Ah yes, the most pressing issue of our times. Mandatory surveillance of every person's activities is a reasonable solution to the critical issue of teenagers watching porn, who totally won't be able to bypass this by... grabbing Dad's phone.
Obviously, it's not about the children. It was never about the children. If I had my way every one of these people would be taken to a gulag, because they are evil, have evil intentions, and blatantly lie to further their evil goals. I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated, and by allowing this to fester we are headed for a much worse totalitarian dystopia.
All accounts and that are important to kids have are being tied to their real identity and they won’t be able to get a new one if they’re banned. The potential for social engineering is insane.
All of these ID laws are going to make it more dangerous for kids online IMO.
“Hi I’m a Roblox moderator. Your account was reported for X and you’ve been temp banned. Come to platform Y to appeal. Start by submitting all your personal info and a selfie.”
And it’ll be completely normalized by big tech. Seriously. WTF are they thinking?
First, I should say that I am against online age identification. But if we are going to get age verification because the larger population wants it, I definitely prefer the EU's privacy-preserving age verification that uses zero knowledge proofs (yes, they have issues too) over private companies doing age verification, requiring uploading scans of your ID, filming your face, etc. For the reasons that you mention (people can easily be tricked into giving information to the wrong people), but also because I simply do not want my data to be in the hands of random private companies that will sell the data, give it to Palantir, etc.
That makes this fight so annoying, we have to fight age identification, while at the same time also promoting privacy-preserving age verification for the case it happens anyway.
I think this is folly. You cannot communicate this level of nuance at scale, especially when faced with opposition that actively lies to achieve their goals.
Quoting an older post...
> In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves via parental controls. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. That level of nuance is far too much to ask of millions of people who are not technically-informed, and idealism needs to give way to pragmatism if we wish to avoid the worst-case scenario.
In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses
I do not (completely) agree with this. This seems like the very typical US-centric view of politics. A lot of members of the European Parliament are not corporate puppets and have ideals (even if they often do not align with mine). Why would the EU come with a ZKP-based verification reference app if they were sock puppets? The corporate sock-puppet politician would just push the narrative that age verification should be left to the market (which is probably what happens in the US, where most politicians are sock-puppets due campaign sponsoring, etc.).
You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements.
We do not have to convince the population. We have to convince regulators and if it becomes necessary the EU/national-level courts that handle human rights violations.
Also, in the case of the EU, they made a reference implementation of ZKP age verification and asked national governments to roll this out in their apps. One of the large issues though is that the reference implementation relies on Google Play Integrity for device attestation (+ the iOS counterpart), so if national software development agencies use the reference implementation as-is, it shuts out competing systems. They should have used AOSP device attestation, which is also supported by GrapheneOS, etc. So, besides protesting age verification, I'm trying to get the message to politicians that how device attestation is done in the reference implementation is an issue. The thing that might help here is that sovereignty is also high on the agenda.
> We do not have to convince the population. We have to convince regulators and if it becomes necessary the EU/national-level courts that handle human rights violations.
Without the population on your side, it's some insignificant minority's words vs. corporation's power determining where the lines get drawn by regulators. The people can put a leash on politicians who cave too hard to corporations by voting them out of office, but if they don't even understand the issue and have been conditioned to accept age verification, that will never happen.
> One of the large issues though is that the reference implementation relies on Google Play Integrity for device attestation (+ the iOS counterpart)
I am confused as to why you suggest my view is US-centric, and then go on to acknowledge that the EU is currently in the midst of rolling out regulation that de facto enshrines the Google+Apple duopoly in law. The EU bureacracy seems to be just as captured by corporate interests as the US. At times, they put up a token protest against Apple/Google, but generally only insofar as to promote competing European corporate interests where applicable. The EU would certainly prefer to serve European corporations over American ones, but the European people don't seem to factor into the equation at any point.
the EU is currently in the midst of rolling out regulation that de facto enshrines the Google+Apple duopoly in law
It isn't, it's not enshrined in law, de facto does a lot of work here. IANAL, but I'm pretty sure such a requirement will not hold up in court either. Besides that, the developers of the reference app have stated that national apps do not have to require strong integrity from Google Play Integrity. It seems like they took the standard platform path either because they did not have time the time or knowledge to do anything else.
At any rate, I'm optimistic that it won't require passing strong integrity in my country. Age verification will be added to our national ID app (DigiD), which does not require passing strong integrity, even if it is used for more security-critical applications than age attestation.
>They should have used AOSP device attestation
No, they shouldn't have used any attestation. If they are using sound cryptosystem for their ZKPs, they don't need to care at all about what hardware and software I'm using.
>In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses
Conspiratorial gibberish
Are you seriously blind? Do you genuinely believe politicians don't legislate in ways that benefit corporations over individuals? Or do you genuinely believe the sudden worldwide push across dozens of countries to surveil all internet access, prevent VPN usage, and lock down devices at the OS level is the result of an organic, grassroots desire to protect children no matter the cost?
Politicians do things that are likely to get them reelected, e.g, passing legislation that is broadly supported by their voters. Passing legislation that their constituents do not like will not increase the chances of them getting reelected.
If you could link a piece of legislation that has little support among voters, but was passed due to corporate money, I would be interested.
> cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses
Politicians lie to voters to get them to accept things they would otherwise not accept. That was literally central to the entire comment you were replying to. "But the children" and "But national security" are essentially a free pass to enact any legislation a dishonest politician wants with support from a population that cannot stay fully informed on the nuances of the incredibly complex modern world.
> If you could link a piece of legislation that has little support among voters, but was passed due to corporate money, I would be interested.
I feel like I could gesture broadly at everything. As noted, people will support something when lied to, but even without public support it's obvious that this happens. Off the top of my head, Trump's corporate tax cuts in 2017 might be one of the most clearcut examples of something that benefitted corporations over individuals, was lobbied for by corporations, and was high profile enough to have public polling while being so blatantly unjustifiable that said polling demonstrated the public was clearly against it.
>Off the top of my head, Trump's corporate tax cuts in 2017 might be one of the most clearcut examples of something that benefitted corporations over individuals, was lobbied for by corporations, and was high profile enough to have public polling while being so blatantly unjustifiable that said polling demonstrated the public was clearly against it.
The 2017 tax cut law was extremely popular among republican voters, so I think that goes towards what I am saying.
I suppose that was a bad example because Republican voters don't have a single policy they stand by, only party loyalty. eg. Republican voters were staunchly opposed to war in Iran until Trump did it and then support skyrocketed.
I agree that the US is in a strange place currently. The cult of personality Trump has hopefully goes away with him.
> grabbing Dad's phone
That will only very rarely happen. Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn? For more than one minute? People are so addicted to their phones.
> it's not about the children
It's also about the children, but there surely are parties which use the process to further their own goals.
> I am tired of the intolerant being tolerated
That's not the right quote for this case.
> Do you actually know people that will just give you their phone so you can watch porn?
They don't ask for it, they take it when you're busy or sleeping. Teens certainly weren't asking for Dad's VHS tapes or magazines when I was a kid. I suppose this problem is solveable, too, though. Mandatory biometric locks on every device capable of accessing the internet, why not?
> That's not the right quote for this case.
It is. These people are fascists. Their goal is to create a society where the government has a permanent record of everything every person is doing, monitored 24/7 so nobody can defy it. The point about tolerating intolerance is that by abiding such people, you allow them to create an intolerant society, thus it is prudent even in a tolerant society to be intolerant specifically towards those whose goal is intolerance.
> they take it when you're busy or sleeping
That will be quite noticeable. And tricky if it's face or fingerprint locked, something I see in all phones around me are. Daddy likes his privacy too.
For the rest: rant on, but it'll only reduce your audience. One thing we can learn from history: calling people fascists doesn't work.
One thing we can learn from history: tolerating fascists really, really doesn't work.
If it's not clear, the point of calling fascism what it is, is not to convince the people who are being called fascists of anything. They cannot be convinced of anything, because they are fascists. The point is to highlight, to people who are already amenable but complacent, that a greater sense of urgency is needed. Our societies are currently sleepwalking into a dystopia that will make the Gestapo and KGB look like child's play. There will be no revolution, no liberation, no resistance if our governments are allowed the degree of control they're seeking. Once complete surveillance is established, communications are controlled, and freedom ceases to exist, it will be lost permanently this time.
By your logic, my kids are going to find a way to smoke weed anyway so I might as well give them some, right?
Can you not be disingenuous beyond belief? That is not even remotely close to what I said. What I take issue with is that the solution is worse than the problem (and does not even solve the problem). We can solve all problems of society if we lock everyone in an isolated prison cell 24/7 except under strict supervision when working or studying. That, obviously, is a fucking insane idea. Yet it is what we are creeping towards when you defend government surveillance of every person's device usage. A solution to a problem should not be 100x worse than the problem it allegedly solves, and this is doubly true when it doesn't even solve the problem.
Obviously, not all solutions have to be 100% solutions to problems. Indeed such solutions very rarely exist in the real world. But they do need to be less of a problem than the original problem, and the more invasive they are, the more you'd better expect they solve a serious problem as comprehensively as possible rather than barely addressing a trivial problem.
Your children would certainly cherish and respect you for it.
Many such cases, in fact! Which you of course don't know about. Because anti-prohibitionist narratives don't cause Number to Go Up.
What's safer: if you were to provide them with secure access to a substance that is risky only when used irresponsibly - or if they had to acquire it illegally off the street, and were to consume it in some sketchy environs away from your oversight?
On the other hand, setting boundaries meant to be crossed - such as a restriction on substance use that "they will violate anyway" - is parental betrayal, and risks bricking your child.
Also many such cases! Which you also "don't know" about. Because you prefer to consider unhappy people less-than-human, and parents are only happy to sweep their failures under the rug. Even if it means giving their child to the torturers.
From one sentence you wrote "as if it's obvious", I can see that your sense of ownership over your progeny trumps your concern for your children's safety.
A lot of resources go into subsidizing your unsustainable lifestyle, which you yourself only tolerate thanks to constantly impairing your cognition but perfectly legally.
Similarly, a lot of resources go into silencing and/or exterminating people like me; yet, last time I checked I was still kicking and spitting.
Both of these economic dynamics, ultimately, serve to perpetuate a multigenerational Ponzi scheme which treats humans as property. Notice people getting into debt younger and younger? Yeah, that.