Programming

Recently I saw an article on more needs to be done about age verification because it’s easy for children to falsify it (and most do). On the other hand you have adults who falsify it because it’s nobody’s business how old you are.

Current protections that ask you to confirm your age are completely pointless.

Now if you were required to provide ID to access X service, would you? If we’re talking adult content then children will simply look elsewhere, taking them to potentially more dangerous areas of the internet. (Heck, so would adults) Same if you deny them social media.

But if we’re implementing verification regardless then it needs to come from a third party. And it also has to be easy. Like something you do only once.

First: I would allow children access to social media under a child account that has limited access and ability to be audited by a parent. This is important because you don’t want them going somewhere you have no control over. (Which they will)

Secondly: An age verification gateway that can be implemented by developers seeking to use it. Possibly managed by the government body responsible for issuing ID (or a partner). This would be taking a short video of yourself plus uploading ID. (Banks are doing this now)

Thirdly: ease of use. Majority of us have a google or apple account associated with whatever device we have. Let those accounts hook into the 2nd step and share if an account is a child/adult account with any social platforms you log in using it with.

Just a few thoughts that came to mind whilst waiting dinner. Feel free to tear it apart!

It can't be. The entire concept is a Trojan horse to kill the anonymous internet.

I'd lean on the ISPs. Your ISP knows what sites you visit, and they have your location and payment information. They can just insert some verification page when a classified IP is contacted. This gives them hardly any information beyond what they already have. And since they are mainly located in Australia, it is easy to enforce laws on them.

You have to lean on ISPs anyway because it is quite ridiculous to assume that the entire global internet will implement Australian laws. Does anyone believe that their Lemmy instance will implement some AI face scan or cryptography scheme?

You would have to block servers that do not comply with the law anyway. The effective solution would be a whitelist of services that have been vetted. In practice, I think we'll see the digital equivalent of ok boomer.

If a whitelist seems extreme, then one should have another look at the problem. The point is to make sure that information is only accessed by citizens with official authorization. There is no technological difference between the infrastructure needed to enforce this (or copyrights) and some totalitarian hellscape.

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