alt Hacker NewsI'm fundamentally opposed to age verification because it usually leads to mandatory account creation no matter how privacy friendly the age verification process itself may be. It's already extremely annoying that, for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account. Furthermore, the whole thing also reinforces monopolies. Once you've verified your age on one platform, the barrier to switching to another is even higher than before.
The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating. Once this were established, websites targeting all age groups would have a strong incentive to participate. Otherwise, they would suddenly become invisible to a large portion of their underage users.
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And instead of an age you could even make the indication about what is potentially objectionable so that parents can choose when to allow their kids to see what - and adults can also choose to avoid certain things.
The part I'm most opposed to is requiring a full KYC, using "verifying age" as an excuse. My Gmail account has been active for >18 years, that should be enough proof.
At glance this looks reasonable but how do you enforce that kids connection always goes through the parents control?
You are just moving the verification point to another gate, it means that no anonymous connections are possible anymore to the entire Internet because we want to allow parents to control their kids.
You want to use your friends Wi-Fi? Now that requires full identification so that we know that its not some kid trying to look at stuff their parents don't allow.
Want to connect your cat toilet to the internet? Well, we will need to either cryptographically identify the device or attach its ID to your real ID because we don't want to allow kids look at stuff their parents did not allow and this might just be a proxy device for some nerdy 14 y/o.
Want to use your old PC? Sorry that's not possible, now all devices that connect to the internet require biometric identification because we can't tell if this is an adult or just some kid using a legacy device to look at stuff their parents don't allow.
I am not sure creating an account is seen as an issue anymore given that the vast majority already have one. However yes as you say it helps create a monopoly. Combine that with a doomscrolling algorithmic feed on like YouTube and that's how you create a moat: age verification and doomscrolling.
I think sites and app developers don't really need external reasons to force account creation, they all seem to want to do it anyway. And at least this API would - in theory - enable age verification without needing an account.
The sensible solution doesn't build a consumer profile for resale and government surveillance.
> Allowing parents to ...
That's the crux of the issue - the state (pick one) wants to be "the parent".
I wonder if it would work to make it illegal to sell ad impressions of underage people. Do whatever you want as long as you can prove its being done to adults, or prove you have no economic incentive to algorithmically engagement bait
Your second paragraph describes the approach in the blog post almost exactly.
> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating.
I'm afraid you'd get the cookie banner problem but way worse. Everyone that's not Meta/Google/Apple would immediately add a legal CYA "18+" age rating and stop thinking any more about it.
> Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating.
This could be done with setting the age too. Kids don't have their own money and can't sign their own cell contracts, their parents do, and during the phone setup process, the parent could set "the owner of this phone is a minor" checkmark, set the age of birth (so it auto "unlocks" at 18), add a parental password to manually unlock for whatever app needed (or reset or change the setting). Then the phone would just send "user_is_a_minor" flag to whatever and/or filter the 18+ stuff.
Exactly. In the future, to view a youtube video we will need create a Gmail account, we'll need a phone, SMS verification, an ID card, and we'll probably have to rotate your head two or three times and talk to some AI.
>YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account.
What YouTube video can I not watch via yt-dlp without an account?
Many years ago I worked a technical support job for Xbox services, and the amount of calls about "unauthorized charges" was obscene. Xbox provided parental controls, but it required the parent to set up their child's account themselves, and many couldn't be bothered.
I imagine the same thing will happen here...
> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating.
Agreed, just make age controls available to parents, optional, and keep the user age data on the local device. External hosts can verify against it in obvious ways. But isn't that what California's law said, that commenters on HN opposed so strongly?
> for example, on YouTube, you can no longer watch many videos without an account.
I do not like this argument. Does an adult theater let anyone in without an ID? Do movie theaters let kids under 18 into an R rated movie without ID? Why do we think this should be different on the internet?
IMHO, they should have Youtube 18+ (Adult book store) where you need an ID and YouTube <18 where you do not (Barnes and Nobles), and they can filter the content as apporpriate.
I think it is evil that YouTube enables kids access to both grooming and violent material.
> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating.
That just entertains the false justification for what is ultimately about surveillance and control. There are privacy preserving alternatives to accounts and ID/face scans but no one in power is interested in them because the loss of privacy is the entire point.