Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akersten | Hacker News Reader

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I'm baffled by the general lack of absolute outrage around these recent bills requiring government issued ID to use the internet. Most of the comments here are discussing irrelevant nuances like "oh, well it seems to only apply to platforms above a certain size," while ignoring the atrocity that these bills represent for the freedoms and privacy that we've all taken for granted up until now.

Get your bloody hands off my internet was a common bond hackers shared when I was growing up and using this allegedly dangerous thing at the ripe age of 10. Did enough of us become disengaged parents who want the government to sanitize a beautiful sea of expression because we're too lazy to teach our kids about it? Do we not see the path that bills like this lead us down? I fear that the golden age of information is waning.

My only hope is that this kind of nonsense doesn't spread outside of the flyover states, where it might have an actual chance at needing to be implemented.

I'm just so angry and disappointed that no one is fighting this as hard as we should be. "Think of the children" is such a cheap parlor trick.

The cookie consent law followed a similar path: A lot of people saw the proposals and assumed it would only hurt the websites they didn’t like. Then the laws passed and now almost every website you visit comes with an annoying cookie pop-up.

I’m baffled by all the HN comments from people who think this will only apply to websites they don’t use. No, it’s going to become a miserable burden on the entire internet if it happens.

A remarkable number of commenters haven’t stopped to think about how all of these websites will only apply the laws to minors: The answer is that they’ll have to ID everyone. Either that, or it becomes a silly checkbox for kids to say that they’re over 18.

Can't sign up without a credit card, credit cards are issued to folks 18 and over. This is how they've done it up until this point (with little success). Making a "know your user" law like banking, no one will want to deal with the hassle and so only corporations (with big pockets to spend on this kind of Deloitte BS) will be able to compete on the internet.

It's a travesty.

>credit cards are [exclusively] issued to folks 18 and over.

This is not 100% true.

A child can have a credit card as long as they have an adult co-signer. A child can also be an authorized user on an adult's credit account and be issued their own card.

I didn't have a credit card myself as a child, but I DO know a few people who did.

Credit cards can be given to 13 and above. I don’t believe there is an age tied the specific account number.

Hence the “little success” part.

Unless you’re parents co-sign for you in order to start your credit history early.

Instead of “comes with an annoying cookie pop up”, please consider that the reason every website has this is that every website is installing persistent advertising trackers.

Pointing at kids is incredibly effective tool, no wonder it's utilized so often.

There is already growing momentum outside of flyover states and outside of social media, gaming platforms now are encouraged quite heavily to implement severe age verification systems, out of fear of being sued or having to deal with COPPA issues. Further, people will likely embrace any bills that encourage a standardized "encrypted" government ID system as being preferable to various platforms insecurely trying to get parents to submit identification documents. Meta has already announced testing of an age verification system in front of congress.

So your hope in that regard might already be smothered. I believe at this point there needs to be greater public awareness of what's happening, otherwise every time this is going to come up people are going to embrace it naively.

I also started using the Internet when I was around 10, in the mid-90s

I suspect Generative AI will accelerate the transition to real ID

There’s a new impetus to be able to tell who is real from who is not online

Younger me would probably be angry and disappointed at how I have all but accepted that it’s going to happen one way or another

Does real ID have some online component? I don’t follow the connection with real ID and generative AI.

making faking identity proofs harder to fake?

Also nobody has thought about what the implementation will mean. I was 12 when COPPA went into effect and all the companies just deleted all my accounts: Email account, hosting, chat accounts, etc. It was easier than dealing with the logistics of getting parental permission (which I could have gotten, I started programming when I was 5 and both my parents were hacker types; I was supervised just fine). Which is that they're going to take the easy way out and a lot of people are going to get hit in the crossfire.

Also interesting that 'think of the children' always only means the stupid, unsupervised children. Children growing up with technologically literate adults who can actually parent and whose parents might want them to be exposed to things can just screw off, we guess. So can those parents' rights. "Well, we don't know how to do it, so you're not allowed to raise your children this way/let them use these things."

> I was 12 when COPPA went into effect and all the companies just deleted all my accounts: Email account, hosting, chat accounts, etc. It was easier than dealing with the logistics of getting parental permission.

COPPA doesn't just require permission under 13, it imposes kinds of other requirements and prohibiting users under 13 is a way of avoiding thosr requirements.

The revenue restriction might limit the damage. If the law only applies to high-revenue sites, they probably have the resources to implement a parental check. If the law applies to all sites, most will implement the much simpler ban.

We require government ID for people to buy alcohol, because we don’t want children doing it. How is this any different?

I agree this law is ridiculous, though.

This is different specifically because many people do not want to prohibit their children from accessing online content or a government and GateKeeper.

For one, the scope is much more massive. One surrounds a single beverage category, the other basically every online communication platform. If the world wasn't more and more online, I could maybe consider the scope acceptable.

Another is how much it messes up the user flow. Buying alcohol? Hand over a plastic card to a cashier for a few seconds. Accessing a new website you want to try out? Scan your driver's license, upload to this random site, have it likely go through some black box algorithm that you hopefully don't get falsely flagged with no human response, and you're good. And that's the good flow. I don't want to imagine the headache of manual checking for every site.

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