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Comment by hnlmorg | Hacker News Reader

The issue as I see it isn’t going to be solved by forcing social networks to gather even more personal information about individuals (eg proof of ID and proof of age). The issue is how social networks are engineered, either by chance or by design, to promote negativity in the pursuit of engagement.

If we can find a way to declaw social networks then we’d have a healthier ecosystem for all ages.

But this is a much harder problem to solve.

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I believe the only correct way to solve this is to add an RTA header on sites that permit user-generated content and require the most common devices and browsers to once again recognize this header and instead of just treating it as adult content, also use it for user-generated content. Then put the liability on the parents to lock down devices. Let parents decide which domains/urls to approve-list in the devices.

If a site with user-generated content is missing this header give them a warning, then fine them {n} percentage of their net revenue per day until remediated. After {x} days out of compliance seize their domains.

If a child/parent is having compliance issues on their devices leading to problems, hand it over to social services like they would for any other social/family issue. Social service issues are not tech platform issues.

Using RTA in HTML:

    <meta name="RATING" content="RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA" />

PHP:

    header("Rating: RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA");

Apache:

    Header set Rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"

HAProxy:

    http-response set-header rating "RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA"

NGinx:

    location / { add_header Rating 'RTA-5042-1996-1400-1577-RTA'; }

This would 100% work for techies. I'd put a rule on my router to not allow devices to go here. Woot.

But sadly most people wouldn't know how to use this info. It's the first great idea I've read though.

Great idea in theory but in practice it would be trivial to bypass. You’d just need one cheeky proxy to MITM the connection and you end up in a worse situation than you started (from a security standpoint).

Rather than limiting access, what we really should be doing is limiting the negative harm that social networks can cause. For example YouTube Kids is a vast improvement over regular YouTube with regards to younger audiences.

In general I hope this Bill doesn't pass, because it's extremely poorly written, and based on the list of exceptions and the loose wording, I'm not sure the Bill authors have any idea _how_ any of this should be enforced.

https://www.schatz.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/protecting_kids_...

That's the actual Bill, and it's quite a fast read and in fairly plain language, but it's mostly an empty several pages.

Multiple times the Bill states that it is not to be construed as a requirement for Government ID, but then in Section 7 regarding the pilot program, it mentions these as a reference on how to validate users in the pilot program. No other definitions or examples of "reasonable". In fact, the validation method in Section 3 simply says

> IN GENERAL

> A social media platform shall take

> reasonable steps beyond merely requiring attestation, taking into account existing

> age verification technologies, to verify the age of individuals who are account

> holders on the platform.

That's not a ton of guidance besides Government ID's referenced later on, and leaving it to "reasonable" is really too vague; if a user signs up with a gmail email address, is it enough to assume that because Gmail requires a user to be a certain age that they are validated? Is it Gmail's fault if it turns out the owner of an address misrepresented their name or is it the social media company's fault? How exactly are the Social Media companies supposed to validate this?

More importantly, how is an individual supposed to validate it without giving out more information on themselves or spreading records of their Government Identification to a bunch of sites?

The exceptions list in Section 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C is way too big and you can guess the businesses that the Bill has in mind for each entry. But it's also so loose; if TikTok starts adding in-app purchases for the items in ads you get, is it now exempted under ection 2, Paragraph 6 subsection C item i? After all, it's facilitating transactions now with the algorithm, and logically a guardian has given consent to use the platform if they forked over their card number so their kid can make purchases.

There is so much loose language and intent here when the crux of the bill is hidden under Section 6, which is to tone down the algorithm usage.

I wonder if it really is harder, or maybe the solution is just less obvious?

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