EFF launches Age Verification Hub

As much as you (and I as well) don't want age verification to involve discussion about kids' access to content because we're more concerned about the surveillance push riding the popularity of that, repeating "it isn't about kids" loudly 3 times doesn't make the (extremely large) group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear.

Telling that larger group their interest just isn't part of the conversation at all excludes _you_ from the conversation rather than changing the focus of the conversation to the other downsides instead of the primary interest others might have.

There are also, concerningly IMO, an extremely large amount of people willing to accept severe surveillance or privacy downsides so long as it helps achieve the goal about kids. To them, the same would in reverse would be "why are you talking about surveillance, the real issue is the kids. Say it 3 times loud, for those in the back!" and the conversation gets nowhere because it's just people saying how they won't talk to anyone who disagrees what concerns should be considered.

I'm sure those people exist, I just never happen to see anything they write online nor meet any of them in real life.

For the folks in the back row:

Age Verification is about Kids and Censorship: to track them and censor them

Age Verification is about Kids: giving it to companies who will keep it as safe as they've kept your identity, email, and other information.

Age Verification is about Kids and Censorship: taking control from you and giving it to corporations and government.

Age Verification is about Kids and Censorship: to keep them on their platforms so they can profit from them

Age Verification isn't just about Kids: it's also about tracking you

I don't know why we want to put children's data online. I don't want cameras in the kids rooms to verify their face, that camera will be used by others. That camera will be used to do the very thing they claim it is to protect against. I don't want the kids online, easily meeting with pedos, pretending to be kids or otherwise. I don't want kids data online for those people to use it to harm them. I don't want kid's data being leaked and exposed forever. To create lasting damage that will follow then the rest of their lives.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The devil uses this to fool you. Seriously, y'all gonna trust your kids' data with the people in the Epstein list? Why would you let a fox guard the chicken coop?

We're all in bubbles. But it's good to expand them when you recognize you're in one.

"group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear."

Parents need to parent then, but the amount that will are still larger than the people who want mass surveillance because they can't be arsed to raise their kids.

If they are too lazy to raise their kids, they don't have the energy to push the nanny state forward.

And the Internet also consists in large part of bots talking to bots. This is not to say that some people won't always promulgate the "Won't somebody please think of the children?" argument every time an expansion of the surveillance state apparatus is in question, but rather to say that we should not take for granted that every bad opinion we see online is one deeply held by any real people.

And now compare this comment with another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228900) I got in yet another "let's save children from the Internet" thread:

> Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion.

> "Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral panics fuelled by this phrase).

> I'm not sure a blanket under-16s ban on all social media is the right answer, but there are really good reasons why people support this that you need to engage with to have a useful discussion here.

So basically for everyone even with modest pattern recognition abilities the template used here should be crystal clear, which goes along the lines of

- I'm kinda with you (even though you are stupid and emotion-driven);

- But your point is totally invalid because you should be humiliated by the sheer number of your opponents, which renders you small and negligible;

- Your opponents have very good reasons to support any fascism that is able to address their reaction to prefabricated problems with prefabricated solutions, and you've got to support that too if you want to be heard.

I'm pretty sure these threads are chock full of shills, because one can't rob people of freedom without significant narraive steering efforts.

> There are also, concerningly IMO, an extremely large amount of people willing to accept severe surveillance or privacy downsides so long as it helps achieve the goal about kids.

I’m alive. Nice to meet you.

I “accept severe surveillance”, not in the sense that I agree with it, but because I know that it already exists and has existed and that people that are against it are screaming into the wind. Many large and small countries have long histories of surveillance.

It’s not that you shouldn’t try to enforce privacy, in fact, the law requires it if you in some cases, and it’s a good idea in others.

I’m certainly not against the EFF standing up for the rights of everyone not to be severely surveilled.

But, realistically, the public cannot easily anonymize our activity and data. And if you try to do so, you’re painting yourself as a target.

If you were trying to keep your country safe, wouldn’t you like the ability to infiltrate any major cloud, SaaS app, social media platform, bank, government, VPN/internal network, and OS?

Similarly, if you were a big data or security company wouldn’t you also do everything you could to know everything it is to know about a person if you had the means and time and it made sense for your business?

Following, if you were to have that power as a government, business, or other organization, wouldn’t it be critical to ensure that you restricted its use to ensure it wasn’t abused to the point that you’d lose it, even though the reality would be that you probably don’t have time to keep it as safe as you need to?

I “accept severe surveillance” not because I promote it or want it, but because I understand how the world works and what it does.

All these things will pass. If you have the focus and the mental capacity to do what is good, then do it. It likely helped the world in some way to learn about KGB wiretaps. But, in the U.S., as far as I can tell, the backlash against the CIA and NSA was just used for political gain and then to replace those that didn’t agree with the current administration. Was that helpful? And who are we really being manipulated by when we attack ourselves and install destabilizing leaders?

How about the majority of the recent thread about the Australian social media ban?

BTW the Australian law says it's illegal for a platform to require government ID for age verification.

Parenting is, and always has been, a collective responsibility. We made it illegal to sell alcohol to kids, instead of just complaining that parents weren't teaching them not to drink it.

Write to your legislators/representatives.

Honestly, it is the only thing that you can do, apart from voting and talking to people in your near environment.

Is it a good solution, and always likely to work? No, absolutely not.

But is a hell of a lot better than doing nothing or sharing social media posts, which is frankly as effective as screaming into your pillow at home.

This is a fairly defeatist approach to the issue (read that as a statement of fact, not an accusation or argument). The problem with taking this stance, for many people, is that you’re giving a mouse a cookie, except the cookie is marginally more and more control over your life in the form of the ability to control what you see, what communities you’re allowed to engage with, and what you’re allowed to do online.

This battle for online privacy and control is just that, a battle, and you are correct that it is not a fair fight. But engaging and pushing back, through advocacy, speaking out, and acts of noncompliance does three things:

First, it slows the progress of these measures and thus limits the amount of control over our lives we give up, hopefully until some more politically friendly people come to power.

Second, it provides a barometer (via its effectiveness) for assessing the state of that fight, and how dire it is becoming.

Finally, people voicing their concerns about these laws gives information that helps inform more powerful and potentially altruistic advocates with more resources (such as the EFF) in how those resources should be allocated.

Maybe those aren’t good reasons for you, and that’s okay. Lots of people just want to browse twitter and see sports scores and they don’t really care if they have to show ID to do that. For anybody else reading this though, there are lots of reasons why your involvement and engagement in this issue should not stop with “that’s just how the world works”.

This take is really detached from reality, I get down voted for this whenever I ask, but do you have kids? If not sorry, but your opinion means nothing.

We all exist in a society and (as the other comment says) it take society to raise kids. I don't want a society where as a parent I have to fight against shitty parents and the potential immaturity of my kids (they are too young right now thank god) to stop them watching porn as a 11yo or other inappropriate gifts from internet "culture".

Setting some reasonable standards for what content kids should consume provides parents with cover when trying to raise their children well. Its the reason movies have age gates, and strip clubs and many other things not on the internet.

The first comment is a real example of what I was saying about seeing the reverse situation - when it's someone you disagree with it becomes obvious how dangerous it is to say other views/ideas are not supposed to be part of the conversation. zthe other comments are ones I'f personally disagree with, but that's precisely the kind if discourse which needs to be engaged with instead of ignored if one has any concerns around fascism taking hold.

Also, I don't want to give the impression the only path here is to placate the other concerns/interest. That does work very well if you can, but the main point is just avoid this idea declaring anny other ideas out of the conversation because you disagree with them and only want people to talk about what you like. That doesn't help, you want to convince people to see the reasons you do not to ignore them.

If you ever feel there are threads with shills send an email to hn@ycombinator.com. This isn't just some platitude people say here, they've really hopped right on it, triggered action, and got back to be right away every time I've emailed.

Chances of being manipulated and attacking yourselves would diminish quite a bit if those tasked with surveillance wouldn't be blinded by the pursuit of as much data as they can get their hands on. Yes, knowing everything there is to know about a person can be helpful to a point, but if you had the means and time there is literally no business where it makes sense to pre-emptively collect every bit of data on such a single person. To do so in regard to multiple people or more will have a crippling effect on gaining insight and understanding of relevant information. Having a vast knowledge-base is a huge waste of resources when it impairs your capacity to convert what you know into what would be wise. There's really no need to infiltrate anything and everything to know what needs to be known, and it will save a whole lot of distraction and data fatigue.

People eager to have such a vast trove of data at their fingertips lack patience and focus to develop skills to use their access responsibly - having them around is counterproductive and dangerous in any business where intelligence is key.

So, no. I would actually prefer to try and keep my country safe, thus any desire to infiltrate anything, anywhere, anytime would be irrational, and most likely an early warning signalling an onset of dementia, delirium or any similarly debilitating condition. It should certainly exclude me from working with highly sensitive data, unless you are in the business of making my country less safe.

The issue here for me has always been about the difference between treating a symptom and treating the illness.

Excessive surveillance is necessary when you cannot convince people of the merits of your politics or morals on their own and need to use the power of the State to intimidate and control their access.

For the issue on minors, if you have a child (guilty here) you are obligated to actively raise and educate them on the nature of the world. For access to online interactions this doesn’t necessarily only mean active limits (as one might judge appropriate for the child), but also teaching them that people do not always have positive intent, and anonymity leads to lack of consequence, and consequently potentially antisocial behavior.

A person’s exposure to these issues are not limited to interactions online. We are taught to be suspicious of strangers offering candy from the back of panel vans. We are taught to look both ways when entering a roadway.

The people demanding the right to limit what people can say and who they can talk to do so under the guise of protecting children, but these tools are too prone to the potential for abuse. In the market of ideas it’s better (and arguably safer, if not significantly more challenging) to simply outcompete with your own.

Hear, hear! I'll add another:

"Age Verification is about suppressing the 'undesirable' for kids, but also for you". I.e. having to share your personal identity for that taboo (but legal and harmless) sex site (or whatever someone in power might not approve of) sure is going to make you think twice and may even kill many smaller instances withojt making them illegal outright.

It may not sound bad in a single example, but eventually there is something you like that is fine but gets added to the list.

I suppose it depends on how much you bother to see. E.g. the recent discussion on Australia's social media band for teens https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46208348 has ~1500 comments covering every possible angle I had conceived and some positions I'm not sure I would even have been able to imagine myself. Focusing on about the kids is a popular position in threads like that, and one of the top 5 top level comments is even an example of "I care about the kids and don't want to discuss how it should be about these other things".