Hacker News Reader

Comment by gdprwhat | Hacker News Reader

> It also found that the “family pairing” scheme, which gives an adult control over a child’s account settings, did not check whether the adult “paired” with the child user was a parent or guardian.

How exactly are TikTok meant to be verify parents? Are other tech companies expected to verify parents? It seems like no one else is being fined for this?

View on HN

Instagram was just fined even more for the same thing.

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/05/instagram-gdpr-fine-childr...

1. How do regulators expect tech companies to verify the real age of users (without further intrusions of privacy)?

2. How do the regulators expect tech companies to verify the parents of child users?

3. Do regulators want tech companies to collect every child's birth certificate?

1. How do regulators expect Airlines to verify the real age of users (without further intrusions of privacy)?

2. How do the regulators expect Airline companies to verify the parents of child users?

3. Do regulators want airlines to collect every child's birth certificate?

See how silly this sounds when you compare to any other industry?

Oh but tech is different!

Indeed. I mean, on the one hand, all that tech is indeed different - but on the other hand, it's not the law of physics that it has to exist in a form that makes compliance difficult. A service not existing, or existing in a vastly different form, are options too - options the tech industry doesn't want to talk about.

And FWIW, it's third-generation mobile-first social media platforms we're talking about. It's hard to make a case they're not a huge net negative for society. In any other thread, people would happily agree they shouldn't exist in the current form in the first place.

Airlines check government issued ID against a central database when you fly. This is standard and expected in air travel, and is not in social media.

Use one of the many companies in this space to verify the users ID? Or push some development in this space to find a better way?

Or like, basically anything except pretending it’s not an issue and externalising the cost + issues onto everyone else while you reap fantastic profits?

I would imagine most social media platforms have already aggregated enough data to suss out familial relationships pretty confidently. That’s kinda central to their business model.

In fact, it’s probably more likely these platforms don’t want anyone to know how much they already do know about familial relationships.

This is just the EU finding a way to extract money from them

Reply on news.ycombinator.com