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Mastodon says it doesn't 'have the means' to comply with age verification laws (techcrunch.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 3 points 1 year ago (8 children)

In Finland you could handle this by having people authenticate using their online bank passwords. A LOT of government stuff already works that way, so it would require almost no extra coding at least over here. I wonder why it cannot be done the same way in England?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago

    Sort of the same system they’re building in Denmark.

    You will log into MitID (myID), authenticate with the MitID app, then be issued a bunch of ZKP tokens which you’ll burn off against age verification services. No trace, fully authenticated, fully trusted, damn near impossible to fool.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (6 children)
    • Teenagers can find out their parents' passwords (or their friends' parents' passwords) if they really want to, and if things are anonymous enough not to leave a paper trail that would allow spouses to see each other's porn usage, they're anonymous enough to let teenagers hide that they're using their parents' credentials. 2FA helps, but it's not like teenagers never see their parents' phones.
    • There's not anything that all adults in the UK have that could be used for everyone. There's no unified national ID or online government identity. There's no one-size-fits-all bank login system. You'd have to build and secure tens of independent systems to cover nearly all adults.
    • As I said in the post above, if it's too much hassle for teenagers to access mainstream, legitimate porn sites, then there's very little anyone can do to stop them accessing obscure ones that don't care about obeying the law or can't do so competently. If governments could stop websites from existing and providing content, there wouldn't be any online piracy.
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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    There’s not anything that all adults in the UK have that could be used for everyone. There’s no unified national ID or online government identity. There’s no one-size-fits-all bank login system. You’d have to build and secure tens of independent systems to cover nearly all adults.

    i mean, that seems like a solveable problem. either build a national (internationl?) or have some reciprocity with the identification systems that allows the different regions to easily access each other's systems.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (4 children)

    Online banking passwords? "Find"? How the hell? Have you lived in a barrel?

    There is a 8-number code that I've got in my head, then there is a 4-number password that I've also got in my head. And then a paper with single-use passwords which work so that when I have given the two correct passwords, it tells me which code to use. And no way am I giving full access to my bank account for my children!

    Some banks also have a system where you log in with your fingerprint and then a four-number code using an app on your phone.

    I think the money on the parents' accounts is a much better motivation for the children than an ability to watch porn. And yet, I have not heard of anybody's children actually having found out their parent's bank passwords.

    And also: Maybe there really is a child that installs a keylogger on their parents' computer and steals the password paper from the parents' wallet and also happens to really want to go out of their way to watch porn... Well, then there is. Such a child is already in so many ways in trouble that I don't think seeing porn will traumatize them at all. Such children are few and it makes no sense trying to build a 100-percent foolproof system. In any case, using online banking passwords is a lot more reliable way than the weird hocus-pocus being done now.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    My point is that you can't build a completely teenager-proof system. Even if most parents uphold the most unimpeachable password discipline, someone's going to put a password on a post-it note near their computer, and have their child see the piece of paper, or use their dog's name despite their child having also met the family dog.

    The original comment I was replying to was framing the issue as teenagers being allowed to watch porn versus no teenager ever seeing porn and maybe some freedom is sacrificed to do that, which doesn't match the real-world debate. If freedoms are sacrificed just to make it a hassle for teenagers to see porn, that's much less compelling whether or not you see it as a worthwhile goal.

    As for what a teenager with access to their parents' bank password would do, if they're not a moron, they'll realise that spending their parents' money will leave lots of evidence (e.g. that they have extra stuff, their parents have less money than expected in their account, and there's an unexpected purchase from The Lego Group on the bank statement), and so they're guaranteed to end up in trouble for it. It's not any different to a child taking banknotes from their parent's wallet. On the other hand, using it to prove adulthood, if it was truly untraceable like adults would want, wouldn't leave a paper trail.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    You can't build a completely teenager-proof system. But you can build a system that is almost completely teenage-proof. And that's definitely good enough!

    All such systems exist only to support parents in their parenting. It gets easier keeping your children safe and developing well if the amount of ways the teenagers can be idiots is narrowed down.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    As I said, I fundamentally disagree. Even if you can make a nearly-teenager-proof website (and so far, your example has been something that most of the people I was at school with could have beaten aged thirteen), teenagers can just go to a different website, so the system is only ever as teenager-resistant as it is difficult to find a website that doesn't care. Most vaguely competent teenagers know how to find pirate sites with illegally-hosted TV, movies and music (even if they're not techy, one of their friends just has to tell them a URL and they can visit it). Governments have had minimal success stopping online piracy even when aided by multi-billion-dollar copyright-holding companies, so there's no realistic reason to think they'll have any more success stopping porn sites with non-compliant age checks.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    While I disagree with the teenagers' ability to find my banking passwords regardless of where I hide them, for example because I can make a copy of them that has been altered with a password I can calculate in my head and that takes the location of the password on the table into account in the calculation, the rest is true.

    I remember having seen things I really wouldn't want to see even as adult when I was browsing Internet for stuff that wasn't supposed to be available. Shady websites can be shady in so many ways! It is true that making an age verification system for a basic porn site will probably direct the youth to other sites with content you wouldn't see on PornTube. I hope my children won't ever watch porn, but if they ever do, I hope it's from a source that doesn't allow the worst things to be shown. For example PornHub does remove the worst stuff and is quite commonly used. If that one cannot be accessed, then probably something else will. And it's likely to be worse. Though, PornHub has a lot of really bad abusive things as well. Checked it out now and one of the first videos it showed was something that looked like the woman is really unhappy, even distressed, about the situation she's being filmed in :(

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