Of course they would. Not only would they get their hands on data users fully voluntarily give them by using their platform, but they’d get their hands on verified IDs and quite reliable family tie information. The potential loss of users is definately worth it for them (from their perspective).
Meta said it supports proposals for an EU-wide age of digital adulthood, below which minors would need parental consent to use social media
Submitted 3 weeks ago by Pro@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
tja@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
In my opinion we would need an EU service that does the verification while sharing as little information as possible with facebooks services.
I think the EU service should only send back, if the person is allowed to use Facebook. A single yes or no. Which could mean both, that the person is either old enough or has their parents consent.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
how would you ensure that this stays private? not just from facebook, but completely. as I see it, this would require some form of biometric authentication
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Which of course they wouldn’t do
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Anything else would be in flagrant violation of the GDPR (and this too, probably, though not as flagrantly).
RaivoKulli@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
I thought that’s exactly how the porn age check is going to work
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t want age verification for social media — I’d rather parents of young kids (who likely grew up online in 2025) be responsible for it — but if they do force this, it should be part of the operating system. Sort of like Apple Pay and Google Pay where sites can essentially put some boilerplate code that’s easy to implement and all they get back is a yes/no answer. Users only have to go through the process once. It protects privacy way more than every “social media” site that comes along.
It’s not ideal but it’d be way more workable than having to provide ID to every site that has social media functions. I mean, you could classify any random forum or site with a comment section as “social media” if the definition is too broad. Things like Fediverse instances wouldn’t have to each write their own implementation. (Eventually, there would be trusted, mature libraries, obviously, but that could take awhile.)
squaresinger@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d rather parents, who in 2025 probably grew up with connected devices, be responsible for it
That’s about as useful as saying that shops should be allowed to sell alcohol to 5 year olds and the parents should be responsible for it.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 3 weeks ago
I’ve been thinking about it and here’s my proposal:
- total ban on videos with kids below 16. Anyone uploading content with kids is immediately banned. Platforms hosting content with kids are prosecuted.
- treat mobile phones like cigarettes. Parents giving phones to children < 16 are fined. If you want to track your kid get him a smart watch.
Who’s with me?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
No one.
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 3 weeks ago
I would be surprised if majority of people couldn’t live without watching kids on youtube but who knows, maybe you’re right.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
No. I want freedom, not this BS
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
a heavy handed approach, but I don’t see one that is not heavy handed, private, and effective enough.
slight modification: mobile phone is ok if it only has a small screen like on old feature phones, no capabilities for mobile data but only calls (that’s probably a software limitation), and no social media apps (or any installable apps).
perhaps wifi capability with a weak antenna, or a wifi interface that only supports low speeds.private communications is a question though, because phone calls and SMS are anything but private.
hey people, this could work!
and its not like we need to ban kids from the internet, but to only allow them with the active supervision of a parent.
leftzero@lemmynsfw.com 3 weeks ago
Pagers. Kids under 21 can only get pagers.
They get within two meters of a smartphone, both kid, parents, and whoever owns the smartphone go straight to jail.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Fuck this
Redex68@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’ve been thinking of possible ways that you could prove you’re of legal age to access a site through a government service without the government being able to know who the user is, and I can’t really come up with a clean solution.
The best idea that came to my mind was that you could e.g. have a challenge system where the government service challenges the user to return an encrypted randomly generated value. Each user has e.g. an AES key assigned to them that corresponds to the year they were born in, e.g. everyone born in the year 2000 has the same encryption key in ther ID card, and they just use that to return an answer to the challenge. The government website can know all of the secret keys and just check if it can unencrypt the result with the correct one. This means that the government service won’t know anything about the user other than their year of birth, but can confirm their age.
Now two main problems are that, as everyone with the same year of birth has the same key, it could be possible to somehow leak one key and make it so that anyone can pretend to be born at that age, but considering this is for kids, exploiting that sort of problem is probably enough of a barrier to use. Another problem is that this would require you to scan your ID card with every use. Maybe you could accomplish this with a mobile app but idk if that’s possible to do in the same way.
BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
There is no way. If identity is involved in any way, shape, or form it is a major privacy and security risk. Meta supports it only because it shifts responsibility and liability of themselves. In other words, it benefits them financially. Endangering the public for profit is their whole M.O.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
How about parents just do their job and make sure their kids aren’t accessing stuff they shouldn’t? I’m a parent, and I’m already doing that, I don’t need the government to violate my privacy in order to be a decent parent…
Tehdastehdas@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Commanding a bad/incompetent/overworked parent to become a good parent doesn't make it so.
altphoto@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
That’s a funny way to say they shouldn’t be allowed to be on the net by themselves until they are 18.
Going back to the Napster days there was an analogy that the internet is like a street. If you leave a photo or an mp3 available on the street, then I can take it as I pass by.
Well similarly, if you allow your kid on the street and the internet is basically like the pink zone in Amsterdam, your kid will see things. Also they will be susceptible to abusers and advertisers.
For that reason, we should always opt for local software for them to use, no social media and no presence on the net. Also anyone doing business on the net should be barred from doing business with a kid on the net.
MilitantAtheist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And multiplayer games, please, add multiplayer games…
arararagi@ani.social 3 weeks ago
Of course they do, since small spaces like lemmy and each of it’s instances would have to implement some form of age verification too, making them either close down, or ban EU IPs like misskey does.
badbytes@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Keep internet free. Like libraries.
AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space 3 weeks ago
As the age verification technology would forcibly deanonymise all EU users, opening a huge new vein of behavioural surveillance data to the zuckerbots.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Oppression of one group is a skeleton key to everything else