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Pornhub is urging tech giants to enact device-based age verification (arstechnica.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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[–] 9 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Its the best option I can think of that doesn't infringe on privacy in any way while also working. The parents are responsible and technical changes that help make that more obvious to society along with making it easier for parents that can't be bothered to look after their children seems like the best compromise to reduce the chance of the otherwise inevitable loss of privacy that we are going to face. Or in some cases, already have.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Exactly, it makes sense up and down the stack. Parent says junior is under 18 to the os. Os passes it into the browser, browser passes it along to sites, or prevents displaying them. There would of course be ways around it, but it solves 95% of the cases immediately, and lets us adults continue being adults.

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  • [–] 0 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Any sort of hardware attestation that non-trivially identifies a person to verify their age is going to be used to track and exploit people.

    Anything less than that isn't going to be effective for the supposed purpose.

    The moment we need photo ID or government issued keys to access computer systems, things will get a lot more ugly real fast.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    That is not at all what we were talking about. California passed a law that only requires an admin on a PC to be able to create a child account which will be marked as under 18. Standard OS behavior there with permission systems that already exist. That then is passed up the stack. It's quite literally a boolean, one that was created by a parent. It's the most sensible way for a compromise.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    What makes you think it will stop there? Once the groundwork has been laid for this framework, all they need to do is roll out v2 which requires a little more from the user, etc.

    Most servers won't check this bit at first because they don't need to or care, but once the technology is in place, it won't be long before legislation mandating the checking of that bit begins to roll out affecting industries and providers that deal in topics and goods deemed to be bad for the children (it won't stop at porn).

    Once that happens, minors will learn ways around the check (or parents will be lazy and give their kids access to adult logins, etc), and the "need" to enact stronger checks will be pushed for and...

    Put all of it together and you're heading towards an Internet without anonymity in a couple of decades.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    That's all 100% a slippery slope argument. Fact is is that they're already trying to do that. Saying no is only going to be ignored, as it already is. It's better to provide a solution that works that also respects our privacy and allows us to maintain control over our devices, otherwise they'll mandate the exact thing you're worried about.

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