Texas Sues Discord, Seeks Mandatory Age Verification | Hacker News Reader

Texas Sues Discord, Seeks Mandatory Age Verification

reclaimthenet.org

12 pointsanonymousiam11 comments

Age verification does not belong with app stores or OS developers. It belongs with the parents that are already legally obligated to protect their children. There is a simple means to do this [1] and while not perfect it would shift the responsibility back to the parents where it belongs. Texas should push for RTA Restricted To Adults headers on servers and RTA header detection in browsers and applications that speak HTTP(S). Anything that involves sharing a minors details with a corporation regardless of intent is a non starter for me.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270018

Tautologically, something restricted to adults does not involve sharing a minor's details with anyone since the entire point is to block access to minors. That said, not all of these laws are about access restrictions per se, so RTA is only a partial solution. In fact, the government doesn't need to mandate any solution; simply mandate that restricted services not be offered to/not behave in certain ways for children and place liability on the people offering the services. They can figure out the best compromise that follows the law while keeping their customers happy.

Tautologically, something restricted to adults does not involve sharing a minor's details with anyone since the entire point is to block access to minors.

At some point some company has to know the clients age to block the access, thus RTA is the only solution that potentially does this with the optional assistance of the parent whilst not sharing any data. Anything else will require connections to a 3rd party which is still a non starter even if using using magic math that pinky promises not to be reversible meaning someone can put 2 and 2 together to get the persons identification. People have caught on to the shell games.

The service does not need to know age to block access. In fact the only reasonable way to work is to block functionality by default. It needs to know age to allow access.

If you're 14, and go to a porn site, you'll be told to go away or prove you're 18+, which you can't do because you're not. If you try to submit ID (which you likely don't even have), you'll still be told to go away, so why would you do it?

This is not about collecting children's info. It's about not providing service to them.

Additionally, nothing in these laws (well, from the red states. The new ones out of e.g. California are much worse) says you can't e.g. establish physical verification at adult stores to get an access card or something, giving the same properties we have for other age restricted purchases.

If you mean Discord blocking Texas, well that is the method porn sites are using but trivial to bypass with a VPN. VPN providers climax in the pants when companies do this. I would rather not shove more money down their pants thus propping up yet another artificially created business model and getting the money all sticky.

Right, that's why the law should simply put liability on the providers to prevent access to children in the state + grant private cause of action to the parents. Then it becomes easy to prove their negligence (did the child in the state access the site?), and VPNs become immaterial. This is what e.g. Texas has done.

Would they be liable if a kid stole an id from an adult? If not, probably because the site had protection against minors accessing their site. If that is the requirement, a simple window asking for age would suffice, right?

Would a physical store be liable for a kid stealing an id from an adult? Likely it depends on how passable it is that the id belongs to the kid. In any case, obviously a simple window asking age (or in person, simply asking "are you 18/21?") would not suffice.

You only need to look at Britain to see how much of a bad idea this is. As for CSAM I don't believe AI can't be used to solve that.

As a Texan this is beyond gross.

I will instantly delete my accounts if discord or any service implements this kind of tracking.

There are other ways to protect the children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KyiLyOxux8

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