>The problem with this scheme is that it's exactly as protective as requiring someone to tick a "I'm of legal age" tickbox in the software they wish to access.

no, it is exactly as protective as the protections for purchasing alcohol or buying smokes or other controlled substances/products.

buying smokes/alcohol when underage is obviously harder than "click this box". (did you ever try to buy smokes/alcohol when underage? you cant just go up to the clerk at the store when you are 14 and say "trust me bro, im 18/19/21".)

>Anyone who is of legal age can buy UUIDs and pass them around to folks who are not.

same for smoking and alcohol. i could go to the store right now and buy smokes, then hand them to my 10 year old.

we have laws already in place to punish selling smokes/alcohol to underagers, and laws for consuming smokes/alcohol when underage. we can apply those laws to your internet-age-token.

most people seem fine with the current trade-off for smokes/alcohol. i see no reason why tiktok needs to be treated as more dangerous than either.

>Having said that, I think having an "I'm of legal age" tickbox goes quite far enough.

i agree with this and everything you said afterwards. id rather not have any of it.

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simoncion 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> no, it is exactly as protective as the protections for purchasing alcohol or buying smokes...

Right. That's exactly as protective as that tickbox. [0] As I mentioned, any of-age person can distribute those UUIDs to people who are not of-age. Unlike with the proposed ID-collection-and-retention schemes (that are authoritarian's wet dreams) the vendor of the UUID is not responsible for ensuring that that UUID is not later used by someone who is not of-age.

If you were to -say- make alcohol vendors liable for the actions of of-age people who pass on alcohol to not-of-age people, then you'd see serious attempts to control distribution.

[0] Don't forget the existence of preexisting parental controls in every major OS. IME, this is a hurdle that's at least as difficult to surmount as the ID check done in non-chain convenience stores.

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john_strinlai 6 hours ago | parent [-]

>Right. That's exactly as protective as that tickbox. [0]

no, it isn't, for reasons already mentioned but i will say it again for clarity:

- a 14 year old can click "im of age" on a checkbox.

- a 14 year old cannot go into a gas station and buy smokes. they will be declined.

>As I mentioned, any of-age person can distribute those UUIDs to people who are not of-age.

again... same with smokes and alcohol! but we are okay with how smokes and alcohol are regulated right now.

tiktok is not worse than a bottle of vodka. we are okay with how vodka is regulated. tiktok does not need even more strict age-verification than vodka.

it is not perfect, but it is absolutely more stringent than a checkbox. if you still doubt me, please send one of your 12-14 year old family members to buy a pack of smokes or a bottle of vodka at the nearest store. i will wait for your report.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I mostly agree but unless these UUID age tokens are of limited life, it's more like buying the kid an unlimited amount of vodka and cigarettes with one action. If the tokens were good for one use, or a short time period, it would be more workable.

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john_strinlai 5 hours ago | parent [-]

sure, make them good for like 1 year or 3 months or something.

or make them good for 1 month, but sold in 12-packs.

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simoncion 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> or make them good for 1 month, but sold in 12-packs.

...if these tokens are as protective as you claim they are, why would it be important for them to expire?

Would you also advocate for the token issued by authoritarians' preferred "send a video of yourself [0] and/or your government-issued photo ID [1] to some random third-party for-profit company" check to frequently expire? If not, what's up with the discrepancy?

[0] Or of someone physically near you who is of-age

[1] See [0]

	▲	john_strinlai 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		you seem really eager to catch me in some sort of "aha gotcha!" scenario so that you can... what? feel good about winning a hackernews argument? you are trying to argue with someone who largely shares the exact same views as you. the only difference between us is that im offering up alternatives and you are hoping that if you yell loud enough that everyone will forget about age verification. age verification is already being rolled out. so we can either suck it up and try advocate for less shitty versions, or we can bicker amongst ourselves while id/video-based age verification continues to be implemented everywhere. >...if these tokens are as protective as you claim they are, why would it be important for them to expire? read above for the conversation that occurred. >Would you also advocate for the token issued by authoritarians' preferred "send a video of yourself [0] and/or your government-issued photo ID [1] to some random third-party for-profit company" check to frequently expire? If not, what's up with the discrepancy? a) no, obviously not, because i dont advocate for video or id-based age verification. b) i know that you know this, and are just pretending to be ignorant for some weird ass reason: various age verification implementations have different risks and benefits. for some implementations, users are forced to give up significant amounts of privacy in favor of increased accuracy. other implementations give up less privacy, at the risk of reduced accuracy. look at discords implementation for a recent example (it was easier to spoof the client-side verification than the server-side id-based one. more privacy, less accuracy). this type of balancing act is not new. we do the same balancing act with alcohol, smoking, gambling, healthcare, security, development, etc. so, when looking at potential mitigations for less-accurate methods, while maintaining the same level of privacy, a sensible option is to make the UUIDs time-bound which will limit the time an illicit token is valid. this makes much less sense for id/video-based verification, because they have higher accuracy than my version (paid for by giving up your privacy). --------- something you said earlier: "Your time and energy are better spent resisting the expansion,". so, go do that. find the people that are really pushing for age verification, and argue with them. instead of replying to me, use that time to call your state representative or something. im not your opponent here. if it were up to me, we wouldnt have age verification in the first place. you already know that my stance is anti-age verification! my proposal is not perfect. i dont like age verification. you can have the karma from this argument, its cool, you can "win". what more do you want me to say?

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simoncion 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Your hypothetical 14-year-old needs to first be able to bypass the parental controls that come with every modern OS. You keep ignoring that.

(Also, like, did you ever go to college? Live in a dorm or apartment with underage students? It was super common for of-age people to buy and distribute booze to substantially underage students. Everyone knew it was happening all the damn time.)

> they are obviously not liable if i buy something legitimately, go home, and feed it to my kid. in that case, i am liable...

And if you changed up the rules to make them liable, you'd see serious attempts at controlling distribution.

What has been the state of the art in parental controls for quite some time is like the current regulatory regime for booze and tobacco. The single thing that needs to change to make it exactly the same would be to make it substantially illegal for US-based publishers to not tag the porn/violence/etc that they publish with age-restriction tags. [0]

What's being proposed and is currently implemented by several big-name sites is even more invasive.

> we are okay with how smokes and alcohol works right now.

I'm not. Either booze and tobacco need to be made into Schedule I substances, or their regulation needs to become much more lax. But I recognize that my opinion on the topic is considered to be somewhat out-of-the-ordinary.

[0] This might already be the law of the land right now. I haven't bothered to check.

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john_strinlai 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Your hypothetical 14-year-old needs to first be able to bypass the parental controls that come with every modern OS. You keep ignoring that.

because they dont matter. parental controls exist today but have been deemed ineffective for the age verification conversation, for whatever stupid reason. so we are stuck trying to figure something else out. do i wish we could just use the existing basic parental controls instead of whatever the hell we are going to end up with? obviously!

the easiest "something else" is to piggy-back on existing age-restriction regulations (i.e. smokes, alcohol, gambling) because they have broad (obviously not ubiquitous, but broad) support. we have decades of experience with them.

and, to that end, you create a little token and you show your id to the store clerk to buy it. the "protect the children" people are satisfied (its the same process everything else age-restricted!), and i dont need to send my id to a peter thiel company. it preserves privacy, it re-uses existing laws, it re-uses existing infrastructure, etc.

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simoncion 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> ...but have been deemed ineffective for the age verification conversation, for whatever stupid reason.

Consider that such arguments (just like the arguments of Prohibitionists that resulted in the rise to power of Organized Crime) are made in a varied combination of ignorance and bad faith, and that we should loudly reject them in the strongest possible terms.

To be clear, I'm asserting that the claim that preexisting parental controls are insufficient is an argument made in ignorance and bad faith, not your assertion that the argument is being made.

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john_strinlai 5 hours ago | parent [-]

>Consider that such arguments [...] we should loudly reject them in the strongest possible terms.

me and you can yell into the void all we want. and i will continue to do so!

but, age verification is already here. so while i continue to yell about how stupid it is, i am also going to propose options that i feel like are less bad than what is being actively rolled out right now.

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simoncion 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> ...i am also going to propose options that i feel like are less bad than what is being actively rolled out right now.

As I mentioned, what you propose is exactly as useful and protective as what we have now. What we have now has been roundly rejected by the authoritarians pushing this expansion of power and influence. Your time and energy are better spent resisting the expansion, rather than suggesting alternatives that those authoritarians will never accept (and tacitly accepting their premise in the process).

	▲	john_strinlai 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>As I mentioned, what you propose is exactly as useful and protective as what we have now. i disagree, for reasons i have already said and for other reasons i havent yet. but it is clear that we wont end up agreeing, so no need for us to keep going.

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SoftTalker 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A 21-year-old in a dorm buying booze for a 19 year old dorm-mate is a bit different from doing the same for a 14 year old.

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simoncion 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What about a 17 year old? 16? Many folks who go to college are younger than people seem to realize... and teenagers of all ages often like to party.

	▲	SoftTalker 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's very rare to run into anyone under 18 living in a college dorm. There are a few 17 year olds, even fewer younger than that. Sure there are high schoolers taking classes, but as full-time residential students? Not many.