Comment by bengale | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bengale | Hacker News Reader

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Ideological is the best way to describe the reaction by most people on here I think, counterproductive is another one. The reality is most normal people want children protected, unless we can come to the table with good options we are going to end up with a terrible one thrust upon us.

Slippery slope arguments and things like it are not going to convince people, "just parent your kids" is not going to convince people. Not because they're wrong, but because on balance they feel like the damage to children being exposed to this content is worse than the potential civil liberty issues.

It will be very difficult to explain to people why this is not the same as alcohol being age-gated and you having to prove your identity to access it. Technically there should be no real reason we cannot do age attestation without fully revealing our identities anyway, there will need to be trust at some point in the system but the reality of the real world is that there is already and it's far less secure than we'd like.

> there will need to be trust at some point in the system

This is why you don't have a technologically effective solution, here. "Trust" in this situation is a weasel word for surveillance, just like the pinkie promise that Client Side Scanning would never be abused by the government. Trust would not stop child abuse, or meaningfully prevent access to online pornography. Trust is not a technical solution, it's a political goal.

If you have a productive suggestion, now is the time to voice it. All of the non-technical hand wringing is not helpful either, and feeds into the slippery slope logic that HN should be avoiding.

> "Trust" in this situation is a weasel word for surveillance

Is all security a weasel word for surveillance? You answer a valid argument with a meme. It is very unproductive.

How do you suggest to disallow children access to pornography, harmful content, etc? Or are you arguing that any solution is worse than the harm that bad actors in search of money and political gain are doing to children?

> Is all security a weasel word for surveillance?

If the security asks you to "trust them"? Yeah, that's usually pretext for hidden abuse.

When the Wizard of Oz says "pay no attention to the man behind that curtain" then you don't look the other way. Trust is unnecessary in situations where transparency is demanded. Accepting "trust" is equivalent to accepting every single abuse of the technology, up to and including using age verification to facilitate child abuse. Do you really "trust" the internet to use this power for good alone?

> How do you suggest to disallow children access to pornography, harmful content, etc?

Stop leaving them unattended in front of the TV. It worked in the 1980s, it still works with the iPad (gasp! screen time?).

This whole argument reeks of the Catholic moms protesting HBO, desperate to make themselves the victim. Bad parenting is not the TV network's problem. You cannot contort it into a working argument or legitimate ethical quandary. The solitary reason we see age verification pushed so hard is to promote online surveillance. If you want to enrich and entertain your kids without exposing them to topics you consider unsavory, buy them a book instead of an iPad. It's not rocket science.

> It worked in the 1980s

In my country TV has always been regulated. Pornographic movies could only be shown at late hours, there was no data gathering nor targeted ads, and nobody could reach children privately thru TV.

Not all parents have the means and time to be with their children all the time. There is a bare minimum of children safety that we need to guarantee as a society.

Many children grew up watching TV unattended without risk of being sexually harassed or radicalized. And with time children shows became even better and with less ads for toys and so. Regulating TV was great to achieve a better live for everyone.

> reeks of the Catholic moms protesting HBO,

Different country, different culture. You are applying American logic to non-American concerns.

> If you want to enrich and entertain your kids without exposing them to topics you consider unsavory, buy them a book instead of an iPad. It's not rocket science.

That way all responsibility is on the parents while big corporations increase the pressure on children to keep consuming their content. I prefer a world where criminal behavior is punished instead of blaming the victims for not avoiding the danger.

This is what I'm getting at, this is an ideological position. You are of course welcome to hold it, but you will have a way worse solution forced on you by normal people who will not go along with this binary view of the world. The default position will be that kids come first.

Rejecting "trust"-based models is a purely technical position. You can disagree with my stance, but unless you have the authority to disprove me then you're just voicing an opinion too. "Trust" has no built-in validation, there is valid reason to be skeptical.

I agree that the "think of the kids/terrorists/puppy killers" rhetoric is effective, but I don't think that's a reason to dilute my stance. I haven't seen a single age verification proposal that both works and isn't abusable. I cannot imagine a technical solution to this issue any more than I can write a Python program that detects terrorists. It is simply a bad idea that endangers children more than it could possibly protect them.

Well the direction of travel now is that you provide your identification documents to all providers, that feels like a far worse solution that some trusted attestation nodes to me.

The options available are not "perfect solution" and "do nothing". It's currently "terrible solution" or we fill in the second option. If there is no perfect solution to put on the table then "do nothing" doesn't suddenly become available.

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