You need to process that other people disagree with that claim, and do not believe we'd be better off.
We should not accept the Overton window shifting here, and say "well, if we do it to ourselves, in a privacy-preserving way, that's less bad".
You need to process that other people disagree with that claim, and do not believe we'd be better off.
We should not accept the Overton window shifting here, and say "well, if we do it to ourselves, in a privacy-preserving way, that's less bad".
It really would be less bad though wouldn't it?
The more we resist turning this into a state-sided solution which provides a service to private companies with a YES/NO age verification, the more likely your data is going to be given to botton-of-the-barrel third party private companies.
I'm genuinely curious what the argument is against state-run privacy focused age verification is here. We already protect real life adult spaces with IDs. You hand your ID to a random store clerk who scans it with a random device when you want to buy alcohol or cigarettes.
What makes these social media platforms special that they have entirely different rules?
I will say, if they came for small privately-hosted communities, I can understand the cause for alarm. But so far it appears to be limited to massive misinformation machines.
> You hand your ID to a random store clerk who scans it with a random device when you want to buy alcohol or cigarettes.
Or, as has always been my experience, gives it a cursory glance without scanning or recording it.
> You need to process that other people disagree with that claim
I think I already said that in my original post.
> We should not accept the Overton window shifting here
Great! Let's say you and I refuse to accept it. How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies? How can we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age restrictions on social media?
You'll never convince a majority of voters in democracies that nothing online should be age-restricted. These are the people that the enemies of anonymity and free speech are counting on to advance their agenda.
At the same time a majority of voters is currently quite content with the state of age verification for access to tobacco and alcohol. Both its strictness (or lack thereof) and privacy preservation (almost perfect).
I'm not saying my proposal is the one that should be adopted. I honestly don't care which idea gets picked and I don't want anything from it. But it's a virtual guarantee that in the absence of a competing good-enough, privacy-preserving implementation, only the most privacy-invasive idea will be implemented.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46776272
2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838417
> How do we keep Discord from demanding passports or selfies?
Build and promote alternatives that don't. Fight the political efforts trying to require it, and identify them as the attempts at control they are.
> How can we get France[1] or Finland[2] to roll back age restrictions on social media?
Host services elsewhere, and ignore claims that a country's laws extend beyond its borders. Support folks trying to fight such efforts politically, where possible.
> Build and promote alternatives that don't.
How well has that worked? Social media and messaging apps have network effects.
> Host services elsewhere, ignore claims that a country's laws extend beyond its borders.
That doesn't help the French or the Finns. Unless they use a VPN. And access the fragmented, lightly-used alternative services from the IPs of the fewer and fewer countries that don't pass such laws.
Your vision leads to a world where the privacy-conscious 1% congregate in echo chambers on Mastodon instances hosted in international waters. Everyone else uploads their passport to FaceSnapTok.
That's not a real solution. It's a cope. That's my opinion and I have no illusions I've changed your mind about anything. I already alluded to that in my original post. Privacy activists think age verification is not a problem that needs to be solved. By maintaining that belief they're ceding ground to bad actors who will "solve" it in a maximally privacy-invading fashion. This will leave the vast majority of internet users worse off.
> Privacy activists think age verification is not a problem that needs to be solved.
Correct. But more importantly, privacy activists understand that the "problem" governments are trying to solve with "age" verification is people having privacy.
This isn't something we can solve with purely technological solutions. It requires political action to defeat the attempted control, and pushing back on every instance of people trying to paint that attempted control as mere "age verification" and other "think of the children" takes.