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Technology @lemmy.world Tea @programming.dev 2d ago

First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control.

www.eff.org First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control

I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...

First Porn, Now Skin Cream? ‘Age Verification’ Bills Are Out of Control

80 comments

I have to agree with PornHub's idea.

A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.

It won't protect all the children but children of parents who can't be assed to setup a device properly will have problems no matter how much we increase the surveillance state.
- A device should be able it indicate in its browser headers whether its primary user is an adult or a minor and the service can react accordingly.
  
  I can already see that being used for targeting children with specific ads on the internet.
  
  The laws around advertising are fucked to begin with but the headers SHOULD be used in advertising 100%
  
  The minor flag would actually remove the LARGE gray area that platforms take advantage of to push harmful ADs and content to kids (Today they just get to play dumb)
  
  This would actually create a framework to enforce existing advertising laws as well as data collection laws with regards to minors.
  
  Examples: Minors should not see ads for holsters, knives, ammo, ED medications, Diet drugs, muscle building drugs, Alcohol, Tobacco products, Online Gambling
  
  These are all things I have seen advertised on YouTube to me; Granted I am not a minor but I am also just using Youtube by going to the site with no account.
- Kids are babied already but if 14 year olds can vote in party elections, and 16 year olds can consent to sexual intercourse with adults, then I don't think restricting porn is our problem. Either kids can make decisions, or all of these laws need to align with each other more logically.
  
  We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
  
  I could not care less about whatever the final say is on age restrictions, but if there are gonna be rules, at least make them make sense you know? I also do not love that I have to verify my identity to use the internet. Look at the UK and how that's working out there even without IDs. Talk about authoritarian control.
  
  This stuff is the whole reason I switched to this platform.
  
  I am actually in full agreement.
  
  A header would put the setting on the device and only indicate "Minor" or "Not Minor" which would allow to restrict or allow porn without having to collect everyone's PII just so they can crank their hog.
  
  If you read previous things though such an indicator would put a lot more responsibility onto Social Media platforms to not show harmful content to minors. Today they get away with it because "TOS says only 18 year olds are allowed to us this service"
  
  South Park kind of nailed the attitude https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park_(Not_Suitable_for_Children)
  
  We have taken parents rights away to allow children to make decisions on their gender and name changes, yet we expect parent to be responsible for their actions like accessing porn.
  
  That's not a contradiction. Gender and name are about who the child is. Porn is about who the child wants to imagine having sex with. One of them, 99% of children are perfectly capable of making a good decision on. One of them can potentially be traumatising, and certainly isn't absolutely necessary for a good life and healthy development.
  
  That said, it's not the government's job to control it. An "I am 18" button and a lesson in health class are enough.
  
  If porn sites must be legislated, here's a better way: force them to display information to users on unrealistic depictions, the dangers of underage sex, and counselling resources.
- These ideas are all fundamentally misguided. Let's take a step back what we are trying to do here: We want to create a system so that the government can withhold certain information from certain people. That's both difficult and dangerous.
  
  PornHub's idea requires cooperation from the hosters. You are not likely to get global agreement on that. So you will still need to do something about those foreign sites, such as blocking them.
  
  At that point, such a law would achieve 2 things:
  
  Society has decided to create a technical censorship infrastructure.
  
  Domestic porn providers have an incentive to support to it because it removes foreign competition.
  
  Blocklists that parents can install on their devices already exist, so there would be no change in that regard.
  
  Of course, minors have no trouble circumventing such software. They have plenty of time and they are horny. You can't win. The only faint hope might be to include such features at deeper levels, similar to existing DRM schemes. This would be ripe for abuse by bad actors or governments. It certainly would be used against the consumer by the copyright industry and tech monopolies; just like existing DRM schemes.
  
  So we really should ask why we would want to walk further down this expensive, hostile, and dangerous path. Are we afraid that masturbation causes blindness?
  
  Government in this case is forcing sites to collect PII to verify age not blocking content not blocking content themselves.
  
  I am working under the knowledge that these age verifications are not theoretical (Its the end game of all the KYC startups from last decade)
  
  If you are in the south in much of the US these ID checks are already forced and will only expand
  
  A browser header gives the result without building a Database of people who like porn
  
  Browser headers also put the responsibility on sites that promote dangerous things to kids (its in your best interest as a site that can deliver porn, things not suitable for kids to check and respect the header from a liability perspective)
- What's gonna stop a pedo from changing the headers to child so that they can access the child internet where all the children are? Like it's not a great solution to me.
  
  your understanding of what the proposed header solution is is way off base. "protecting the kids" isn't about keeping adults from interacting with kids in online forums, it's about keeping the kids from accidentally seeing porn (really it's about making the lives of sex workers more dangerous). think of it like a tv v-chip but for the internet, not as a nightclub bouncer creating two different online communities and making sure they don't interact with eachother
  
  The same thing that’s stopping pedophiles today of course.
  
  The idea isn't to let sites restrict adults, just let them restrict kids. So there wouldn't be a child internet.
  
  Ahh yes the children
  
  If we cared about the children why would we permit religious institutions to exit
  
  Pedo central every single one of them
  
  So what if it was no different than now?
  
  Nothing stopping adults from playing Roblox now, but we know why they are there
  
  Lucky for the pedo, you never have to prove you are under 18, if that is what you tell the website.
  
  Don't worry dude at least one person sees this is a joke
  
  I think he means that the headers come from the device making the call, not the one receing it, so a pedo should be able to change the headers of my device which is not that easy.
  Then yes, the receing end could simply ignore the header anyway, it would be way easier.
This is all dumb. If you're worried about kids surfing porn sites then the legal guardian should act accordingly. There are so many methods to blocking porn sites that it's almost hilarious. Web filtering; most ISPs are able to support website filtering on their supplied gateway or DNS. Parental controls on device; most devices come with opyional locks built-in at this point especially if it's aimed towards children.

Sure, it's not perfect but it's better than removing yet another layer of web anonymity. We see how well browser fingerprinting is going, let's not make it easier to track who is browsing where than it already is. But that's the real point behind these bills, isn't it?

Edit: I guess I was ranting mainly about the porn, but honestly, these are all things that parents should be aware of their children doing. If it's an awareness issue, then that should be the next step. The government going straight from "oh there's a problem" to "let's make it illegal" without trying to raise awareness is extremely heavy handed.
- I don't even have kids and I have protection in place at home to block devices from accessing sites, not exclusively porn tho, gambling and social networks.
  
  Porn can be bad, okay, but if we taught our kids properly it's not that bad and curiosity is ok. Gambling is terrible and more and more people are getting addicted to it.
  
  Fuck government paternalism.
  
  That's reasonable. It's a good idea to have additonal protections and if you have the knowledge, something like a pihole can go far.
  
  In a perfect world the parent(s) would know the needs of the child and adjust. Curiosity should be encouraged but the guardians should be the ones to prepare the kids for the world, as far as home life is concerned.
  
  Access to porn and gambling is impossible to guage the best age for granting access to in the legal sense; it's a different situation for everyone. That's why it really should be up to the guardian to dictate when is appropriate.
  
  Unfortunately, instead of teaching with an open mind, what gets passed on usually is the parent's frustrations and dispositions. To even things out, I also think public education is helpful, but that's a different topic.
- Agreed, they are and will be relentless. We'll need to be comfortable 'missing out' on popular sites e.g., Lemmy instead of Reddit.
  
  For those who want to rewind the clock to when the web was anonymous, check out how to access I2P.
  
  And for parents, there are some good blocklists at https://oisd.nl/ including NSFW blocklists.
- Block it to the point where you are not going to accidentally stumble upon it. Once they are determined to find it then there really isn't much point.
  
  Also, Reddit will block anything NSFW if you are under 18. Anything related to sex often gets flagged as NSFW. So I guess fuck you if you are 16 and trying to have safe sex I guess. NSFW probably shouldn't always mean 18+
- I love that we've gone so far that finally the left and right are on the same page. This is the progress I've dreamed of.
  
  Giving the government more power is like letting someone beat you up for his fare when you could just walk 1km.
cosmetics that contain certain chemicals like Vitamin A or alpha hydroxy acids.

I believe I can buy a ton of these chemicals over the counter and shove them all at once down my cockhole without ID. Is dabbing a smidge on my cheeks dangerous?
- I wouldn’t recommend doing that
- Perhaps long term exposure, like these products would be?
  
  These are sold as daily health supplements, where internal dose would seem much higher than topical applications. If its dangerous, it shouldn't be sold to anyone is all I can understand.
One of the experiences I will never forget was "teaching" an ICT class about 2 decades ago (I was a TA who got left to cover a class - good times).

The older ones of you will remember the trick (many of us used it for playing flash games like adventure quest!) - have two browser windows open, minimise the one with the thing you were not supposed to be doing on it when the teacher comes around - no evidence right?

These kids were doing the same thing - I swear I've never seen so much porn in my entire life. Oh and yes, a lot of it involved Japanese animation. This was on a network with parental controls enabled by the way, because it didn't block those sites.

Here's the thing - and we all know it, no matter what measures you put in place kids will find away around it. More crudely put "If little Timmy wants titties, Timmy going to move heaven and earth to find them".

They'll sneak a parental passport at 3am when you're sleeping, or just VPN on in, or even invest in a fake ID. Nothing you do is going to stop that; you have to sleep some time, you have a lot of goals, they can stay up all night, and they only have one.

Catching your kids with porn and dealing with it is a game of whack-a-mole every parent has to play, and honestly it's one they need to play. It's about having those difficult talks and saying "it's ok to want to look as long as you realise it isn't real".

Mass surveillance isn't the way - if I were a government hostile to the USA (and soon the UK), I'd be working on making the best free porn site ever made. Think of all the free documents and credentials, think of all the blackmail material, think of all the harm that could be inflicted.

Admittedly, skin cream is likely to face less of a rabid drive from kids, and isn't something you'd blackmail over. Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion, or maybe president Puta wants to use my girlfriend's skin lotion addiction to compel me to spy for Russia?
- Yeah. Keep public spaces (meaning, advertising) mostly free of porn. Aside from that, children who are interested in porn and sex are ready for it, let them explore it with the neccessary knowledge and care and avoid abuse from broken grown ups. Laws should be focused on that, a sensible approach, including the parents.
  
  Generally saying "porn only for 18+" doesn't work, since it's a primary instinct.
  
  Even worse, we know that sexual repression just pushes people into more extreme and unusual sexual practices in adulthood. Just give children comprehensive sexual education already. It prevents unwanted pregnancies, sexual abuse and mental illness.
- Like, I remember the pirate radio station making a big hubbub during that time when rock n roll was banned in the UK. I could see illegal porn sites operating on ships in international waters, outside the boundaries of US enforcement using satellite connections to get their content out there. Problem is, the US is a little more trigger happy and might just send Navy ships out to sink them. If it happens in international waters nobody has to know.
  
  We have a lot of land in the US that is a pain in the ass to get to, would be harder to set up but I could see some spiteful folks setting up something in the remote asshole of the mountain ranges. Would also be a lot harder to follow them if they pissed off as well.
- Then again, maybe little Timmy needs some lotion
  
  Maybe Timmy is building a skin suit.
I'm sure big tech is stoked on this idea. I mean, they were always able to figure out who most people were but now people have to straight up enter their identification and positively confirm.

I'm sure no one will use that information for nefarious reasons, right?
- Frankly already a moot point - your browser fingerprints are already uniquely identifying (even before IP, cookies, and backend analytics). Realistically, tho, just more info for them to sell, leak and then eventually pay $0.25 per person in Google Play credit in the class action settlement.
  
  short of a website provider having access to my provider ip over time vs. customer data, how is my browser fingerprint uniquely identifying me when I clear cookies every now and then and often resize the browser window? Genuinely curious - obviously between clearing cookies there's an issue, and also if I use logins to any websites that share data with some asshat like google analytics, they will recognize me across websites. And of course with the latest mozilla data grab, things will get worse :/
What? Now kids have to learn how to download a VPN before buying makeup? Should be some good pepperidge farm memes soon
- VPNs don't help here, the website asks you for your driver's license. Tbf giving your credit card to them is typically enough for them (big tech + govt) to construct a full profile of who you are anyway, and that was the original "age gate" -- though there are some services that make CCs modestly privacy preserving -- not the case for IDs
  
  Yea, age restriction like this is a nogo for me. And yess, VPN would help, since in other countries, they still allow access just by clicking “I am 18”.
Such laws are guaranteed to fail in their written objectives. The intended objective is to lead idiots to believe they help.
- idiots
  
  The people who voted for it, you include?
You don't even need to visit adult sites to find porn nowadays. Its all on social media.
Given the 3 examples given in the article, I would say that this time they are wrong. None of the items given as examples should be accessible to a minor without parents approval anyway, expecially if we are talking about medical items.

Not that I think that a law will magically change something, btw.
Yes. Teach a new generation how to operate around such lunacy.
The porn one makes sense, but skin cream one don't.
None of this is bad. The skin cream one is dumb but the rest are def needed.
- It's all about the implementation. The Washington bill is treating diet products as similar to alcohol (check ID in-store and on delivery), which seems fine to me.
  
  The NY law seems to be suggesting that dating app services need to collect (and possibly retain) sensitive information on people, like identification, location data. That's troubling to me.
  
  I understand the concern but if ot stops underage people from getting on, I think it's a good idea. All social media needs it too. We have to protect our kids better. As someone with step kids, I hate that they use tiktok but they were already addicted to it when I entered the picture.
- They’re all kinda the same amount dumb. The anti aging creams that bill targets are causing genuine long term skin damage to young girls who think they need it because of a massive economic system built on exploiting their insecurities. It’s pretty gross.
- Not true, we all know what those uncontrolled kids do with the skin care products after pirating the porn.

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