Mastodawn

Feb 22

Age Verification isn't a technical problem to solve. If you think that, you're missing the point.

It's a social problem used by authoritarian governments as an excuse for population control and censorship.

It's a fundamental attack on free speech and democracy.

It must not be accommodated.
It must be stopped.

#MassSurveillance #AgeVerification #Privacy #Democracy #HumanRights

Show thread

divVerent Feb 22

@Em0nM4stodon There are technical solutions without mass surveillance.

But I am not optimistic enough to believe those will be demanded.

Specifically because of the lack of surveillance, and the lack of monopoly protection for big tech.

Pretty sure big tech lobbyists are making sure the worst approaches possible get put into law. Not because they are evil per se, but because it strengthens their monopolies.

Show thread

Cassandrich Feb 22

@divVerent @Em0nM4stodon No there are not. This is a fundamental fact of mathematical logic. Given a proposed age verification system you can prove that it's either trivially bypassed (doesn't actually verify age) or violates key privacy properties.

Em's point is spot-on. If you think of this as a problem to be solved, you are going to be wrong and you are going to be a useful fool for fascists.

Show thread

Ed Wiebe Feb 22

@dalias @divVerent @Em0nM4stodon Knowing how old someone is does not limit their speech nor their ability to vote (we verify age for that already, and for many other reasons). Age verification isn’t state censorship. I suppose it could be a way to limit anonymous speech. That isn’t a Right where I am from (nor is ‘free’ speech). I doubt anonymous speech is a Right anywhere.

I have no doubt it’s absolutely technically feasible in a way that infringes on no one’s privacy. Ultimately though, yes, it could be abused by bad actors. Like everything else in civilisation we need some balance of enforcement to deal with those people.

Show thread

divVerent Feb 22

@edwiebe @dalias @Em0nM4stodon From what I understand, active verification does necessarily invade privacy.

But active verification is not necessary.

A mere social media ban under age X, if necessary, could simply be passed as a law, making the parents responsible for ensuring their children follow it. There already are existing laws of this kind for other areas of life. And as parents are responsible for supervising their children, they definitively can also be responsible here.

The opposite is true as well - while the child is supervised by their parents, such restrictions should not apply.

To support the ban, I still think it'd be useful to have an (optional at parents' discretion) software solution. Sure one could go all allowlist using e.g. Google Family Link, but I'd prefer if sites specified their purpose (and also some other properties, e.g. the severity of various kinds of NSFW content, potentially even at multiple levels of which the client can then pick one and specify in a header) for such software to use. That's trivial to do, it's just one file to be placed in the web server's root and it'll work. Could store it in DNS instead, whatever, don't care.

Furthermore, while at it, we could combine this with a technical solution for COPPA and other regulations that ban tracking and surveilling children online. Namely, revive Do-Not-Track, and have aforementioned software automatically set the header for minors.

But, I hear Big Tech say, then what if adults set the header too?

Then you don't effing track them either.

But... what if everyone sets it?

Then the people have spoken.

Show thread

Ed Wiebe Feb 22

@divVerent

Age verification doesn't take away anyone's Rights.

Maybe we don't need it. Maybe we do. That's a different discussion.

@Em0nM4stodon @dalias