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.
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.
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.
I don’t want age verification for social media — I’d rather parents, who in 2025 probably grew up with connected devices, 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 and apps can essentially put some boilerplate code in that’s easy to implement and all the sites/apps get back is a yes/no answer. Users only have to go through the process once. It protects privacy way more than giving your info to 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 and presumably would need to be part of every browser/app language but also at least some code for every back-end language to store the data.)
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.
Fuck this
As the age verification technology would forcibly deanonymise all EU users, opening a huge new vein of behavioural surveillance data to the zuckerbots.
Oppression of one group is a skeleton key to everything else
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).
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.
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
I mean yes, the verification service would know about you. But since this is a trusted service, it would be me okay. It doesn’t even have to store the verification result, if you don’t want to
Anything else would be in flagrant violation of the GDPR (and this too, probably, though not as flagrantly).
I thought that’s exactly how the porn age check is going to work
Which of course they wouldn’t do
Yeah… no, they already have access to all that. It’s the good ol’, if it’s gonna happen anyways might as well get behind it and get some good PR.
I’ve been thinking about it and here’s my proposal:
- total ban on hosting/streaming 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?
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.
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.
No. I want freedom, not this BS
No one.
I would be surprised if majority of people couldn’t live without watching kids on youtube but who knows, maybe you’re right.
Most people could live without youtube period. But what the fuck would be the reason to do it?
Even so, the much more ridiculous one to me is the second one.
Most people could live without youtube period. But what the fuck would be the reason to do it?
You don’t know why it would be good to stop exploiting children for clicks and ad revenue? Do you think a 12 yo can consent to live streaming their life for the whole world to watch?
Even so, the much more ridiculous one to me is the second one.
Cell phone bans are now common in schools. More and more research shows phones are bad for development.
https://www.newsweek.com/overcoming-our-denial-about-smartphones-effect-kids-opinion-1926025
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2451958821000622
But you want to give them to kids why exactly?
You don’t know why it would be good to stop exploiting children for clicks and ad revenue? Do you think a 12 yo can consent to live streaming their life for the whole world to watch?
The question is not whether you can find one kind of video/streaming that is exploitative but whether all of them are. Is it exploitative to share video from a spelling bee competition? Is it exploitative to share a school theater video? If not, only ban the things that are.
Whether to give phones to children and how is a parents decision. As for the research, it is the same as above. Clearly these issues did not exist with early smartphones. So it’s not the phones, it something on them. My money is on social media and the “idle” games. Parents have the option to prevent installation of those.
You don’t ban pipes, because they can be used to make pipe-bombs. You ban making pipe-bombs. Your proposals are so broad they would ban way too many things that are ok.
You don’t ban pipes, because they can be used to make pipe-bombs. You ban making pipe-bombs. Your proposals are so broad they would ban way too many things that are ok.
Ok, I see your point. You think that videos or random kids dancing on TikTok or kids you don’t know doing theater are somehow valuable are should be protected. Personally I don’t know who enjoys those videos and I think banning all of them achieves the desired goal without sacrificing anything of value. I thought that only other kids watch those videos and that everything about it is harmful. It basically trains easy to influence kids to fight for internet points, teaches the the wrong values and promotes bullying. You clearly think that having kids on TikToc have some benefits. We’re not going to agree about this.
As for phones, if we have science proving that they are harmful to kids I don’t see how they are different from cigarettes or alcohol. Then again, we let parents fuck up their kids in many different ways so I guess you’re right here and we should leave it to them. Their are free to take care of their children if they want to and we can’t force everyone to be a good parent anyway.
are somehow valuable are should be protected.
No. I believe that what isn’t harmful shouldn’t be banned. You don’t get to decide what is valuable or enjoyable to other people. If it does not harm someone, it should be allowed. We are not robots that are programmed to value things equally. What is insignificant to you can be important to others.
I thought that only other kids watch those videos and that everything about it is harmful. It basically trains easy to influence kids to fight for internet points
You can make this point about almost any entertainment for children. Having pretty clothes. Having fancy toys. Playing videogames. Playing sports.
Parent your children properly if you have any instead of trying to put them into bubble wrap.
That is not to say there are not specific things that are too harmful, but we won’t ban everything because maybe, some of it it could influence kids badly.
As for phones, if we have science proving that they are harmful to kids I don’t see how they are different from cigarettes or alcohol.
Show me research that show a dumb phone only making calls is harmful and I will admit you are right. Otherwise, it is not phones that are harmful, it is something specific on them. I have no issue regulating apps harmful to kids, like lootboxes, idle games, login rewards, etc. But it is not about phones.
And multiplayer games, please, add multiplayer games…
