UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts(bleepingcomputer.com) |
UK to require ID or face scan before you can make social media accounts(bleepingcomputer.com) |
And who's gonna stop them!? They're constantly unpopular, doesn't matter if they're individually voted out when all the party lines follow the same doctrine.
Genuine question, but how does anyone see this all being shut down?
Then it's not a stretch to see the government requiring all good citizens to "check in" with the government every month like someone out on parole.
It would be exactly what they would love and like the frog that slowly boils, I believe they'll get it.
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So all of the legit providers will be required to collect ID, and anyone not willing to will be funnelled onto the sketchy providers; which I'm sure won't backfire at all...
At the moment, it's network effects that are the biggest deterrent to using these technologies -- at the moment I don't want to browse eepsites or .loki domains at the moment although I think the technology is interesting -- because the use cases are "normal" consensual porn, horrific illegal porn / CSAM, illegal drugs, and organised crime, none of which are me. If they manage to drive even 0.1% of the population towards talking about, say, cat pictures, unreal tournament matches (gamer-to-gamer communication is itself banned under these proposals without age verification!), or something that normal nerds would like, then (a) the popularity of these methods would explode; (b) the ability of law enforcement to surveil them as proxies for genuinely bad stuff would be significantly hampered; and (c) I think the net result is that more people would be exposed tangentially at least to criminality than before.
It's a shockingly short-sighted proposal. I wrote to my MP about it; her response was basically "We have a difference of opinion".
I think you have a skewed and inaccurate understanding.
Why would "British muggles" be so up in arms over an ID check that they swear off social media if they can't "circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy"? It's not like everyone has the same attitudes as your stereotypical computer geek, but with less computer skills.
Not if they can make Apple forbid this.
I mean, even in China, Apple users can still use VPN to get around the great firewall. And that's despite the fact that their government already imposed quite a few extra requirements on Apple in terms of iPhones sold in the country + any China-based accounts. I also don't think that any of it really applies to general purpose computers at all there (as opposed to smartphones).
So I don't see VPNs going away with that recent UK requirement. To be clear, I am 100% fully opposed to the ID verification requirement from the UK, for plenty of reasons that were discussed on HN and elsewhere to death by now. My only point is that even if China didn't get to forbid Apple from allowing VPN, I don't see UK succeeding at this either.
P.S. For those curious about what "extra requirements" for Apple look like in China (only listing the directly relevant ones to this discussion, as there are more of them that aren't):
* iCloud is operated by GCBD/AIPO Cloud, a Guizhou-based Chinese cloud operator, rather than directly under Apple’s standard global iCloud entity.
* Apple also moved the relevant iCloud encryption keys into China. This means Chinese authorities can pursue access through Chinese legal procedures without needing to go through US courts or obtain data from US-based servers.
* App Store is much more heavily censored, but that's not really relevant. VPN apps aren't as easily available, but nothing is stopping a person from just connecting to the same VPN providers through the iPhone VPN settings (they just get to type info in a few fields, as opposed to a one-click-app solution).
"But everyone uses their phone all the time!" Yes, and everyone will be worse off for making the obviously worse choice.
Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.
In a trade off between child protection and online freedom child protection will win.
> Ofcom will set out in the coming months different options for effective forms of age assurance for proving whether someone is over 16 that are accurate, robust, reliable, and fair.
The fact sheet doesn't actually specify how age verification will be done so it the title is bit speculative. However, it's concerning that there's nothing in description about preserving privacy.
So, to be clear, I have to tiptoe around cookies but eu-users will simultaneously do this so they can share pictures of their ...
Sure, as with everything, this ban ks circumventable. But more and more I don't see any social utility of these networks at all. It's the cigarettes or our time.
They're not even particularly social any more. Most posting is done by professional influencers and disinformation bots. And criminals, it seems.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-londo...
"To enforce it, platforms must age-check their users. In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they're over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan."
> likely
It could, of course, use a double-anonymous system like the French one.
Probably not, but I'd rather that they didn't state their guess as fact in the title.
Which isn't really anonymous or privacy preserving, despite it's funny name : https://broken-by-design.fr/posts/proto-authz-porn/
It's not beyond the wit of humankind to build a working system.
I hadn't heard of the French double-anonymous system, though. That does sound slightly better.
Token could be signed out-of-band to obscure the interaction between the parties.
Anonymity online is of course a double-edged sword, but we've seen the authorities, particularly but not exclusively, in the UK use intimidating tactics against those with unfavorable political views. Even when those views didn't break the law (e.g. no calls for violence).
If you also look at how nearly all the existing "verification" systems work, it is just a giant data drag-net, that is absolutely used to associate your real-ID with their advertising analytics. It isn't subtle. Which is why "big tech" (e.g. Meta, Google, Palantir) aren't far behind many proposals.
Fully expect pretty much all countries to follow suit though. The "think of the children" angle to force dystopian surveillance is just too neat of a trick to resist. It functionally can't be defeated. No politician is ever going to stand up against it because it risks "oh so you're in favour of harm to children".
The strategy is equal parts brilliant and evil
I will get downvoted by people suspicious of handing over a lot of personal data, but we do have GDPR laws, and they're not getting me to install a proctopod (tm). Giving someone my email address to verify my age is not a big deal. They're getting my email address to create an account anyway.
The practicalities of implementing 'good enough' age verification, where the website can prove that they conformed to an acceptable approach, do not require giving up all or significant freedoms. Maybe we get to something similar to DNS verification where you need to create a dummy TXT record in an already verified account.
At least people will realize that age verification is something everyone will have to do to prove they're >16 - not just something <=16yo's will run into.
> People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.
It would follow from your argument a solution would be to make this normal. A solution to make this normal would be to classify as child abuse to give an under 16 more than short access to a device without parental controls.
This would not be a good law. But it would be less bad.
My take:
These laws exist because _everyone_ not just kids needs to be tracked by real ID. Make no mistake you won't be exempt from this when you have to prove you are over 16. Sure just don't use social media but that's just the first step. Next step will be games (already exist to some extent in China and South Korea) and then who knows what. Mind you sign your git commits and your emails with real ID?
https://www.thegamer.com/online-games-chat-ban-for-children-...
I think we've also seen this in action with playstation, i remember people complaining about it.
I promise you, within a few years there is going to be an underground social media network or sites that are harder to monitor, don't give a shit what the UK government thinks, and definitely don't care about children's safety at all.
They probably already exist.
I want it to not be normal to spend all day on TikTok. If something is illegal and underground then it’s much easier for me as a parent to ban it for my kids
These laws exist because people will believe any nonsense if they see it repeated enough times in news headlines.
"Social media", as presently incarnated, depending on what definition you choose, may be somewhat damaging to some people, including some children. That does not justify ghettoizing all children.
It also doesn't justify creating (yet another) pervasive tracking infrastructure for both children and adults, but that's the part everybody alway harps on. Cutting off teenagers from society as a whole? Nobody's willing to say that's bad.
Well, it's bad. It's especially bad for the ones who are getting the least support at home.
> destroying their attention,
Maybe. Strongest among the claims. Applies to adults, too; there's no sign that adults are one tiny bit more resistant. Best addressed by structural changes to the platforms.
> exposing them to online bullying and extortion,
Occasionally happens. Occasionally happens offline, too. And in online venues that aren't "social media" unless you have an insanely broad definition. One does not lock people in a vault because of that.
> and showing them horrific and traumatic content.
Oh, get a damned grip. You see a picture. Which you probably sought out. It won't kill you. If you're so sensitive that it really gets to you for the long term, your problem is your capacity for "trauma". Something else will "traumatize" you up to whatever that capacity is.
> Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
Restructure the platforms. For everyone.
> In a trade off between child protection and online freedom child protection will win.
Well, yes, when the "tradeoff" is being made by hysterical idiots. Which admittedly is what tends to happen.
Every dad I know who works in tech supports some kind of restriction on social media/smartphones for kids. The argument is how to do it, not whether we should.
Kids do.
Sure if they want to circumvent and go home and use Dad's laptop to cyberbully or send pictures of their wang they probably could ...
And Iran?
Switzerland isn't in the EU, though.
I would like that too, but I genuinely believe these measures are going to make things worse for children, for the reason I explained.
No. You believed it would be effective was the most charitable interpretation.
There will always be people who get round the ban.
If they decided this site was for 16+ or whatever, and there was some privacy-preserving way to prove that, I might consider it. But not by sending them my driver's license.
Whatever happened to steel manning? It's supposed to be in the fabric of HN. Curious enquiry.
Is it nice children are exposed to dreadful things? No. Could we, with tech, come up with a way to improve things? Probably! Let's discuss and think about how!
Smart people could apply their skills and build a genuinely useful technology.
But seems they would rather stick their finger in their ears and pretend that it's not happening. And they will be ignored.
WHen did this learned helplessness become so in vogue?
I suspect that the number of kids using not using an app on a device that is aware of its locality is a rounding error.
Tesco* phones on some network's family plan must be 95th percentile.
(* other high street retailers are available)