In most legal jurisdictions that I know of, kids aren't legally allowed to be able to access to pornography either. How is that working out?

The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification. Few people want that as it represents a massive violation of privacy and effectively makes anonymity on the Internet impossible.

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triceratops 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not.

Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out.

In the same way that kids occasionally obtain cigs or beer despite safeguards, sometimes they may get their hands on a code. Prosecute anyone who knowingly sells or gives one to a minor.

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pryce 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained...

Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?

The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people and we need to acknowledge that - even if acquiring a token somewhat ameliorates the compounded risk from presenting ID multiple times

So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases, and happily charges ahead to a proposed solution as though they've sufficiently thought about the people affected and the harms involved.

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triceratops 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I've seen many women buying alcohol and cigarettes. After a certain age you aren't even carded. It isn't obvious to me that it's a big worry for women in general.

However, I accept it may be a concern for some due to a history of stalkers. They have alternatives.

They can ask a friend to buy a token on their behalf. It's always legal to give alcohol to a friend you know is of legal drinking age. Same thing.

They could find liquor or tobacco stores with women cashiers. And rotate between stores to avoid showing their ID to the same person multiple times.

> So many of these internet ban proposals feel like someone creates a single cartoon scenario that captures ~2% of the use cases

I think the "problem" with my proposal you're harping on is the "~2% of use cases" you're talking about. My proposal isn't foolproof but it is anonymous. Just like alcohol and tobacco sales today.

If we're saying social media is the new tobacco and must be kept away from kids (I agree on both counts) then we must not intrude on the privacy of adults any more than we would when they buy actual tobacco.

It makes no sense to want to control access to certain websites more strictly than access to actual poisons that cause disease, violent behavior, and death. Otherwise it's clear it was never about "the kids". It was about control, speech policing, and ending anonymity online.

Forcing everyone to upload IDs makes all women vulnerable to stalking and harassment. It's strictly worse.

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Dylan16807 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Ask a woman in a liquor store whether her anonymity is maintained by this scenario...?

Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database, one or two people that are probably going to forget immediately"?

> The current liquor store approach for buying liquor is hazardous for a good chunk of people

What chunk of people?

Are you trying to imply that this chunk includes women in general? It's really easy to find random women without looking at an ID. If this is about addresses, anyone taking actions based on "a woman probably lives here" has about the same effect as picking houses at random.

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pryce 3 days ago | parent [-]

> Is she not going to say "pretty well compared to a surveillance database"

No, instead she is likely to avoid talking in abstractions and instead talk about personal experiences of getting stalked online by multiple people she has had to show her details to in the past, who may include storekeeps, police, university staff, etc, etc. Eva Galperin is an excellent source on the way many of our procedures are designed in ways that do not at all account for the potential of stalking and harassment, though her focus is on how this continues to unfold in the technology space.

	▲	triceratops 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I can't really follow how a woman showing an ID to a lecherous cashier allows said cashier to stalk her online. Where she is, presumably, speaking about personal experiences anonymously. Generally you can't get through life with no one knowing your name; even women at risk of stalking. As you already pointed out they may have to show ID to police, university staff, employers, landlords, medical staff, banks, social workers or other government employees. Buying a single-use token annually to get on social media doesn't meaningfully increase that risk profile. And as I already said, if they're that worried, they can ask a friend to buy it for them.
	▲	Dylan16807 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Very big citation needed for saying it's "likely" she has been stalked by multiple people because they got a glance at her name. Especially because someone that just wants info on an attractive woman can find a hundred times as many candidates by scrolling facebook. I'll believe it if you have proof, but you need proof.

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lisbbb 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't see the danger of pornography, tbh. Oh, much of it is sick, sure, but violent video games are far more harmful. Would it be better to depict loving, caring relationships? Hell, yes! But there are so few of those these days.

My teenage son struggles to have any meaningful dialog with any of the girls his age. It's like he doesn't exist. The few kids who are "dating" is basically the exact scenario that MGTOW depicts--girls only go for the elite jocks and ignore everyone else like they don't even exist. Everyone is miserable. Many will eventually grow out of it, but I don't think the females will ever view themselves as doing anything but "settling" because of the nonsense programmed into their heads. And yes, social media is largely responsible for how extreme the situation has become. In the 90s, girls were picky, but nothing like now. So all that young men have left is like AI chatbots and porn and it's better to not take that away from them, too.

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oblio 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It could be designed to be anonymous.

Government runs authentication service that has your personal details.

User creates account on platform Y, platform Y asks government service if your age is >18, service says y/n. Platform never finds out your personal details.

OAuth for age verification.

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swiftcoder 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The government still knows your identity in this scenario, so it's a pretty limited form of anonymity (i.e. only suitable for activities the government isn't hostile to)

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oblio 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I know Americans don't want to hear this, but once the government turns hostile, internet anonymity won't save you, just like how guns won't save you (hello propaganda and a large and very active brainwashed minority that also has guns).

The only thing saving you from a hostile government is a well educated populace that really wants democracy and is willing to fight for it (through constant activism, peaceful & other types of protests). This is where many democracies are failing now. No amount of technology or rules can replace large amounts of constantly vigilant eyes that understand how democracy is subverted.

I would rather optimize for not giving companies too much power and end up with a Kafkaesque patchwork of corporate abuses and regulatory captures.

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tim-- 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Can't you just put a middle man on there then? Get a non-profit organisation like Mozilla to ask the govt. on behalf of the user.

The organisation asks the govt, and gives back a signed token.

The the only thing the government knows is that an age verification was requested. Once verification has been done once for one site, it can be used for future verifications.

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swiftcoder 2 days ago | parent [-]

The middle man in this scenario can mask the URL that is requesting age verification, but what's to stop the government compelling traffic logs from the middle man?

	▲	trinix912 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Nothing more than what prevents them from getting logs from your ISP about the sites you visit after verification. In ideal countries they need a court order for that, in less ideal ones they just scoop up the logs preemptively.

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iknowstuff 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The government then knows all the services you use. No bueno.

There are better ways to do this including zk proofs, but you gotta work against people mass reselling them. Could do some rate limited tokens minted from a proof maybe.

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osn9363739 3 days ago | parent [-]

Let's be real. Unless you're putting in the effort, the government already knows. Especially so on the sites listed in this ban.

	▲	iknowstuff 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		To an extent I agree, except consider that governments of smaller countries probably don’t currently have the means to know, but they with such a system it would be served on a silver platter. Additionally, it could be leveraged as a means of censorship system restricting access to undesirable content

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padjo 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Some concerns: - government gets a list of every website that requests your age - every website has to register with the government to initiate age verification checks

Which pretty much puts an end to any notion of an open internet. But maybe a system I prefer to one where a bunch of random startups have my age verification biometrics .

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Froztnova 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Would zero knowledge proofs work here? I'm not enough of a cryptography nerd so I don't know if it would be a practical use-case.

	▲	tim-- 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		> Would zero knowledge proofs work here? Yes, but that would then require more infrastructure. For example, Australia does not have a national ID card - or a national proof of age card (each state, however, does implement a Proof of Age card, eg https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/driver-...). So, what is your zero knowledge based on? Who is the signer? Under the Identity Verification Services Act 2023 we have IDMatch (https://www.idmatch.gov.au/). This whole setup can simply be extended to have third parties act as an intermediary between the government and the party attempting to get proof of age. Similar to AusPost's DigitaliD (https://www.digitalid.com/personal). But let's not have that company owned by the Government :) It's pretty cooked that we are asking the social media companies to go ahead and prove to the eSaftey commissioner that they have measures in place to stop kids from getting access to social websites, yet they have to use unreliable measures like selfies to do it. The companies can't win here. This won't be the last you hear of this. https://youtu.be/YTwBStZIawY?t=306

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thfuran 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>The only way to even attempt to enforce these things is with government mandated age verification

Yes, that's what they did.