alt Hacker NewsStill, I don't want to gate people based on age.
Parents should at least be able to overwrite the age of their child, maybe selectively allow bypasses. My experience with a computer would have been completely different if I was blocked from half of the internet. Especially when I see which kind of content gets blocked.
Replies
Websites should have an easy way to check whether the connecting device has a child lock turned on. We don’t need to identify the person using the device at all. It should be up to parents to make sure their kids use device that are locked.
I hesitate to comment on these because hundreds of comments have already said it and I don't have anything new to add.
- The age-gate should just be a setting on the device: either over 18 or under 18. Websites/apps should at most only be legally required to respect the device's assertions.
- Devices should be controllable by parents: let the parents decide whether the child should be age-restricted or not.
- Devices should have profiles so that you can let your kids use your own phone/laptop without messing up your stuff or getting into things they shouldn't.
Historically parents have been allowed to rent R-rated movies for their kids with nudity and sex and violence even if the video store isn't supposed to rent it out to the kids directly. That was always considered okay. If I think my 16-year old is mature enough to watch some porn, that should be the parents' decision.
You are imagining that a solution for you will be deemed a solution for the political powers pushing for this. Or that being age-verified is the main danger of having age-verification.
That would be nice!
But if there isn't a safe market driven solution to age-verification, which provides anonymous, unsurveiled, age-attested site access, with no ability for the government to individual monitor, deny or revoke, then that is exactly what is going to get pushed on all of us.
You don't defeat an enemy by not needing the manacles they are very motivated to force on everyone..
Increasingly: We adopt zero knowledge proofs, and other decentralized open-sourced hard-security technologies, and resolve seemingly-small, but not-going-away practical issues like age & porn, or empower and "trust" every weak politician, interest group and stranger on the internet to not use our lack of awareness and defense against us.
Add AI to the mix, and the risk/damage of passivity becomes extreme.
I do. I’m going to take a wild guess that you are an old head like me, male, and lived your youth in the wonderful internet free of commercialisation of human interaction, free to roam and find new cool things and people, a wonderful library of Alexandria to learn and spend time in.
Discuss what the experience was/is to zoomers and younger, especially girls. Did you try to play a silly online game with your friends while being constantly harassed by 3-4 adult men? How many times someone offered you money (in form of “lootboxes”) to get nude pictures of you when you were severely underage? Or was on every site you visited an algorithm pushing on your face content about how you should embrace anorexia, start gambling on what Trump says on TV, use drugs, or simply do a suicide?
Hey fellow unc’s, we really need to stop nostalgising on the computer childhood of our youth and listen to the kids (as well as a bunch of research on the topic) and face the fact that the internet of the friendly geeks and nerds of the yesterday does not exist anymore. Things have to change, if we want to have any kind of working society left whatsoever.
As a millennial-aged person I saw a fair amount of content I would not want the young people in my life to see, but it's probably not nearly as harmful as the non-age gated content that they will still have access to. There is a lot creepy youtube and tiktok content that isn't off limits but still unhealthy and my younger relatives are fascinated by it.