The last thing we need is to force everyone to have ID to “protect the children” before I can go on to a site on the internet.
Registration and access maintained at the county level or smaller so that community standards and relationships shape adoption and use.
Low age cutoff with actual adults trying to connect put in jail and on a list.
Bars do it by having you show an id.
Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id.
Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id.
How does Florida expect a site to do it?
This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?
Parental control software picks up on that. [1]
Social media could do the same thing: make a social media adults-only meta tag for parental control software to use.
For the parents that care, and use parental control software, the ID laws won't stop their kids running into porn. The porn their kids are going to encounter is going to be on non-porn sites like twitter or reddit (or small sites that don't care about these laws anyway).
Maybe we needed a bigger push for more awareness or better parental control software but the ID law push is weird and unamerican to me.
That's client side. This law specifically makes this a server-side issue; the service cannot let a minor make an account.
How do you do that without ID?
I'm a parent I have parent controls setup on my child's devices but it's very hard to dial it in properly and cover all the bases. It should be far more straight forward to manage than it is now.
I'm obviously pretty tech savvy and I would say 99% of parents are not going to get this right.
Microsoft's parental controls are sort of ok. I also have separate control software for Windows and I have controls at the router. Of course, none of things can talk to each other to create a coordinated plan (say giving X number of screen time hours per day).
Besides the easiest way to know what you kid is doing online is to watch them -- much easier to do if I control when they use it.
I do disagree that a technical solution could have avoided laws like Texas. It’s not about “protecting the children”. It’s never about the children. It’s just censorship. It’s just easier to go after a porn site than it is a library.
Get informed.
I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25.
Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you were in a bar. Don't want to? Don't maintain a social media account. Don't have that drink.
The alternative is setting up a government-maintained 0Auth-style hand-off. They know who you are. The social media site could open a verification ticket, you authenticate with your government and they sign your ticket without the social media site getting any of your details. The trade-off with that is cost and your government now knows you're on TikTok. For some people that last one matters.
If you paired these laws with strong PII protection (see GDPR) to stop social media sites storing this stuff indefinitely, using your data against you, it might be an easier sell.
You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan.
I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.
They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too.
My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo.
But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.
Do you have another method to prove age? One that doesn't require ID, and can be implemented as of today?
Emphasis mine. It's that that which I'm disputing.
This law does not require you to have an account to go onto a website. It is a law that requires you are age-checked to hold an account on social media platforms. These are different things.
Holding an account —broadly speaking— allows you to post, like, comment, follow and be profiled in an enduring fashion. Some of these can have life-long implications that 12 year olds aren't equipped to evaluate. How many adults can identify unhealthy social media usage and do something to stop it?
I don't know how age verification will work in practice. Checking a government ID is one way but if you're handing that off to a third party service, it's expensive. They don't need to know who you are for certain. A similar check is when you buy alcohol. If you look young, you're asked for ID.
When I buy alcohol, I'm not because I look like a man with kids nearing his forties. It would be far cheaper for Facebook to have an AI watch a video of you speaking to camera, with ID as a fallback. Many social media platforms are ingesting gigabytes of our faces every day so. They probably already know the rough ages of their users.
But going on a website (eg Youtube) doesn't require you have a profile. Going on Facebook business pages doesn't require it. If anything, laws like this might mean that things like Instagram have to be more open to preserve their reach. Not a bad outcome, IMO.
And is AI the new blockchain that will magically solve every problem? And most children over 14 don’t have government IDs either.
If you don’t want your kids to be on Facebook, use parental controls. It’s the parents responsibility.
I live in Florida for context. The same government officials talk out of the left side of their mouths about “parental choice” and now this law says children can’t be on social media even with parental consent.
You don't know how much their child is being affected by platforms that have been designed to be addictive, that go out of their way to spur conflict and argument (sorry, "engagement"), and that have so few parental controls that it's near impossible for a parent to actually vet what's going on, who's interacting with them.
You're not even allowed to give your kids alcohol. There's clearly some precedence for protecting kids from their parents' inability to make informed choices.
And ML models for detecting age have existed for a long time. It's not magic unicorn dust. It's just one way to avoid this ID stuff that everybody is upset about.
But would you be okay if I used that same argument about why open computing platforms are bad because adults don’t know enough about computers to avoid malware and ransomware?
There have been cases where the cops arrested someone for criticizing them on Facebook
https://theconversation.com/mocking-the-police-got-an-ohio-m...
The cops also raided a newspaper for criticizing them
https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/12/in-marion-county-news...
We have to be free to criticize the government anonymously
For reference: https://flsenate.gov/session/bill/2024/3/billtext/er/pdf
The Texas porn law similarly required no records be retained, with pretty steep penalties ($10k per record) for noncompliance.
And I should have to do that as a 50 year old guy with grown kids for “the children”?
How about if parents are concerned about their kids, they should use the parental controls that are already available.
And this isn’t theoretical for me. I live in Florida.