gives people the power
| to talk in public about them with near impunity. They
| want to go back to the old days when if you wrote a
| letter to the newspaper about potential corruption or
| wrongdoing among the "more equal animals" you'd get
| pulled over for a light out whenever you went through
| that town for the next 20yr.
| skydhash wrote:
| > They hate social media because it gives people the
| power to talk in public about them with near impunity.
|
| If you think you have even near impunity on social media,
| I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go with it.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >If you think you have even near impunity on social
| media, I have a bridge to sell you. Even a town to go
| with it.
|
| I specifically said "near" impunity. If you do something
| bad enough they'll come after you but even then if your
| gripes are legitimate that's likely to amplify it.
|
| Surely you're not honestly claiming that there is not a
| significant practical difference between modern internet
| criticism and the old ways when messaging that could
| reach the broad public was far thoroughly gated by people
| and things that had more stake in the power structure.
| skydhash wrote:
| I wouldn't say it was gated. More like it was costly. And
| people having the means to do so was a very small set and
| prone to agree with the status quo.
|
| But even now, a lot of messages are lost on the internet.
| And the internet is only decentralized for messages
| propagation, not for access.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Fractionally gated is still gated. At some point a
| difference in quantity is a difference in quality.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Are you also harvesting teens data and selling it to the
| highest bidder or using it for target advertisements?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Not intentionally - but in the past I did have
| advertisements to finance it , which I had to stop since
| that is enough under a lot of jurisprudence to qualify as
| running a for-profit, which usually means less leniency
| from judges.
|
| So it is advertisements where we should draw the line --
| websites with advertisements should require age checks?
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Why did you cherry pick advertisments from my reply and
| run with that?
|
| It clearly isn't just a singular data point that is a
| True or False that would include a site in the ban.
|
| Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter,
| do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self
| harm material and the ability to receive private messages
| from a 45 year old registered sex offender?"
|
| I get your point - "Where is the line in the sand?" and
| it's a valid point but no need to argue in bad faith.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Because it is the ad network that I chose 30 years ago
| that was doing any of the types of tracking you mention.
| In fact, all of the ad networks from 30 years ago would
| be considered as doing "teen tracking" today. I do not
| know how you can do tracking without doing teen tracking,
| barring precisely I troducing age verification on every
| single website. And I also do not know if there is any
| network out there doing advertisements without tracking
| -- certainly none of the major local news websites use
| it.
|
| I do think the "wont somebody think of the children"
| arguments are in bad faith though, and I say this as a
| father.
| squigz wrote:
| > Perhaps it should be, "If I had a 12 year old daughter,
| do I want her to have easy access to pornography, self
| harm material and the ability to receive private messages
| from a 45 year old registered sex offender?"
|
| If parents are concerned about this, why let them on the
| Internet? Why not use parental control systems? Why not
| teach your children healthy sex education, how to deal
| with their feelings, and to tell old creeps to fuck off?
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| Because parents can't or won't monitor their kids
| internet usage 24/7.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > what is the difference between "social media" and a website
| very much like this one?
|
| Pretty much everything? Not the same intent, not the same
| usage, not the same business model, not the same users, &c.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Frel free to name something concrete. Remember that Reddit
| has already been targetted by this in Australia.
| snowpid wrote:
| Does HN spread Fake News? Facebook and Youtube do. Do you
| feel bad after using HN? Insta and Facebook it happens.
| Does HN collect data to specify marketing? Every other
| Social Media do.
|
| This is hard to define in laws so e.g. the EU chooses to
| force concrete measures from the social media pages.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Does HN spread Fake News?
|
| Yes? Even newspapers do that. You have never had Gell-
| Mann when reading something here outside mainstream
| topics of interest? (e.g. almost anything from outside
| the US, or health related).
|
| Is this really the criteria you want to use to decide
| whether to require age checks for a website?
|
| > the EU chooses to force concrete measures from the
| social media pages.
|
| This just sidesteps the issue of how a website ends up in
| the list. Today, Reddit. Tomorrow, Discord. Then Github.
| Eventually, HN.
| snowpid wrote:
| My news is almost outside of the US as I am not American.
| (wow this should be sent to r/USDefaultism). So let's say
| like this: I do read a lot outside of "American
| mainstream media".
|
| Most good working journalist try to verify claim and
| statements. This is the opposite to Fake News, Clickbait
| and Russian state propaganda spread in Social Media
| because its their business model.
| tekla wrote:
| > Does HN spread Fake News?
|
| Yes?
| snowpid wrote:
| Give me an example of websites on HN, which spread fake
| news by purpose and it was allowed by the mods even they
| knew the news / artice / website was spreading fake news.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| You have quite an unatenable position (you really think
| there have never been outright wrong headlines on HN?).
| Even this very article is (being very generous)
| clickbait.
| immibis wrote:
| Why do you think Reddit is any better than Instagram or X
| or TikTok, such that it doesn't deserve to be targeted
| according to the same principles?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I used it to follow some functional programming
| discussions that had chosen it as it's main bulletin
| board, as did many other software projects. (I am not a
| fan of Reddit, which is why it is of paramount importance
| to me to be able to continue to browse it without an
| account.)
|
| But fine: if you think Reddit deserves the cut, please
| let me know why you think this site does not deserve it.
| Or why Discord (also used by a lot of software projects,
| to my annoyance ) does not deserve it. In a way that a
| "80 year old judge which hates computers" can understand.
|
| We should have kept to mailing lists, as I said many
| times.
| immibis wrote:
| Reddit has pockets of sanity, but as a whole it is
| insane. The same is true of Instagram, TikTok, X, etc.
|
| If Hacker News doesn't improve its moderation (especially
| of fascist propaganda) I do think it should go the same
| way. HN openly flaunts the fact that it only follows
| American law - e.g. the fact that it completely ignores
| GDPR. It wouldn't happen until HN got big enough to make
| some politician pay attention though, and HN is kept
| relatively small by design.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Reddit is a cesspool of bots reposting the best performing
| images and rage bait of the last 5 years ad nauseam, that
| and porn makes up the bulk of the traffic. So yes, again,
| there is nothing in common between reddit and hn
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Eh, with user links, user commentary, profiles and votes
| HN is "basically the same" on several key aspects and
| there is quite a bit of demographic overlap. It's just
| reached a very different equilibrium as to what goes on
| here due to the 2nd and 3rd tier aspects that are
| different.
|
| Take two cesspools (I'm not gonna pass up the chance to
| use the analogy, sorry not sorry). Assume they are both
| serving the same quantity and quality of people. Feed one
| a bunch of inorganic matter, laundry bleach and only the
| finest most heavy duty multi-ply shit tickets. Feed the
| other nothing that shouldn't go down a drain, no bleach
| and Scott 1-ply. The latter will perform way better and
| go way longer between needing service despite the only
| differences being minor differences that don't even
| matter in system design.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| This lacks hindsight. Whatever you subjectively dislike
| about Reddit will certainly apply here, if not today then
| tomorrow. If you want proof, check out Slashdot.
|
| Also, no porn on /r/haskell.
| Hizonner wrote:
| I read several subreddits and see nearly no images,
| nearly no rage bait (probably less than on Hacker News,
| in fact), and exactly no porn. _My_ daily Reddit
| experience is so close to Hacker News that I 've been
| known to forget which one I'm on.
|
| Reddit still has the capacity to show you _what you 're
| actually looking for_. It still lets you find content by
| _interest_ , rather than by _personalities_. It still
| keeps replies together, still lets you order by time
| easily, and doesn 't stick too much random crap in the
| middle (none if you use a decent ad blocker). It handles
| long form content well and doesn't try to force
| everything to be a sound bite that you have to click on
| to see more. It's still convenient to use it that way,
| and most users probably _do_ use it that way.
|
| Compare to, say, Youtube, which fight you ever step of
| the way if you try not to be drowned in a disordered
| flood of some combination of what a computer guesses you
| might want and what it's most profitable for the site for
| you to see (including what will keep you on the site),
| with your only control being which "influencers" you
| uprank by "subscribing" to them.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > Reddit still has the capacity to show you what you're
| actually looking for.
|
| Reddit has the capacity to manipulate minors and groom
| them into believing all kind of sick "fictions", endorsed
| by the admins. It should absolutely be banned for minors.
| Alex2037 wrote:
| the services that comply with speech suppression and privacy
| violation orders will be deemed acceptable, and those who don't
| won't.
| immibis wrote:
| With the caveat that by "speech suppression" you mean "spam
| suppression" and by "privacy violation orders" you mean
| "search warrants"
| dfxm12 wrote:
| From a definition standpoint, hn is a social media site. From a
| legislation standpoint, it's not nearly popular (infamous?)
| enough to legislate (the mentioned sites have had enough
| negative coverage to manufacturer consent for this invasion of
| privacy: cyber bullying, destructive challenges, etc.)
|
| When it is, and when your local government becomes sufficiently
| captured by the user surveillance industrial complex, you will
| need real world verification here.
| grunder_advice wrote:
| >hn is a social media site
|
| Social media typically implies a website where users are
| sharing self-created content. If a website with comments
| counts a social media, than all web2.0 is social media and
| there's practically no distinction between the web and social
| media.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Proper moderation, and - how to say it without sounding
| elitist? - more mature users.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| None. HN is a social media since it's an online forum. In fact
| HN runs afoul of many EU regulations already, GDPR, cookie law,
| ...
| astura wrote:
| This website is social media.
| guywithahat wrote:
| HN is social media, and if you look at the implementation of
| the Australian law it's more political than anything else. They
| banned X but did not list BlueSky, which has an ongoing
| pedophilia problem. This has nothing to do with protecting kids
| from social media it's just political maneuvering, like banning
| children from reading the epoch times but not the NYT
| snowpid wrote:
| I am convinced that the current world wide rise of (right wing )
| populist movements is mainly caused by social media. By
| regulating like this my hope is we can reduce their spread.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| What's wrong with right wing populist movements? They come and
| go just like left wing populist movements. The pendulum
| swinging across both the political spectrums over election
| cycles is a thing of beauty.
| snowpid wrote:
| both are a threat to democracy like we see on Trump.
| logicchains wrote:
| Populist movements are the opposite of a threat to
| democracy; they represent the actual views of the people,
| not the views of some cultured elite. Real democracy, not
| some republican elitism.
| plaidthunder wrote:
| The flip side of that, is that the same sense of urgency
| that flings populists into power also compels them to
| start to bend the systems that got them there in order to
| maintain power.
|
| After all, if the evil "elites" -- as if populists don't
| comprise their own elite class -- ever gain power again
| they could undo all of our "progress".
|
| You can see this tendency in how some red states, like
| Texas, have tried to furiously redraw their maps to
| maintain control of the US house. They are doing this
| because they fear that "the people" will not choose to
| give them a majority again. They even admit to it openly.
| https://www.politico.com/news/2025/07/15/trump-five-seat-
| pic...
|
| California had a state wide vote to do the same thing.
| But they were acting in kind. Tit-for-tat is a reasonable
| strategy what Texas did. Though it remains a shame that
| it came to it.
|
| Cumulatively, these actions represent a breakdown of the
| machinery in our system that allows us to course correct.
| It's not healthy for anyone.
|
| Planned markets lead to bad economic outcomes, why?
| Because when you fix prices you lose the ability to react
| appropriately to changing conditions. Managed democracies
| lead to bad social outcomes for the same reason. You need
| reasonably fair elections in order to sense the condition
| of the population and react to it.
|
| Yet, populist rhetoric ups the emotional ante to the
| point where it starts to convince people that it's a good
| idea to subvert this. The old "Flight 93 Election" essay
| from 2016 is the perfect case study in this sort of
| absurd rhetorical escalation. Where they literally said,
| if Trump doesn't win America is doomed forever. We have
| to "charge the cockpit" before the plane crashes, so to
| speak.
|
| Yet, when he lost in 2020, America didn't end forever.
| It's all been a farce and a grab for power.
| fhrhfbhdusx wrote:
| Because real democracy is using censorship and
| authoritarian measures to repress political dissent. Is
| your democracy textbook from the Democratic People's
| Republic of Korea? What an absolute clown. I don't care
| where you stand on the political spectrum: what you are
| suggesting is the exact opposite of democracy.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| You're being far too literal here. "Threat to democracy"
| can be directly translated to "Threat to our hegemony".
| Legend2440 wrote:
| I'm not convinced social media is to blame. Plenty of extremist
| movements have arisen throughout history without social media.
| Politics has been bad for a long long time before social media
| existed.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| They did exist, but you had to seek them out. You had to send
| them a letter and ask for their pamphlets to be mailed back
| to you.
|
| Now you have right-wing extremists running the sites and
| deciding what you should view, just look at Twitter/X and
| Musk.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Consolidation of all kinds of media (social, print, TV, radio,
| etc.) is a big ingredient in this. Another ingredient is the
| enshitification of the net, along with the value of unfettered
| collection of user data.
|
| The problem isn't that people are consuming (social) media,
| it's that everything is owned by so few people. We shouldn't be
| punished for this by having to submit to even more
| surveillance.
| logicchains wrote:
| Social media is just decentralised information flow. Populist
| movements are rising because people are finally seeing how
| absolutely exploited they are by the elites, because the elites
| no longer have complete centralised control over the flow of
| information.
| Hizonner wrote:
| So wait. You upload everything you post to a _centralized_
| service, which uses a _centralized_ algorithm to decide which
| of the billions of available uploads to show to each person,
| in order to increase the advertising profits that accrue to
| the _centralized_ corporation that owns the whole thing, and
| that 's decentralized information flow?
|
| Have you considered the possibility that you may be an idiot?
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Besides breaking multiple HN rules, your comment also
| totally misses the point. It is decentralized with respect
| to governments and politicians. Which was their entire
| point.
|
| Have you considered the opposite possibility?
| SauntSolaire wrote:
| Content sourcing is decentralized, sure, content distribution
| is not. Through curation, one can craft a narrative without
| even needing to pay propagandists to write copy.
| nephihaha wrote:
| Nothing decentralised about social media. It's centralised
| everything.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| So you want to silence your political opponents? Sounds
| draconian.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| It's disturbing how internalized their view of "silencing
| opposition is good" is that they just blurt it out publicly
| without further elaboration.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| It's such a normalised sentiment that they feel completely
| comfortable expressing it publicly for everyone to hear.
|
| I'm glad though, it lets me know who to avoid at all costs.
| nephihaha wrote:
| So one variety of extremism is bad but another isn't?
| astrobe_ wrote:
| The question is how this is implemented, in particular age
| verification.
|
| It's usual to say that MPs are old people that don't understand
| current technologies, but in law preparation committees they
| appear to be well aware; in particular, they mentioned a "double-
| anonymity" system where the site requesting your age wouldn't
| know your name, and the entity serving age requests wouldn't know
| which site it is for. They are also aware that people walk-around
| age verification checks with e.g. fake ID cards, possibly AI
| generated.
|
| I'm not sure if it is actually doable reliabily, and I'm not sure
| either that the MPs that will have to vote the law will know the
| topic as well as the MPs participating in these committees.
|
| I would personally consider other options like a one-button admin
| config for computers/smartphones/tablets that restricts access
| according to age (6-14, 15-18) and requiring online service
| providers to announce their "rating" in HTTP headers. Hackers
| will certainly object that young hackers could bypass this, but
| like copy-protection, the mission can be considered complete when
| the vast majority of people are prevented from doing what they
| should not do.
|
| Alternatively one could consider the creation of a top-level
| domain with a "code of content" (which could include things like
| "chat control") enforced by controlling entity. Then again, an
| OS-level account config button could restrict all Internet
| accesses to this domain.
|
| Perhaps an national agency could simply grant a "child safe"
| label to operating systems that comply to this.
|
| This type of solutions would I think also be useful in schools
| (e.g. school-provided devices), although they are also talking
| about severely limiting screen-time at school.
|
| For the french speakers, see:
|
| [1] https://videos.assemblee-
| nationale.fr/video.17950525_6942684...
|
| [2] https://videos.assemblee-
| nationale.fr/video.17952051_6942761...
| logicchains wrote:
| The only way they could successfully implement it is with
| constant live video surveillance, otherwise parents who oppose
| the ban can easily get around it. Which is going to be at least
| a double digit percentage of the population. And the police
| don't even have the resources to investigate theft and robbery,
| let alone go after millions of parents for helping their
| children create social media accounts.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| > parents who oppose the ban can easily get around it
|
| Irresponsible parents are irresponsible parents, and they can
| do much worse than letting their children wander on the Net
| alone. IFAIK no law at least here forbids parents from giving
| alcohol or tobacco to their children, even though it is
| forbidden to sell those products to them. Toxic social media
| are mostly the same.
|
| Although the topic is a ban, I think the idea is less about
| forbidding and punishing, and more about helping - albeit in
| questionably manner according to some - helping parents with
| "regulating" the access of their children to the Net. Of
| course, the easy answer is to recommend giving them dumb
| phones instead of smartphones, but really a smartphone is too
| useful to be ignored around high-school age.
| immibis wrote:
| That's fine. Adults can buy their kids beer, too.
| felipeerias wrote:
| Yes, perhaps the most reasonable approach is to tie these
| restrictions to the specific device (and, where applicable,
| account).
|
| The ban doesn't need to catch every single case, it just needs
| to add enough friction to stop the most frequent and destroy
| network effects.
| triceratops wrote:
| Here's my proposal:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447282
|
| It protects privacy while being as robust as any other existing
| age restriction method.
| bbbhltz wrote:
| I'm one of the weirdos that should be on board with this, but I'm
| against it. This will do harm to marginalized youth and push
| younger people to lie and find ways around the ban.
|
| Plus, we saw that in Australia that the lobby behind the ban was
| in fact an ad agency that makes ads for gambling apps.
|
| Here is France, the ban is probably just a way to avoid
| legislation against companies selling crap that isn't for kids
| like vape pens and sports gambling apps.
| everfrustrated wrote:
| A ban on social media for children is a different way of saying
| ID Verification for the entire population.
|
| They are implicitly the same thing.
|
| You can't exclude children without first verifying _everyone_ and
| from there excluding people who match age < approved. This is
| basic logic.
|
| If you were a cynical person you could imagine this is actually
| politicians wanting to bring in an ID law and using "think of the
| children" as the social justification for it.
|
| If you're a conspiracy theorist you'd wonder why Apple and Google
| have now added the ability to upload and link your passport and
| other real id into their respective app wallets. How long before
| your phones browser is digitally signing all your social media
| posts with your ID...
| hexbin010 wrote:
| Yup the aim is to de-anonymise the Internet for increased
| policing/spying abilities
|
| > How long before your phones browser is digitally signing all
| your social media posts with your ID...
|
| Under 10 years I'd say at this rate
| onraglanroad wrote:
| > If you were a cynical person you could imagine this is
| actually politicians wanting to bring in an ID law
|
| Sounds like a good theory, apart from the minor flaw that
| France already has ID cards:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_card_(France)
| nephihaha wrote:
| Gaming platforms are already doing it.
| someNameIG wrote:
| I'm Australian and neither any Meta platform nor Reddit have
| asked to verify my ID, as I presume both just inferred that I
| was over 16 and that was adequate.
| RickJWagner wrote:
| Good for France!
|
| I wish my country (USA) would adapt similar laws.
| viktorcode wrote:
| What do you expect this law will to achieve?
| nephihaha wrote:
| I love the way everything is forced online but you have to use
| state ID to chat with your friends now.
| herunan wrote:
| This is just cop out legislation. I wanna see laws targeting
| addictive design systems and harmful content. Social media is
| only part of the problem.
|
| There's so much that falls out of the social media definition.
| And regardless, kids are not stupid... VPNs, proxies, etc are
| easy to circumvent with.
| amelius wrote:
| Step 1 should be to kill the ad based monetization model.
| soperj wrote:
| Don't let the perfect be the enemy of good.
|
| Who cares if many can get around it, if the majority can't or
| won't, then it kills the network effects.
| Ritewut wrote:
| I don't think this is good though. It's a police state
| masquerading as "SAVE THE CHILDREN!"
| soperj wrote:
| yes, the police state is preventing Mark Zuckerberg from
| being a trillionaire.
| sethammons wrote:
| I'm sorry. What?
|
| This legislation is very much giving more power to the
| government over what its citizens cannot do. The real
| impetus is control by the powers that be. The ideal
| citizen for an authoritarian would be fully controllable
| via digital means. A digital id that is networked with
| services is a wet dream for authoritarians.
|
| What does this have to do with limiting Zuck's net worth?
| Because less kids will see less ads? How much will this
| reduce his net worth? If we took licenses from kids and
| had them wait until 18, would you be claiming this is to
| prevent Musk from gaining more wealth?
| Simulacra wrote:
| This is such a fools errand, there will always be services
| popping up faster than regulators can ban them. This won't stop a
| lot of the kids. So wasteful.
| fidotron wrote:
| That's not how they think. They will ban everything and only
| allow that which is explicitly permitted.
| meroes wrote:
| More!
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I remember when I was a kid I listened to radio until very late
| in to the night.
|
| Unless they want to remove all of technology from 10pm to 8am,
| this bill is going to be ridiculous. Teenager and kid will always
| find better things to do than sleep.
| triceratops wrote:
| I'm going to restate my proposed age verification system here.
| I've posted it several times as a comment on this website. It
| works as follows:
|
| 1. A private company, let's call it AgeVerify, issues scratch-off
| cards with unique tokens on them. They are basically like gift
| cards.
|
| 2. AgeVerify's scratch-off cards are sold exclusively in IRL
| stores. Preferably liquor stores, adult stores, and/or
| tobacco/vape shops. Places that are licensed and check ID.
|
| 3. Anyone who wants to verify their age online can purchase a
| token at a store. The store must _only_ demand ID if the buyer
| appears to be a minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases).
| The store _must never_ store the ID in any form whatsoever.
|
| 4. Giving or selling these tokens to a minor is a criminal
| offense. If a store does it, they lose their liquor or tobacco
| license. Treat it just like giving a minor alcohol or tobacco.
|
| 4a. Run public service announcement campaigns to communicate that
| giving an AgeVerify token to a child _is_ like handing them a
| cigarette. There should be a clear social taboo associated with
| the legal ban.
|
| 5. The buyer of the AgeVerify token enters it into their account
| on whatever social media or adult website they want to use. The
| website validates the code with AgeVerify.
|
| 6. Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3
| months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) - then
| it expires and a new one must be purchased.
|
| 7. A separate token is required for each website/each account.
|
| 8. The website is responsible for enforcing no account sharing.
|
| No identifying information is stored anywhere. Kids find it very
| hard to access age-restricted materials online, just like the
| vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol or
| cigarettes.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| Nah, EIDAS2 got you covered - you use your european identity
| wallet.
| triceratops wrote:
| The beauty of my proposal is you don't need that.
| 9dev wrote:
| But instead, you need this other thing, which requires
| elaborate infrastructure and new standards and regulations
| nej24swei wrote:
| And who is the biggest winner?
|
| Triceratops Age Verification services, provided a state-
| sanctioned monopoly on issuing Porn Licenses. Awful,
| really.
| triceratops wrote:
| It doesn't have to be 1 company. Ideally it would be many
| companies competing on price, promotions, and other
| marketing.
| nej24swei wrote:
| Ok, so grifting for you and your friends?
|
| It's a really bad idea. It's not a problem that needs to
| be solved by building a market for porn licenses.
| buran77 wrote:
| The other thing OP presents is _very_ different from any
| eID scheme in terms of anonymity. You 'd show an ID to a
| human at the counter and even if the seller stores your
| info somehow, it can't be linked to the token they sold
| to you. The required infrastructure is minimal and
| relatively simplistic. The _only_ drawback is that being
| anonymous means it 's easy to resell tokens.
|
| An eID system links your real life identity to any use of
| the eID online. Anyone who thinks there's a math or
| technology that fixes this misses the fact that it's the
| trust in the humans (companies, institutions,
| governments) who operate these systems is misplaced. Math
| and technology are implemented by people so there are
| many opportunities to abuse these systems. And once in
| place I guarantee, without any shadow of doubt that
| sooner or later, fast or slow, it will be expanded to any
| online action.
|
| I will take anonymity and the small minority of kids who
| will find a loophole to access some adult-only stuff over
| the inevitable overreach and abuse against the large
| majority of people whose every online move will be traced
| and logged.
| triceratops wrote:
| > elaborate infrastructure
|
| Gift cards are "elaborate infrastructure"? C'mon be
| serious please.
| izacus wrote:
| Instead you give control over chilren to a private company
| like a silly american.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| I'm in my 40's and I'd rather just use a VPN, I can't imagine
| that young people will feel any differently. Governments should
| feel free to take performative measures, and we're free to
| circumvent them.
|
| Leave people to their fantasies of digital control and let them
| learn lessons the hard way. This is not a technical issue
| anyway.
| AnIrishDuck wrote:
| Or we have devices attest user age. On setup, the device has
| the option to store a root ("guardian"?) email address.
| Whenever "adult mode" is activated or the root email is
| changed, a notification must first be sent to the prior root
| email. That notification may optionally contain a code that
| must be used to proceed with the relevant action, though the
| user should be warned of the potential device-crippling
| consequences.
|
| This setting is stored in a secure enclave and survives factory
| resets.
|
| I will note that these two systems are not mutually exclusive.
| There are plenty of ways to "think of the children" that don't
| trample on everybody's freedom.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Yeah, not doing this on my Linux devices.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| While this can work I just don't want any bans on speech for
| any age. These social media bans are going to next lead to porn
| restrictions and ultimately they will mainstream Christian
| theocratic values in public policy through an ever shifting
| morality goal post. That's how it always goes. Enabling it
| through such solutions feels like a risk.
| sampli wrote:
| Anti Israel speech will be the first to be banned
| CommanderData wrote:
| It already is. Comments are shadow banned across social
| media, videos across Tiktok are shadow banned if they
| include certain mix of words.
|
| There are cases of UK police turning up to homes for anti-
| zionist comments.
|
| We're already there.
| Greed wrote:
| It's arguable, even if you're right, that the net loss to
| humanity is still far greater without these restrictions than
| with. Modern social media is leading to multiple generations
| of emotionally stunted, non-verbal children. Many of whom
| literally struggle to read.
|
| If you haven't seen it in person, it is now incredibly common
| for children as young as 1 or 2 to be handed an iPad and
| driven down an algorithmic tunnel of AI generated content
| with multiple videos overlaid on top. I've seen multiple
| examples of children scrolling rapidly through videos of
| Disney characters getting their heads chopped off to Five
| Nights at Freddy's music while laughing hysterically. They do
| this for hours. Every day. It's truly horrifying.
|
| Parents are just as poorly equipped at dealing with this as
| the children are, the difference being that at least their
| brains have already fully developed so that there is no
| lasting permanent damage.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I am sure that they will not lead to "Christian theocratic
| values in public policy" in France. That value system is
| fringe in France, one of the most irreligious and
| historically anti-clerical cultures in the world.
|
| Among people who identify as Christian in France, the ones
| who could be described as radical or fundamentalist are a
| very small minority.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| My observation is that there is a big resurgence in
| supremacist politics and the main identity involved is
| white Christian male. Maybe it's not yet big in France but
| that's what I see gaining momentum in many parts of Europe
| and North America.
| hypeatei wrote:
| So a kid just has to get their hands on a token then access is
| open to restricted websites for a year (or whatever time
| period) while adults are inconvenienced? The black markets for
| these things would pop up instantly and you'd deal with
| secondary effects of that (scams, fraud, etc.)
|
| I think the whole idea of age verification on the internet is
| dystopian and should be tossed in the garbage.
| Ritewut wrote:
| Japan has a similar system for payments. If you prefer to buy
| things online with cash they give you a barcode you take to any
| convenience store. The store scans it and you pay with cash.
| coppsilgold wrote:
| You can do the same thing with online payments combined with a
| ZKP token system.
|
| The issue is and will always remain reselling the age
| verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless.
| Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they will
| be very motivated to do so. Criminals will be eager to aid them
| for some change too.
|
| Either you forget age verification, or you can forget about
| privacy. Because identity theft is the only hoop big enough for
| most kids not to make the jump - and even that may not hold,
| typically identity theft is carried out for financial returns,
| the age verification requirement will change the calculus on
| that and will likely expand that particular black market to
| both kids and people valuing their privacy.
|
| In my opinion it should be the parent's job to police their
| kid's access to an internet terminal. It's not even that hard.
| Mitigating the mistakes of parents at the expense of everyone's
| privacy is a poor trade.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Just because something can and will be circumvented doesn't
| make it useless.
|
| People will continue to murder other people. That doesn't
| mean that criminalizing and punishing murder is pointless.
|
| Now, whether the above scheme is prudent or workable, that's
| a separate question. But the counterargument to the scheme
| cannot be "It's all or nothing".
| coppsilgold wrote:
| Murder is all but impossible to prevent, the reason the
| murder rate is kept low is because it's difficult to evade
| attribution after the fact.
|
| In this instance we are talking about a technology that is
| impossible to attribute by design, the only way attribution
| will happen is if the reseller makes a serious mistake.
| There will be resellers that don't make serious mistakes.
| And unlike murder, very few successful resellers are
| sufficient to serve everyone.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The issue is and will always remain reselling the age
| verification tokens. The entire system is pretty pointless.
|
| I forgot to mention in my original post. I'd also rate limit
| purchases. Maybe only allow purchasing one per visit.
|
| > Kids will just have some hoops to jump through, and they
| will be very motivated to do so.
|
| Maybe? Kids can just buy alcohol or cigs or drugs from
| criminals today. But most can't or don't. Some do, and we
| accept that as a society. And we punish the criminals who
| enable it.
|
| This isn't like illegal drugs, where criminals have a massive
| market (adults with cash). A black market catering to only
| minors isn't very lucrative.
|
| Moreover social media's network effects work in our favor. If
| most kids can't join, their friends are less motivated to get
| in.
| nej24swei wrote:
| And I am going to restate how it's an absolutely terrible idea,
| and will always fail with its perverse incentives. This does
| not solve any problems and creates many more.
|
| Your idea will create a massive black market for "adult
| validation tokens", handing billions of dollars to criminal
| groups reselling these things.
|
| And then where such a system goes in 5-10y. Sure it's sorta
| anonymous today, but then new government decides - "let's make
| it mandatory to be sold with a binding identity and credit
| card." Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public
| website. And Chinese, European and American authorities demand
| realtime access to the global logs.
|
| Every censorship system you build, even if it seems "good",
| will eventually censor you and the things you care about. Don't
| design or build oppression technology.
|
| The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of Sales
| age checks at scale is not sensible.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Every censorship system you build, even if it seems
| "good", will eventually censor you and the things you care
| about_
|
| Nobody is being censored. We regulate who can buy alcohol or
| tobacco, gamble at casinos, or operate a motor vehicle
| without it turning into a slippery slope.
|
| Politically, the free speech argument _might_ have had a
| point if Silicon Valley's most-visible "free speech"
| advocates hadn't lined up behind an authoritarian who's
| creating diplomatic tension (and thus domestic political
| capital) the world over.
| noahjk wrote:
| Some other near-term negatives of the planned idea:
|
| - forces people to go to stores that primarily sell addictive
| substances
|
| - prices out poor people, who can't afford adult websites,
| _or_
|
| - even more money meant for bills / food is spent on
| addictions
|
| - will have a stigma attached (why is that preacher in the
| liquor store? For porn or whisky?)
| triceratops wrote:
| > Your idea will create a massive black market for "adult
| validation tokens",
|
| No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs for
| kids. Adults have no need to resort to black markets. They
| can buy this stuff legitimately.
|
| > Sure it's sorta anonymous today, but then new government
| decides - "let's make it mandatory to be sold with a binding
| identity and credit card."
|
| They're already trying to do that right now! If we can head
| them off with a system that's as robust as age verification
| for alcohol we take away the moderate voter's support for
| making everyone upload passports to access FaceTok.
|
| > Every censorship system you build, even if it seems "good",
| will eventually censor you and the things you care about
|
| Hasn't happened to cigs or booze so far. How long is
| "eventually"?
|
| > The very idea that you can realistically enforce Point of
| Sales age checks at scale is not sensible.
|
| This needs strong evidence. My evidence is that _we already
| do it_ for many products.
|
| > Suddenly you need that token to log in to any public
| website. And Chinese, European and American authorities
| demand realtime access to the global logs
|
| If you treat everything as a potential slippery slope you
| won't get anything done. Right now the threat is governments
| mandating actual ID and destroying everyone's anonymity under
| the guise of protecting the children. I fear they have the
| votes to ram it through. Unless we find a good enough
| alternative that preserves privacy.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| > No bigger than the current black market for beer and cigs
| for kids.
|
| I don't think this part is true. Kids are currently used to
| having access to all of these services. And there is a lot
| more utility to having access to the whole internet, than
| having a a few packs.
|
| To say nothing of the fact that these codes can be
| distributed digitally once they have been purchased. So
| it's harder to deter.
| triceratops wrote:
| > these codes can be distributed digitally once they have
| been purchased
|
| How do the kids pay for them?
| nej24swei wrote:
| Crypto, dah. Are you living in the 90s?
|
| A ten year old raised/scammed $10k in crypto meme tokens
| last week.
|
| Join us in the 21st century.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| credit card, prepaid visas, gift cards, crypto atm, csam.
|
| Hell, pay in cash and get the codes digitally separately.
| nej24swei wrote:
| Everything is a slippery slope. Better nothing be done than
| keep inventing new ways to oppress humanity. Why does
| something need to be done anyway?
|
| You can't nerd harder and solve this problem. You have to
| fight these ideas at the root, and you my friend are being
| the so called "useful idiot" by raising and supporting such
| oppression and censorship.
| triceratops wrote:
| It's coming either way. I prefer a future where I don't
| have to upload my passport for every website.
|
| If you think you can fight it you're the "useful idiot"
| for the people who would prefer that we all upload our
| passports.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| > _The store must only demand ID if the buyer appears to be a
| minor (similar to alcohol or tobacco purchases). The store must
| never store the ID in any form whatsoever._
|
| Your plan requires nuanced implementation details which the
| general public is ill equipped to understand let alone
| independently verify. In particular, it is already normalized
| (in America at least) that liquor and weed stores will ID even
| the elderly, and scan the barcode on the ID into their
| computer. Let's say you want to ban the computer part outright;
| the public won't understand why, because it's already normal to
| them. So maybe you permit scanning IDs but regulate the way
| businesses can store/use that data; the public can't _see into
| the computer_ , they have no idea if the law is being followed
| or not. This leads to lax attitudes towards compliance and
| enforcement both, and furthermore, likely results in public
| cynicism aka low expectations, which will give way to
| complacency. This is why I don't think your plan will work
| well, it's doomed to degenerate into surveillance.
| sethammons wrote:
| In the three states I've lived in, nobody scanned IDs. They
| eye balled it and maybe enter birthday into a system.
| mikestorrent wrote:
| This is how it should be. If you happen to be 16 and look
| 19, well, fuck's sake, your body's old enough to drink now.
| People get so hung up on this kind of think-of-the-children
| crap like as though every generation before now didn't have
| plenty of underage drinking and debauchery. I'm more
| worried about people being shutins and not having any fun
| than I am about some kid having a beer.
| hypeatei wrote:
| I didn't even think about the ID scanning that already takes
| place. States that have legalized weed still have people who
| avoid the legal stores because of the scanning. You don't
| know who has access to that data and how it could implicate
| you because weed is still illegal on the federal level (e.g.
| gun owners may be wary of buying from these stores)
| mikestorrent wrote:
| > it is already normalized (in America at least) that liquor
| and weed stores will ID even the elderly, and scan the
| barcode on the ID into their computer
|
| Then why are y'all so against Digital ID? We don't make you
| do that in Canada, it's just the clerk eyeballing your ID if
| you don't look old enough. I can't believe people are letting
| their ID get scanned and associated with vice purchases. Is
| it mandatory? Land of the free, eh?
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Federal IDs are a political landmine for reasons mostly
| unrelated to privacy. The American public doesn't
| understand privacy issues, unless maybe you frame it as "
| _ThE NUmBer OF ThE BeASt " oooo-oo spooky!_ Otherwise, most
| Americans just get stupified and say they have nothing to
| hide.
|
| My point in all of this is that we should not delude
| ourselves by theorizing about ways this could be
| implemented in a privacy preserving way, because even if
| that's _technically possible_ , its unlikely for things to
| work out that way.
| iamnothere wrote:
| OP is wrong. Most places don't do ID scans in my city.
| There was one place that did and I do not patronize them
| anymore.
|
| I think there are some places where vendors have attempted
| to sell scanning systems as a way to identify fakes and
| banned patrons. It probably depends on the area how common
| it is.
| triceratops wrote:
| I've bought alcohol in many countries, including the US.
| Never had my ID stored. I am not ID-ed anymore.
|
| But in any case, my proposal would ban ID scanning
| altogether. There's no good reason to do it for any purchase.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| A very important part of the system is a nationwide program of
| sending homeless people to concentration camps so that
| teenagers wouldn't bribe them to buy TittyTokens.
|
| Like seriously, do you really think that if currently minors
| can buy tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your
| TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune to the same
| problem because you really really wish they would?
|
| You can't patch this without creating some form of a central
| database of who exactly buys how many TittyTokens.
| triceratops wrote:
| > do you really think that if currently minors can buy
| tobacco and alcohol using unlawful means, then your
| TittyTokens will somehow be magically immune
|
| No I fully admit some minors will still get access to
| FaceTok. We accept this failure for alcohol and tobacco. We
| don't have internet connected beer cans phoning home when you
| open them, asking to scan your face.
|
| But at least where I live, most kids aren't falling over
| drunk or puffing away at school bus stops. So if the system
| is good enough for selling _actual poisons_ , it's good
| enough to limit most minors' access to online vices.
|
| Moreover social media has network effects. If most kids
| aren't on it, the rest will likely not bother either.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Why do you need a private monopoly or physical tokens?
|
| This is trivially solved with national IDs and strict
| liability.
| kurthr wrote:
| Once you're selling them, put a bounty where kids can turn in
| the cards for money. Then you'll both set a price floor and
| know which stores are selling them and you can find out who's
| doing it. Nothing says that a token has to last for a constant
| amount of time. If kids turn in more than a certain percentage,
| then that location would have theirs expire early.
|
| What I like here is that you've turned a digital problem into a
| physical one where we already have solutions and intuition for
| how to enforce rules.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| No need for separate company. Banks know your age. I'd imagine
| CC companies know or at very least can get age data from the
| banks they trade.
|
| So it would be
|
| 1. Site let's you pick your "age provider"
|
| 2. You log to you bank/govt site
|
| 3. They only get age as response.
|
| Even easier with CC, shops could just send payment request with
| minimal age, if it doesn't pass, no sell
| triceratops wrote:
| > Banks know your age
|
| They also know who you are. This rules them out of a privacy-
| forward age verification system.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Banks know your age_
|
| Why are we pretending Facebook and X don't?
|
| Start with liability. The age gates will erect themselves.
| colonial wrote:
| You underestimate the average American teenager's shell-buying
| game (honed for decades by our asinine alcohol laws.) I'm sure
| kids elsewhere would pick it up pretty fast too.
|
| Plus, this would spawn massive online black markets for the
| codes, fueled by crypto/gift cards/other shady means of money
| transmission.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| > Once validated, the code is good for 1 year (or 6 months or 3
| months, adjust based on how stringent you want to make it) -
| then it expires and a new one must be purchased.
|
| That sounds fantastic, were just one step away from making
| social media entirely controlled by one single party
|
| Perfect to push anyone you don't like into irrelevancy,
| politicians will love this
|
| Journalists too, finally they can be rid of these pesky
| YouTubers that show how politically captured they're! Just need
| to get someone with admin permission in that company and you're
| golden
| triceratops wrote:
| > entirely controlled by one single party
|
| Why? Multiple companies could compete in the market of age
| verification tokens.
|
| Right now we have actual partisans buying actual social media
| companies (Twitter, TikTok) to control them. That's a much
| bigger threat vector.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Multiple companies could compete in the market of age
| verification tokens_
|
| Why do we want this?
|
| The entire proposal sounds designed to tank popularity for
| keeping kids off Instagram.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Politicians wouldn't know who has which "adult code", so they
| wouldn't be able to get a singular "adult code" banned/early
| expired by the (supposedly corrupt) code-keeping company. To
| know which code a particular Youtuber has, they'd need to be
| able to get that info from Youtube, and if they "have a man
| on the inside" of Youtube then they can just ask that person
| to ban the Youtuber in question.
| globular-toast wrote:
| So who do you give the private monopoly to? The next lottery
| winner?
| refibrillator wrote:
| No disrespect but paying to verify age feels absurd, let alone
| putting a private company in charge of what should be an
| essential function of the government.
|
| How about when you turn 18 or whatever the government gives you
| a signed JWT that contains your DOB? Anyone who needs to verify
| your age can check that and simply validate the signature via a
| public key published by the government.
|
| Simply grab a new JWT when you need it, to ensure privacy.
|
| And sure, sprinkle in some laws that make it illegal to store
| or share JWTs for clearly fraudulent intents.
|
| > the vast majority of kids don't easily have access to alcohol
| or cigarettes
|
| This feels like it comes from an affluent perspective, where I
| grew up it was trivial to acquire these things and much worse,
| there will always be someone's older brother etc who will do
| this for $20 because he's got nothing to lose.
| tbossanova wrote:
| So they give you their jwt for 20 instead
| bethekidyouwant wrote:
| Step 9 i buy my kids this card because this law is dumb
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Perhaps we should drop age verification and just ban sites that
| use AI to scam attention for everyone? I would be happy enough
| if X and FB were banned outright.
| sieve wrote:
| This is a typical technical solution to a sociopolitical
| problem. The powers-that-be are not comfortable with the free-
| for-all that exists on the internet. All these laws are meant
| to fix that squeaky wheel, one ball-bearing at a time.
|
| "Children" gets the Right to march behind you unquestioningly.
| "Misinformation/Nazis" does the same for the Left. This is now
| a perfect recipe for a shit sandwich.
| like_any_other wrote:
| Ban for children, and mandatory deanonymiziation [1] for everyone
| else.
|
| [1] At best with a "trust us we won't tattle" "privacy"
| architecture.
| egorfine wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it is going to pass.
|
| Too much of a coordinated efforts between western countries, thus
| it cannot fail. The decisions have been made and your voice
| pretty much doesn't matter.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _The decisions have been made and your voice pretty much
| doesn 't matter_
|
| Source for these bans being unpopular?
| agentifysh wrote:
| The confusion you are displaying is because you are not
| cognizant of whats going on throughout the world particularly
| in advanced economies that have opened their doors to all
| forms of migration legal and illegal.
|
| The timing of this coincides with countries in particular
| have seen a major rise in anti-migration sentiments which
| have become very fashionable and popular among young men in
| particular as polls show a global trend of men under 30s are
| shifting towards right wing with women towards leftwing.
|
| Suddenly, they decide NOW is the time to stop despite the
| fact that they've allowed young people to be exposed to all
| sorts of "dangerous content" and algorithms for decades, in
| the late 90s and early 2000s as teenagers we had uncensored
| access to the internet, warez, anarchy, shock as they have
| circumventions widely shared among each other today.
|
| In short, these countries are so concerned about a civil
| unrest in particular between religious groups that are
| perceived to have "overstayed their welcome" that they are
| outright trying to shutdown online discourse both legitimate
| and exaggerated.
|
| Europe, in particular UK, are on the brink of a major civil
| war as per intelligence reports and the ban for the young
| won't be the last but that the net would be cast even wider.
| It's a last ditched effort bandaid solution to keep the dam
| from bursting. With the backdrop of Keir Starmer's threats to
| extradite Americans and jail people for posting grievances
| against the demographic crisis, you can see where Europe and
| other advanced economies even in places like Korea mirror the
| trends, conflicts and draconian laws to buy time for the
| inevitable.
|
| If we want to keep this debate going there has to be an
| understanding of the political context and direction that can
| only be realized through inference and intuition. They will
| never openly announce true motives as that would hinder the
| objective. The comments I am seeing are awfully similar to
| the confusion and fierce debate I see around wrestling
| control of TikTok, which have largely been blamed on China,
| but the concern around uncensored videos of atrocities
| committed in the middle east reaching hundreds of millions of
| young people that has shifted steadfast opinions of a certain
| country which for decades were positive, now show significant
| departure among age brackets within the same political camp
| which shocked a lot of old people from that same side.
|
| Perception is everything and the question "asking for a
| source on if these bans popular" completely misses the mark
| and irrelevant, rather the more interesting question is,
|
| "will these bans that limit freedom of information and speech
| escalate and proliferate in the near future and whether
| France, Australia, Korea is just the start?"
|
| " will the countries reviewing ban like new zealand, greece,
| canada invite more countries to join the trend?"
|
| " why are these bans being accelerated in countries that have
| seen a large wave of migrations that are causing major
| frictions?"
| immibis wrote:
| You've written 6 paragraphs without answering what was
| asked.
| agentifysh wrote:
| I've provided an answer which requires understanding
| because if you don't seek to connect the dots any
| response to whatever question is being asked will be
| immediately negated or denied making further debate
| impossible.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Look, I'm all for not letting children into social media apps.
| But that's the job of the parents, not the state.
|
| Besides, like many point out, this is just a way to deanonymize
| the web for everyone.
|
| Why is the state always meddling with the citizens lives and
| personal responsibilities, and why do we let them? Do we really
| appreciate so much this nanny state?
| jhanschoo wrote:
| I don't think you've thought through the sentiment "But that's
| the job of the parents, not the state" very well. Parents
| frequently want limited Internet access for their older
| preteen/early teen children, don't trust the private sector to
| implement this limited Internet access, and don't have the time
| to enforce this limited access themselves as they have to go to
| work and their children have to go to school anyway (and their
| parents want this limited access for them in school as well).
|
| There are also easier options of no personal Internet access,
| and unrestricted access, but I suppose these are not very good
| for this stage of development.
|
| As citizens we like to delegate aspects of our lives to the
| government; for example, I'm responsible for commuting to work
| on time, but we have delegated the maintenance of roads or
| public transport to the government, and this is something that
| could also be done by the private sector (private roads,
| private transportation), and ends up as a constant negotiation
| between citizen and government. Some polities like Germany and
| I think Sweden have subsidized education for children in
| exchange for mandatory public schooling by an institution
| either owned by the state or extremely highly regulated by the
| state.
| diaspora72 wrote:
| If you want to know what is really driving this _NOW_ , listen to
| this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1RpYGJsp-A
| llmslave2 wrote:
| I was going to write a comment about how stupid and harmful these
| bans are for multiple reasons (including being entirely
| ineffective at their stated goals anyways), but honestly, who
| cares at this point. It's clear to me that the internet is dying
| and will either look dramatically different in the next decade or
| cease to exist as it's overtaken by bots and AI. And I'm starting
| to think that's a good thing for humans and society. Perhaps we
| will return to the real world.
|
| (We will still need the internet for communication, but hopefully
| far less for entertainment etc).
| loup-vaillant wrote:
| Here's the thing though: they're not killing entertainment --
| at least not in general. They're killing communication.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's all just AI and people slop. Real person to person
| communication won't be effected.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Are they? I don't see FaceTime, WhatsApp, Apple Messages etc
| being affected. The idiot politicians might in the future and
| will need to be fought, but I'm at the point where I want to
| see Facebook, Youtube, and X die.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Yeah the internet is stupid at this point. I do get a lot of
| value from YouTube however.
| llmslave2 wrote:
| Same - but I've also wasted so much time there I reckon it
| comes out as a wash (or worse).
| nephihaha wrote:
| I used to look things up on the internet, now it's looking me
| up.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Every nation in the world needs this.
| casey2 wrote:
| Any kind of government encroachment into the time of it's
| citizens is theft.
|
| Many of their citizens chose American social media because they
| prefer American values. This offended the nationalists so they
| are simply going to ban American sites and try to make their own
| inferior ones.
|
| Traditional media (Murdoch) and traditional gambling lobbied the
| hardest for these laws (of course these are anything but
| traditional). This is a billion dollar gimme to newscorp, but
| they will probably still fail to pick up the younger audience
| because they can't compete.
|
| In America we have freedom of religion and freedom of
| association, we used to have the freedom to put whatever we
| please in our own bodies and minds.
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