This assumes good faith, which doesn't match reality. It's about control, not protecting children.

Also age verification is still a problem in itself. Given your idea of a physical card, kids will find a way to use the card of their parents. Even if the card couldn't be misused by others - you give platforms the knowledge of whom is a minor, which means they can be targeted better.

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jonathanstrange 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Kids will simply find a way to circumvent it without any extra steps. To make age verification useful for protecting kids, you'd need to lock down every software on every operating system and put it under tight government control. We're talking about things like every programming language with a networking library, wget, curl, every web browser that was ever developed, etc.

All kinds of tools and software would need to be locked down or criminalized. Otherwise, some smart kid is guaranteed to get around the restriction and give that method to others, and if it's at school on a USB stick.

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stymaar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Kids will simply find a way to circumvent it without any extra steps.

This is just an argument against any regulation whatsoever. Yes, some people will find ways to do illegal stuff, but that doesn't mean forbidding stuff is useless. For instance gangs members always find a way to get access to weapons even in countries where firearms is regulated, but there are still pretty much zero mass slaughter in schools in these countries.

> To make age verification useful for protecting kids, you'd need to lock down every software on every operating system and put it under tight government control.

No! This should never be implemented at the software or OS level in the first place. You should be handed a chip card that you can use for that purpose, like how the bank rent you a credit card. Any other implementation is a bad one, and should be fought.

But by fighting the very idea of age verification instead, an idea that pretty much nobody else in the society has issues with when it comes to voting rights, driving rights, or alcohol consumption, you are just favoring these poor implementations by moving the debate on a ground you can't win.

> Otherwise, some smart kid is guaranteed to get around the restriction and give that method to others,

You should really read that “The optimal amount of fraud is non zero” blog post I linked above.

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jonathanstrange an hour ago | parent [-]

First of all, the sane chip card design will not take place. That's virtually guaranteed. As a closely related example, banks all over the world have moved away from this design to merely trust the (nonexistent) security of mobile phones. Why? Costs and convenience.

Second, if you hand over a chip card, you still need to lock down and tightly control every executable on every machine. How else would you guarantee that kids cannot access content the government deems unsuitable for them?

Third, I still haven't seen a coherent argument why parents shouldn't be in charge of what content their children are allowed to consume. I'm not at all against governments providing free parental control software, for example, or voluntary industry standards similar to the movie ratings.

Finally, "protecting the children" is obviously a pretense. The sole purpose of the push for this is for governments to get the foot in the door of operating systems they currently can't control well. It's the starting point for a surveillance infrastructure: age verification -> digital ID verification -> tracking who said what and handing the data over to intelligence and law enforcement.

	▲	stymaar 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> First of all, the sane chip card design will not take place. That's virtually guaranteed. As a closely related example, banks all over the world have moved away from this design to merely trust the (nonexistent) security of mobile phones. Why? Costs and convenience. Businesses are always going to favor the cheapest options, but that's why regulation exist. > Second, if you hand over a chip card, you still need to lock down and tightly control every executable on every machine. How else would you guarantee that kids cannot access content the government deems unsuitable for them? You don't need to guarantee that. It's like saying you can't have an alcohol consumption ban on teenagers without spying on them all the time. It's technically true but it doesn't matter: having teenagers consume way less booze due to the rules than they would without it, and that's fine for most people, societies don't need to enforce an absolute 100% ban of things for bans to deliver the expected outcome. > Third, I still haven't seen a coherent argument why parents shouldn't be in charge of what content their children are allowed to consume. It's much less about what their children are allowed to consume, but what are businesses allowed to sell to their children. It's exactly like alcohol restrictions: the government don't raid houses to check if parents are letting child drink whine and beer at home, but it aggressively enforces that bars don't sell booze to teenagers. > Finally, "protecting the children" is obviously a pretense. Not from the electors. Most people are favorable to these things, and that's why these laws are voted. Obviously intelligence agencies are always trying to get access to more data whenever they can, but that's not the reason why these laws are voted, and the representatives routinely could vote for a version of that which doesn't serve any intelligence purpose.

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stymaar 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> This assumes good faith, which doesn't match reality. It's about control, not protecting children.

“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

> Given your idea of a physical card, kids will find a way to use the card of their parents.

Sure there are kids who have access to their parents credit card with the PIN, but how frequent is that? In every system, fraud will exist, but that doesn't mean the system is worthless. “The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero”: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/optimal-amount-of-fra...

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ball_of_lint 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I linked it in my direct reply, but - we don't need to guess at why these bills are being introduced or who by. We have evidence. It's malice. https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1rsn1tm/it_a...

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applfanboysbgon 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

This is not an argument, it's just a stupid quip. And I would sooner suggest that you "never attribute to stupidity that which is adequately explained by malice". Humans are overwhelmingly selfish and more than willing to harm others to serve themselves.

	▲	Telaneo 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given the amount of malice in the world, that's not even an unreasonable statement. Even more so if you agree that being in a position of power while not having the expertise needed to fulfil it is itself malicious. The traditional quip works well on small-scale stuff, but if there's loads of money or power to be gained, malice and greed tends to be fairly prevalent.