Ask Lemmy
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Everyone here is going to say: "Be a parent."
It's a meaningless platitude.
That is not a policy idea and sounds a whole lot to me like "just recycle, bro" and we can readily look around us and see that expecting individuals to act responsibly is shitty public policy.
I understand the hysteria over providing ID's, but understand, the social media companies already have all of your information as a user. You're sacrificing your privacy and that of your kids by using them to begin with. Providing and ID is just a formality, and an easy one, because it's something that (obviously) only an adult can provide.
This game is only won by not playing to begin with and disallowing any electronics in the home, at least until there is meaningful regulation of algorithmically-elevated content and mandatory human moderation.
Sorry, why are you on Lemmy then if you're non-plussed about handing over your ID? Social media sites (that I use) do not have a picture of me, or my actual identity.
There are some good comments on this thread that talk about public policy (beyond just ‘be a parent bro’) that do not require handing over any IDs or other compromising info to big tech. That would be the ideal solution in my opinion
I think that answer is obvious.
Also I think it's naive to think you're not already cataloged, especially given that we recently learned definitively that Google is feeding data to the government illegally without a warrant, thanks to the FBI desperately trying to look competent by publicizing doorbell camera footage for a person that didn't have a Google account in the Guthrie case.
If Google is doing this, every corporate social media site is doing it.
Tbh not really
Well, take a moment to think about it.
I could think of some reasons maybe, but none seem to stand out. The fact that big-tech is going to increasingly flagrantly violate our privacy as a precondition to use the services is an increasingly major one.
Ask yourself why you're on Lemmy instead of Reddit, or FB, or Twitter.
That's what I'm getting at.
Comparing one to the other is illogical, because even though they possess similar functions to Lemmy, they are completely different applications.
There is no algorithm here, no ads, no tracking. There are actual enforced rules and human moderation, and the mod logs are public. I am not having my feed tracked to sell me bullshit, and no one needs my ID.
That's my I am here and not there. Hell, I like Lemmy's differences so much I pay a sub every month even though it's free, so providing an ID for access is a mere formality, and I'm personally fine with it since it's an easy way to lock underage people out.
However, the big tech companies are not asking your permission to spy on you, as has been proved by the Guthrie case.
Privacy is a big reason.
How do you even expect a decentralised service run by hobbyists to even implement age-ID in the first place?
Yes, but again, they do not have my face or my actual ID. They can make a profile from my posts and it would resemble what I believe but in theory, after long posting on Lemmy or Piefed - they could implement tools to do the same thing.
Yes, they do: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-nest-doorbell-camera-nancy-guthrie-privacy-concerns-3639806/
If you haven't given it, your neighbor's doorbell has. If you've used a search engine, you've been recorded. If you have a smart phone, they know absolutely everything about you.
You do not have privacy anymore if you are using electronics equipped with a wireless connection.
It's silly to pretend that an ID requirement is endangering your privacy when you live in a world where you are constantly tracked.
But the bigger evil is the effect social media has on developing young brains, so I'm fine with an ID requirement as a means of locking children out, until a better solution presents itself
We're talking specifically about my face as provided by me via my own social media accounts.
I'd still like to know how you think this is remotely enforceable on the Fediverse, much less all websites. How can people here even afford it?
Thank you for the discussion. Have a nice day.
Thank you for sharing your perspective here. I found your comments interesting.
I’m not necessarily advocating for ID verification, but to answer your question: most instances require an application to join anyway, so this could simply be tacked ontop.
From what I understand aussie.zone already does something like this. To join, apparently they require a picture of you at a bar with a beer to prove that you're over 18. Not a perfect method but procedurally not that different from checking IDs.
How is it enforced on them? How can many even afford it?
This doesn't scale at all. Also, I'm not sure why aussie.zone is doing that because Australia's social media requirements specifically only apply to large websites.
And even if it did, there's no way that if aussie.zone was looked into over compliance that such a method would be considered acceptable by the regulators.
It’s not scalable for hobbiest run social media like lemmy. It would probably put a cap on how many people could sign up on some of the big instances, which could have the effect of more instances being created and the fediverse becoming even more decentralized so the load could be shared.
And how on earth would a regulator chase hundreds of different instances hosted all over the world to force them to implement age-ID?
The same way they chase 100s of different pot shops and liquor stores to make sure they aren't selling to anyone under 18
Those pot shops and liquor stores have actual physical presence on a high street in the same country. A small server run out of someone's bedroom in Finland and who they have no idea who they are is completely different.
Again I’m not advocating for this, but it wouldn’t be super difficult to block noncompliant severs from the mainstream internet. We do that all the time with torrent sites for example. Its true that technically savvy users could still find their way around this but these measures would still block the majority of users and create an incentive for server owners to comply
There's tens of thousands of sites out there under the description of "user-to-user communication service" with mixed content. If you set the conditions that every single one of them must provide age-ID tools for adult content access (aussie-zone's improvised solutions will certainly not be legally viable) the level of continued enforcement would be utterly ridiculous. It would be even worse if your country implemented a social-media minimum age requirement and declared that all sites thet enable user-to-user interaction also come under it. OSA in the UK, which does the former (requiring sites to age-gate adult content), attempts to do this - has been active since July of last year and barely scratched the surface.
You don't need to ban literally any website that could be classified as social media to have the desired effect. You just need to ban the big ones: TikTok, Instagram etc. Because these are the sites that are creating the most harm (through addiction, body image issues, etc.). There are diminishing returns blocking anything beyond that. Kids aren't getting addicted to gardening forums or developing anorexia because they spent too much time on tech support IRC channels.
Sure, but recall how this conversation started - we were talking about this specifically in the context of the Fediverse applying age-ID checks. It's financially non-viable and any attempt to enforce it would force instances to all shut down. Not that it realistically can be enforced.
Fair point. I'm sure if there was a social media ban the fediverse would be a low priority. That said I still don't see how it would be financially unviable because like I mentioned earlier most instances already have an application process
Because age-ID tools cost money to maintain. And most larger instances do not screen every single application individually. If it could be done financially without age-ID, it would certainly make running the instance a complete chore and cause many to shut down on that basis alone.
And asking people to give them a picture of them in a pub isn't going to be accepted as a valid age technique legally.
If they already have our information, then they don't need our ID for any legitimate purpose.
The government has all your info but you still have to show ID to vote.
Requiring an ID is a useful way to regulate many things, like ensuring children cannot access social media.
Yes, show, not give. There is a huge difference. In person, you can show them and know that they don't have a copy squirrelled away somewhere. With digital, you have to give them a copy, and you have no real way of knowing if they kept a copy or not. And given how untrustworthy these corpos are, they almost certainly did.