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Rivalarrival

@ Rivalarrival @lemmy.today

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3 yr. ago

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • If you believe parents are the only people who can help

    Parents (and persons serving in loco parentis: guardians, caregivers, etc.) are the only ones who can responsibly impose on the privacy rights of a child. The government needs a warrant to do the same. Society in general includes the pornographers and groomers and others who would do harm to the child, and cannot be broadly trusted with such a responsibility. Any solution for a particular child has to pass through the parents/guardians of that child. The parents/guardians must be the ones implementing it, and they should only be allowed to implement it for their own children/wards. You indicate later that you work with at-risk kids; you might be considered a "guardian" of those kids, and you would be charged with providing this role to your kids. But not to society in general.

    Yes, I get it…you’re saying that the groomers are the people collecting that data. Simply not true,

    You have yet to read or fully comprehend the California law (in particular) if you're making that claim. Go back and read it. When you do, remember that groomers will be making "applications". Some of the developers receiving "age signals" from childrens' operating systems will be groomers. Re-read the law again, but this time substitute "groomer developer" for "developer", and "groomer application" for "application". This law explicitly requires groomer-developers to collect this data.

    poor and at risk children…the children who are majority of children groomed

    Violating everyone's privacy is not a replacement for properly supervising children. The poor and at risk kids you're talking about shouldn't exist: Their needs should be properly met, so that nobody is "at risk". Age verification doesn't do anything to help at-risk kids. It does make it easier for groomers to identify them as at-risk kids.

    Australia adopted age restrictions on social media. They found that the net effect of their ban was to isolate at-risk kids from support. Kids felt compelled to hide their internet activities from adults and authorities. The act of reporting abuse also served to incriminate the kid for bypassing the bans, so kids tend to conceal both. Their ban is introducing greater harm.

    You're not helping kids by supporting these laws. You're putting them at greater risk. As a "front line worker in at risk children", you really should know better.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • The alternative to self-regulation isn’t to just give up (put it in the parents hands)

    Putting it in the parents hands isn't "giving up". That's where the responsibility should be. There is no other entity capable of performing this task without undue invasion of privacy.

    it’s to have a multi pillared approach

    This isn't a case where throwing everything at the problem makes it better. It doesn't. Every effort we take is another invasion into our privacy; into the privacy of children. Everything we do makes the privacy problem worse, and most of what we can do will also make it easier to identify and target children for additional harm.

    Again: removing consumer age-gating and replacing it with nothing is a bad idea.

    We aren't "removing" anything. Consumer age gating does not exist. It has never existed. It never needs to exist. Age gating isn't just virtue signalling. Age gating is actively enabling harm.

    The current model is primarily prohibition and nothing for the rest of us….that’s very dangerous.

    The current model is not "prohibition". The current model is "parental supervision".

    You’re arguing that if it’s possible for groomers to get the data

    No. I'm arguing that groomers are now required to collect the data. We used to be able to prosecute suspicious people for needlessly invading the privacy of others. With the current crop of laws, we require them to identify children.

    You can’t just call every company who collects data a groomer,

    Strawman. I didn't claim that. What I claimed is that every groomer who happens to provide a web service to Californians will be required to collect children's age data as of January 1, 2027.

    I don’t agree that returning the internet to an unregulated hellhole with only user tools is the answer.

    Supplanting user tools with centralized regulation is exactly what made the internet a hellhole.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • You’d need to demonstrate that age verification protects groomers v children

    All I need to show is that groomers can use the tools to distinguish between adults and children. The California law requires your OS announce your age to a "developer" before downloading an "application". The way the law is crafted, though, "developer" = "web server", and "application" = "web page".

    Furthermore, the way the law is written, groomers aren't just allowed to get your age; they are required to get your age if they offer web services to Californians.

    The majority of parents aren’t savvy enough, aware of, or have the time to use the tools.

    You'd be hard pressed to find an adult who was successfully isolated from pornography as a minor. From that, we can conclude that the overwhelming majority of children aren't actually harmed by porn. Quite the contrary, instilling the idea in them that seeking pornography is somehow sinful or disobedient is quite harmful on multiple levels. But I digress...

    The fact that fucking everyone has seen porn before their 18th birthday --without harm-- demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of kids don't actually need the tools. You see parents not using the tools as not knowing they exist or how to use them; I see parents trusting their kids. I see parents feigning ignorance of such tools in order to keep puritanical nitwits off our backs.

    The most common way for parents to try to protect children is prohibition…and we know that prohibition puts kids more at risk. This isn’t an edge case…this is well meaning parents putting their children in danger because they don’t understand the realities of danger. Again…draconian prohibition is currently the most common strategy - that’s what I’m talking about. These parents most often the same parents who want to restrict sex education in schools, by the way.

    No, that puts fewer kids at risk. Only the kids of those draconian parents are put at risk by those prohibitions. Age verification expands that to every kid. You've got the test backwards.

    While those draconian parents are putting their kids at risk, their normal peers are inoculating them with sanity. Expand their insane bullshit to the rest of society, and that sanity is replaced with puritanical dogma.

    You’re creating this straw man scenario where children are broadcasting their age publicly…that’s not really a thing.

    Read the California law. That is a thing, effective January 1st, 2027. There are provisions against requiring data for other purposes or giving it to third parties, but those provisions require first-party groomers to have their webservers collect that data on every page load.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • This notion that somehow groomers are neutralized

    No. I never suggested that. My argument is that using age verification makes it easier for groomers. That is a harm that arises from age verification. The harm to children from age verification greatly exceeds the benefit to children.

    Well, we can protect them as societies and villages and we do.

    Correct. And I described how we can do that: By providing parents with the means to do it. Not pornographers. Not groomers. Not society in general. Providing these means to anyone except the parents is an unacceptable invasion into the privacy. Even to the parents, these measure deprive the child of a certain degree of privacy, but children have no broad expectation of privacy from their parents. It's OK for parents to invade their child's privacy; it is not OK for anyone else.

    Putting it all on the parents

    I'm not "putting" it on the parents: It's already on the parents. That responsibility should stay with the parents, because nobody else is qualified to wield it. Pornographers, groomers, politicians, and you will not invade the privacy of my children, and I should not be empowered to invade your child's privacy either.

    just means that a small portion of rich and savvy parents will be able to “protect” their kids, usually with draconian practices that put kids far more at risk.

    A small portion of parents use draconian practices that put far more kids at risk? What the hell are you even talking about?

    No, here in reality we should continue to institute and advocate for effective measures.

    Age verification is not an "effective measure". The only person who needs to know the user's age is the parents.

    With "age verification", we are supposed to place our trust in the pornographer and the groomer. Most of them aren't even in the same legal jurisdiction and are immune to criminal prosecution or civil judgment. Yet, we are supposed to grant them the power to invade our childrens' privacy, as well as our own. That is by no means an "effective" measure.

    An effective measure would be creating a free, publicly available blacklist of adult content, and any number of free apps to implement that blacklist to block content on the child's device. Which we already have. Hundreds of them. They are extremely effective at protecting children, without invading their privacy or enabling grooming.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • We can do all of the above.

    No, we cannot. At a societal level, we can't do any of it.

    Protecting a child from content on the internet requires a massive invasion of the child's privacy. That degree of privacy invasion should not be granted to society in general. It should not be granted to the operators of a pornography site. It should certainly not be granted to the groomers.

    The only place where that degree of privacy invasion is reasonable and acceptable is between parent and child. If you want to protect the children, you give parents the tools to regulate content. You don't provide those privacy-invading tools to the content providers and you certainly don't expect them to take a parental role over your kids, let alone your neighbors and yourself.

  • Trump threatens to deploy ICE agents to airports Monday if funding deal isn’t reached

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  • 25th requires a 2/3 vote in Congress, so unless he is in a coma, it's not happening before the next Congressional term starts in January.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • The question isn't whether having access to hardcore porn is harmful. The question is the relative degree of harm.

    When a web service can reliably distinguish between adult and child, it can specifically target content to either. Netflix can provide age-appropriate content to its users. That's great.

    Groomers can specifically target members of their desired audience. That's not so great. That's bad. That's really, really bad. That's much worse than kids finding hardcore pornography. And that degree of targeting is only possible with widespread age verification laws.

  • Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy?

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  • No.

    Basically, as soon as a web service knows your age, they can tailor their content specifically for you. That's great when the service is Netflix and doesn't want to suggest R-rated movies to pre-teens.

    That's not quite so great when the "service" is KidGroomer dot com.

    Turns out that having machines automatically report the ages of their users is not such a good idea. Turns out that enabling groomers to identify children from adults is a fair bit worse than kids finding naked people on the internet.

  • Chief Justice John Roberts says that hostility toward judges has ‘got to stop’

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  • Hostility from judges needs to fucking start.

    The judiciary has the power to deputize individuals to enforce its orders. It needs to fucking start.

  • Three-Time Trump Voter Goes Off About Gas Prices and ‘Worthless Pile of Sh*t’ Trump: ‘Apparently, I’m An Idiot!’

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  • After about the third "You're Fired", I never wanted to hear anything from that asshole ever again.

  • Why is checking age at os-level that bad?

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  • Parents, schools, employers, and governments, already use content controls to restrict users from accessing undesirable sites and services on the internet.

    Searching the terms "content blocking" or "parental controls" will get you lists of apps and services doing just that.

    Parents already have the capability. This law doesn't provide any additional capability for parents to parent their kids. This law seeks, instead, to remove the power and responsibility of parenting from the parents, and assign it to pornographers. They want the operators of adult websites around the world to be the ones determining whether or not to provide content to their kids.

    What this law actually does is provide a means for a website to determine whether an adult or a child is trying to access their content, and to use that information to decide what content to provide. The thinking is that a respectable services like Netflix will be able to decide to provide only age-appropriate content, blocking kids from adult content.

    However, that also means that services like "KidGroomer dot com" will be able to provide different content to adults than it does to children. To an adult, they can portray themselves as a site that provides information on how to protect kids from grooming. But when a kid visits, this law lets the site know it is a kid. The site can now show them kid-targeted content, like how to get in contact with the nearest candy-giving stranger.

    Perhaps we don't actually want a website to be able to determine whether there is a kid on the other side of the screen.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • The UK uses single phase to the house. This is provided via one 240v hot and a neutral. Their final distribution transformer bonds one side of the output coil to ground and use it as a neutral, which makes the other side of the coil 240v relative to that ground.

    The US uses split phase to the house. This is 240v provided via two opposing 120v hots and a common neutral. Their final distribution transformer is almost identical to the UK version: end to end, they have a 240v output. The difference is that instead of bonding one end of the output coil to ground and using it as a neutral for the other end, they instead bond the center of the output coil to ground and use that as a common neutral for both ends.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • Not just solar - most grid-scale generators have this problem. "Black start" is the search term you want to look for, and Practical Engineering has a good video on the subject.

    Basically, only a relative few grid generators are actually capable of black starts. The rest need the grid to be already functioning before they can tie in and start producing.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • Ohio does something like that. We have separate contracts with a heavily regulated grid operator for distributing power, and our choice of generation companies for providing power.

    The grid operator does our metering and billing, but forwards our generation charge to the provider we select.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • Are you saying that electrical power should only be provided by government entities?

    Should you be allowed to plug in a solar panel and provide power back to the grid?

    Are you a government entity?

    If you think you should be allowed to backfeed your own meter, you are calling for the grid to be operated as some sort of market. A regulated market, sure. But a market nonetheless.

  • Easy-to-use solar panels are coming, but utilities are trying to delay them

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  • The "natural monopoly" of electrical power is only on the distribution, not the generation of that power. It is reasonable for various generators to compete against each other to meet grid demand.

    You should be able to push power back onto the grid. You should not be limited only to taking it off the grid. If you can put more on than you remove, you should be compensated for your generation at the market rate.

  • Why is checking age at os-level that bad?

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  • There is a difference between providing the capability, and requiring that capability.

    Under this law, something as simple as sharing a Google Drive could make you an "app store" and potentially liable for penalties.

    These laws are specifically designed to be broadly interpreted. We have no idea just how widely the nets will be cast, either tomorrow, or 10 years from now. It is prudent to assume the absolute worst case.

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • I agree with everything except "misunderstand". We're completely on the same page.

    They think that this is what "work" is, so their expectation is that this is what "workers" experience. They see no need or value in retirement. They don't realize that they were already living as a retiree before they started campaigning.

  • A Disturbing Clue Suggests Amelia Earhart Survived Her Crash. And Then She Was Eaten by Crabs.

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  • I saw that documentary.