What is it with Neo-Liberal governments and implementing over-reaching state controls that will eventually grant a tyrant unprecedented levels of control over public life?
The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived
Submitted 8 months ago by tonytins@pawb.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.wired.com/story/the-age-checked-internet-has-arrived/
Comments
NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 7 months ago
Flocklesscrow@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Because they want to privatize all aspects of living so that a handful of exorbitantly wealthy people can build larger hoards. There’s no end to it; it’s a mental disease, enabled by Capitalism and the death of real Labor laws and rights.
Every industry should have unions that actively work to dismantle owner authoritarianism, but for 40 years Boomers have been paving the way for every awful piece of shit “business owner” to have some idolized place at the top of our society. And of course, the knock-on effect of that over time is that the pieces of shit have carved into the legislative and political arenas that provided even a modicum of worker/commoner protections. The digital divide is just a coefficient on the slippery slope.
SkyHeart@lemmy.zip 7 months ago
Man… When I was younger I used to fake my age, I know that some kid’s still going to find a way to bypass the system like giving their parent’s verification IDs or something…
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
It still doesn’t have to be this way.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world 7 months ago
I didn’t need the Internet anyway thanks though
herseycokguzelolacak@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
Age-checking is just a backdoor to force everyone on the internet to identify themselves. Nobody cares about the kids, they care about purging the internet of political dissent and opposition.
irmadlad@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Governments like everything and everyone in their own little stack and in the government’s self established status quo. When Paula Protester comes along with her LGBTQ++ agenda, governments don’t like that. Paula Protester represents instability to the status quo established by the ruling class. Governments don’t like instability. Governments like everyone sorted, coallated, and stapled, all in their respective stacks, so dissidents and social change advocates are viewed as adversaries and are not welcome.
If it’s genuuinely ‘for the chirren’ then it would seem to me that making parents be parents and take responsibility for their child’s actions would go a very long way. However, we make laws with the lowest common denominator in mind. I don’t want your children involved in adult activities online. However, just like any education program, the success is determined by parental involvement in their child’s daily lives, and it starts at home.
It’s a lot easier to make government responsible for the child’s developement, than actually requiring parents to be parents. I hear parents say ‘I’m not technologically inclined.’ Well, get there. The safety and well being of your child hangs in the balance. Take a class, read some of the millions of step by step tutorials that exist all over the internet. Ask some questions in forums. The possibilities are endless. Protecting your child is work, just like rasing them is work, and therein lies the issue.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
I am 420 years old.
KumaSudosa@feddit.dk 7 months ago
That’s a respectable age! Personally I’m 69 years old.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I’m somewhere between 21 and 98, depending on where my scroll wheel happens to stop.
Lofi_Haze@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Can someone tell me if people are actually doing this or just using VPNs? Or what other routes are there around this?
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 7 months ago
norman Reedus’ face mashable.com/…/discord-uk-age-verification-death-…
HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
See, there are a few ways this could go.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, and it’s left at that. I like to call this “the miracle”, and we all know those don’t happen.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a government asks for “access to data to prevent crime” - things degenerate from there. This is the “systemic failure” scenario.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but new scams evolve around it to make it dangerous. This would be the “criminal element” scenario.
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Age verification is not as secure and private as promised, and a leak occurs destroying lives and careers. This is the “system failure” scenario.
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Age verification is as secure and private as promised, but a few companies start scraping and selling data, leading to widespread harms. This is the “unethical merchant” scenario, and the most likely outcome.
All in all, there is only one “ok” scenario, and a lot of horrific ones. The math says we’re entirely boned ^_^
FosterMolasses@leminal.space 7 months ago
I feel like people are downplaying how dangerous even the possibility of #2 is. A lot of nations are already targeting the LGBTQ community on a regular basis and this would massively assist to streamline persecution of “certain” citizens as well as the rapid spread of religious Dogma. Both the U.S. and Australia are current testing grounds for these outcomes.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
In theory, it isn’t hard to make it work, give everybody born on the same day a specific UUID and use that to authenticate with a database if it is true or false. Store the ID somewhere where the person has access to (ID/Passport/Digital passport etc) and it should be enough. Get IT persons and accountants to regularly audit it for security and if they keep logs/don’t have UUID’s per person etc.
But that’s not how it seems to work for the UK at this time
D_Air1@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Or all of the above while still not being “as secure and private as promised”.
emmy67@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Nothing is ever as secure and private as promised.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
4, as it’s already happening. It’s just to be seen if people will have their lives ruined
Scrollone@feddit.it 7 months ago
We would need politicians to be the victims. Then these fascist laws will suddenly be cancelled.
ThatKomputerKat@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Already been seeing bullshit “age verification” scams in replies on mastodon for over a week now.
tonytins@pawb.social 8 months ago
Five seems to be the most plausible. Although knowing how shit corporate security is, I foresee a mix of three and four being common.
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wowwoweowza@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Not for me, bitches!
jpablo68@infosec.pub 8 months ago
Well time to sell thumbdrives to teenagers filled with “tutorials.mp4” and “online class.mp4” lol.
HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Just give em live distros with tor installed.
londos@lemmy.world 8 months ago
On the internet everyone will know you’re a dog.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Mrreow? 😾
npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
Sucks, because it’s going global and we can’t seem to stop it. I’m fine with laws to age gate in terms of a button you click. If some kid is willing to say they’re 15… well, let’s make sure people are treating them as a 15 year old. But… making everyone deal with real verification is at best going to further entrench big business, and at worst, destroy the internet we love. And it raises the question: are trans teenagers talking to each other now creating adult content because the UK hates trans people?
jsomae@lemmy.ml 7 months ago
how do you know it’s going to be global?
npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Canada currently has a bill looking to do the same thing. AFAIK, Australia’s already passed one, many US states are looking at them individually. The EU is looking at frameworks for it. I suppose there will be some places that won’t, but this is increasingly looking like what governments have decided to do, and rather than geofencing, once a large number of money-making territories want this, I think most corporations will do it globally, and smaller sites simply won’t be able to run.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 7 months ago
For porn and games etc. that should be enough yes, but for online gambling, opening stock market accounts etc we do need actual verification, but there are tons of methods of doing it so that the site only gets a true or false (18 or above) and the government gets obfuscated URL’s so that the government doesn’t know what you visited.
npcknapsack@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
If I’m opening a stock market account, I’m trusting them with generating my tax receipts! If I don’t feel comfortable trusting them to hold my personal data directly, I probably should choose a different brokerage…
queueBenSis@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
these laws are all about control and tracking what you do online. they make the internet MORE dangerous, because (as with everything the government restricts or bans) there will be a black market, which is always more dangerous and exposes people to more things than they were looking for in the first place. you think dark web providers are gonna make you upload your id to stay compliant? no, they’re gonna continue anonymously operating through TOR and serve up some very questionably sourced content to those teens that are searching “boobs” and can no longer access pornhub
G4Z@feddit.uk 8 months ago
Fuck it, let’s get back to something like the way it was.
Anonymous, amateur, just slightly hard to access to keep the mouth breathers out.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 7 months ago
being able to use obscure internet forums does not preclude you from being a mouth breather
Zink@programming.dev 7 months ago
Well now that sounds a little like the fediverse itself!
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 8 months ago
I really, really dont want to search for porn on the dark net…
muusemuuse@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
That’s what this is going to become. And that’s another point to this. They can just go after people using the dark net claim it was for kiddie porn even if it wasn’t. the masses will just believe them.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Premiumporn.org
xiwi@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
There’s like a gazillion porn sites on the clearnet though, I can’t imagine them being able to track then all
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
This isn’t about being “age-checked”. It’s about IDing everyone on the internet and tracking where they go and what they do.
The world we live in is far far worse than anything from 1984.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
No, 1984 is way worse, but what we have is still awful.
LordCrom@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Exactly this.
Governments have a rock hard boner for detailed face scans of every person.
Jarix@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I think that’s the tech side windfall, the age checking is entirely to put road blocks infront of boobies. They it will force places to just not service those regions because of the hurdles of convincing enough people to give their ID, some will, and more over time.
And it now gives I people a reason to actually create fake IDs or just more identity theft uses. Raise the value of obtaining people’s ID is the windfall for the data rapers
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I will not be participating. I’ll get around any barriers they put in place.
shaggyb@lemmy.world 8 months ago
And if I can’t, I’ll just stop using the internet for anything I don’t absolutely have to.
I don’t really need my smartphone. A laptop will do.
ook@discuss.tchncs.de 7 months ago
You don’t use the internet on a laptop?
ArsonButCute@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Anything you can do on a smartphone that would require Internet would also require Internet on a laptop no?
I suppose you could download offline installers to a thumb drive at the library or smth
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I’m sure some countries will gladly setup VPNs for accessing this stuff even when all other countries block adult stuff.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Haven’t seen any age verification in BGP.
chunes@lemmy.world 8 months ago
That’s fine. The actual internet will still be here.
drmoose@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I legitimately dont understand who supports this. Who are these parents that can’t parent their kids properly? It’s so incredibly easy these days.
So instead of handling shitty parenting we restrict adults and with surveillance. Make it make sense.
Auli@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
For a lot of people it is hard and over walking because they don’t understand.
scarabic@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It plays quite well with the “I think about things for two seconds, and mostly think with my lower intestine” crowd.
They hear “kids shouldn’t be able to access porn” and they think yeah what’s wrong with that. Then they hear “Democrats want your kids to get porn” and they hit share.
Sunsofold@lemmings.world 8 months ago
One of the biggest problems with human societies is that parents, by necessity, have their brains broken and, due to modern values/life, are under constant strain. Being a parent means (generally) the kid is priority 1, then there’s everything else. This is a necessary irrationality, but if this means you have to do the occasional genocide or violate someone else’s civil rights to ‘keep our kids safe’ then, by god, those people are just going to have to suck it up and die. Sometimes, if you have the time, you can talk some people around and remind them, one day their kids are going to have to live in society as one of those 'someone else’s and won’t always be their precious little baby, but almost no one has the time and energy for a more nuanced thought than ‘save the babies!’ much less if they also have to work 48 hours, commute 10 hours, and parent their kid(s) for 167 hours each week.
rozodru@lemmy.world 8 months ago
a lot of people. The other day I saw a post on mastodon by some politician or someone in the UK stating that if people find any site that is geoblocking the UK because of the age verification to report it to some link he provided. it was boosted A LOT with a lot of replies in support.
bootlickers.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
Report why? They’re entirely within their rights if they want to geoblock them.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
report, lol. what does that douchebag want to do? fine a foreign website for not serving his oh so precious country?
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online 8 months ago
Parental controls for internet use have been around since the 90s. There are even some vintage porn sites that have been running since then that have ads for them. I know this. I saw them back in 1999 and 2000… when I was an underage guy looking at porn online.
hansolo@lemmy.today 8 months ago
It’s more like who supports this in theory vs. who supports this how it’s written and implemented.
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs. I’m not a parent, but I know my parents when I was a teenager would have loved something like this. Kids are sneaky and smart, and this is a blanket thing parents think will once again put porn behind a barrier.
In a perfect world, a system could very easily exist that would 1) allow for a super-secure government owned digital ID system that isn’t a surveillance nightmare, 2) that system use a hash to verify over 18 age anonymously in real time. That’s how it’s supposed to work with digital IDs - only the data you need to verify is displayed to a vendor. Over 18 is a binary yes/no - a full DOB or name isn’t even needed.
The government ID wallet or site would use a no-log system to generate a hash value for you when you ask for one. You ask your ID app or site for an age verification hash. You get one that’s valid for about 2 minutes. Copy, paste as needed. The site uses the hash to only know “is this person over 18 or not?” and nothing else. The ID system shouldn’t keep the logs of which site asked back to confirm “is this hash valid?” This is exactly as secure as going to a liquor store with your passport or ID card and having tape over the name, address, and doc number. It’s even better because your face is not displayed, and your actual DOB should not be displayed either.
However, in our present shitty reality, companies who are trying to get contracts for these systems can’t help but feed their existing, and lucrative, addiction to selling our data and using poor security to store that data. So they want your Google/Apple/Samsung wallets connected to a government system that is actually ran by a 3rd party vendor with questionable security practices, and to provide far more information because no one has set an international standard for neither digital ID checks, nor IDs in general, enough to make it anything less than the surveillance state nightmare that is holding a government ID with all your info, while you move your face around and give them a 3D face scan that the platform doesn’t keep, but the verification company does.
drmoose@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Hard disagree with your initial premise that seeing boobs in google images is somehow a bad thing. What is it supposed to achieve? Hide the existence of breasts from kids until they turn 18? Thats absurdly repressive.
Naia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Realistically, no one should love how easy it is for anyone of any age to go to any search engine and search for “boobs” and just get a million images of boobs.
First. let’s not pretend the idea of a kid seeing “boobs” is in any way shape or form actually harmful. Pushing that taboo is why there is any issue in the first place.
Second: This is always a slippery slope. Even if we gave the benefit of the doubt that these things are done in with honest intentions, someone will abuse the system eventually. At least in the US the fascists have already laid out intention to classify LGBTQ people as “porn” in an effort to both silence us online and ban us in public. And what of the countless queer kids in an abusive home?
And even without someone explicitly exploiting it, there had already been instances where kids who were being actively sexually abused by the adults in their life were blocked from resources that could get them help because of content blocking like this.
Thirdly: People can take responsibility for their crotch spawn and be a fucking parent.
MITM0@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Faacists do
Gsus4@mander.xyz 8 months ago
I have been asked to enter a credit card to verify my age on yt a few times before. It was pretty annoying, really, given how much google already knows about me.
absquatulate@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I wonder what it was that made Pornhub cooperate this time around. Iirc in texas and france they just “left” instead of implementing the age verification.
Korkki@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
All the big adult sites will probably just die or at least shrivel in popularity. Most Europeans simply will not use whatever “tell Brussels or London where or what what you are watching” option is. In the place of the big sites there will be a billion shady and likely virus-lottery proxy sites whose only selling point is that they do not do age checking or require registration. Those then get occasionally smacked down by Brussels, just to be replaced with 10 more clones the by the next week. On the side piracy and vpns will thrive. Kids will not be protected nor will people’s privacy, quality will be worse.
I would also bet that when the landscape decentralizes there will be a lot more cp, revenge and peep-videos and other illegal shit in the mix that will get through through the cracks since massive established sites had to actually fear shutdown and losing all revenue unless they had robust gatekeeping mechanisms. If Brussels wants your 2 month life-expectancy site dead anyway, because of it’s only selling point of having to show id, then why really bother with the quality control of the material of site holder has no personal qualms about that stuff.
thirtyfold8625@thebrainbin.org 8 months ago
age-check laws threatens to chill speech
You’ve read your last free article.
masterofn001@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
It is not age verification.
It is privacy invading, morality policing, de-anonymizing, state surveillance.
Nothing less.
vikingtons@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ll make my own internet… with blackjack
WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
Since the earliest days of the internet, governments have been scheming to gain control over the dissemination of content - to have authority over what people can and cannot see.
Autocracies like Russia, China and North Korea simply established censorships regimes, but the best that western governments have generally been able to do is ban content that is illegal in and of itself, like child porn. Their goal, all along, has been to establish systems by which to censor content that is not in and of itself illegal.
This is the most success they’ve had yet.
ryannathans@aussie.zone 8 months ago
I want to go back
SuperCub@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I mean, schools (k-12) pretty easily blacklist websites you can access, not sure why parents can’t just do that if they want as well.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
Parents can, and the only thing the government should be doing here is teaching parents how.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Because it was meant as a “soft ban”. First you make it troublesome to access porn, but also blame the providers if kids are circumventing it in any shape or form (no section 230-esque protections). This, alongside with payment processors, act as a chokehold on the industry, and also on the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole if you can read between the lines. The long game is to make it unpopular enough in a few years, that it can be easily outlawed.
tonytins@pawb.social 7 months ago
The amount of parental controls available now really give parents little to no room for excuses.