Technology

Isn't this an uneducated take as well? I mean to me it sounds like it's making the situation worse for everyone. If you strip teens access (and do a half-assed job), they're likely going to find the next more depraved place to do the same. Which will be more illegal. And they're gonna be more exposed and more vulnerable... We can see this with the newer social media laws in Australia for example. And they're probably less motivated to talk about this to adults, or get help, once they feel they did something wrong.

And then we have the issue with the adults as well. They can now not talk about valid topics any more. And they also have to pull down their pants, and upload their biometric data and name and ID to some shady companies. And we know this ends up in some large databases which will in turn get leaked and shared with third parties. So they'll be more vulnerable as well. Both to hackers and the dark enlightenment people like Peter Thiel and his political friends.

We also know from speaking to experts in the field, like police staff. How weird surveillance measures like Chatcontrol are utterly ineffective against the criminals. And not only that. They flood the investigators in false positives, and they'll have less time to do their actual job. So it actively takes away from the supposed cause.

I mean these things frequently sound great on some emotional level. Unless you think about it for 2 minutes, or look at the hard facts and numbers after implementing these things. I mean why an intransparent procedure by a private company, that also includes guesswork and shady things? Wouldn't we -instead- need effective means to protect minors?

And I don't think the new Discord procedures do, what you think they do. I think it's about limiting nsfw groups (and content). There's nothing stopping predators grooming kids. They can still talk to each other after March. In fact, they call it "teen by default". So the adult groomer will now be indicated as a teen as well unless they register. So, that makes it worse?!?!! How is there something "in defense of" that?

Edit: I mean I'd love to actually do something for young people. But that'd have to be something that actually tackles the issue. Not make the situation even worse for them... I've had some ideas on how to make the Fediverse cater more to young people, and provide a safe space to them. But that requires an entirely different approach.

When Roblox rolled this out kids were using AI tools to perform the face scan. Kids have easy access to sneak their parents' ID to upload in secret. Predators can use the same tactics. So we haven't gained any security, but some people will be caught up with having their real data made vulnerable.

The only real solution is for the parents/guardians to be engaged and involved in their childrens' lives. That means I have to occasionally invade their privacy and look at their communications, but more importantly it means I have to tell my children about the predators and what kinds of things predators will say to them. It's impossible to child-proof the world around us, we have to world-proof the children themselves.

Or maybe it would be more healthy (and cheap and useful) just to teach kids not to share "secrets" with shady people on the Internet?

P.S. And what about non-vulnerable kids? What about adults? All are victims now!

Instead of removing privacy from the internet, what if parents didnt just shove an ipad in their kids face and walk away?

I'm firmly against what Discord is doing (and what governments like UK, Australia - and soon others - as well).

The main reason is distrust. I do not trust that they - or anyone - would use this data responsibly and only for its intended purpose.

While I do not doubt that these measures could protect more children - I also do not doubt that these measures will be abused. Businesses will violate whatever privacy we still have left in order to get more money from info-brokers/ad-companies, and governments will use it for control. The US has been proving this with ICE, where they've been using Flock to target people.

That's why I always roll my eyes whenever these kind of measures are introduced. They're always introduced with "think of the children!" right beside them.

There's a reason why Apple - years ago - refused to develop a backdoor for iPhones when FBI requested/ordered them to do. There's just no proper way to prevent abuse with backdoors. Yesterday they wanted to check a criminal's phone, tomorrow they may want to target an annoying journalist.

Same principle with this tracking. Once Discord (or any others) can tell that your account belongs to you (IRL entity), there's nothing that you can do to prevent them from abusing that knowledge. Let's assume that today they use this new system for its intended purpose - who's to say that tomorrow they will?

Not mention the data breach discord suffered last year, where around 70k proof of age IDs were leaked. So not only you have to worry about Discord, you also have to worry about others that may get their hands on your info.

Don't get me wrong, we NEED to improve the safety of children on the internet. I fully support doing this via education, improving parental controls, maybe even banning children from social media apps until a certain age, etc.

But abusing our privacy rights is not it.

That’s one beef I have with the EFF right now. They offer no alternative solutions to this. They just didn’t want any kind of protections at all.

That's because public discourse is saturated by the extreme at both ends of the spectrum. The part of society that feels there could be some solution in the center of the argument is drowned out by Stallman zealots that feel that diddling kids is bad but you shouldn't be kept from doing it if it requires any information on you while the corporate sycophants are crying that they can't protect THE KIDS if they don't have every piece of information on you from birth onwards.

I view it the same as politics. I'll let the others behave as if they have a say in it and argue for or against. I'll just quit using discord when they require verification, as I will/have for any other corporation that does the same. Not because I don't think verification of some kind would help protect everyone from additional risk but because providing my very sensitive information to corporations that both exploit my data and pass it on to hackers and third-parties is not something I am willing to do.

Main issue i personally see is that i cant trust big tech. Ever. Especially not with my biometric data or my government id. If my government would have an online service where i could verify my age and in return get somekind official but anonymized hash/string which confirms my age to 3rd parties i wouldnt mind at all.

Instead the whole world is hellbent on deanonymizing everyone on the net while the political landscape in most countries leans more and more towards authoritarianism. Thats a pretty shitty combination in my book.

With all that said more safeguards for children would be great. But why not start with the inherent issues of our current online services where profit stands above all? Most moderation tools on the biggest services are just algos, "ai" and outsourced workforces in the 3rd world as sub-sub-sub-sub contractors. Sure, you cant moderate hundreds of millions of users without any automatation. But cutting into the profits a bit by employing more actual people would probably help a lot already. Emphasis on probably, idk i'm just an random asshole on the internet.

/Also its not great to start your post telling me that i'm an emotional dumb dumb if you want to convince me. While i dont agree with everything you said there were a few new to me insights which i almost didnt read because you came off as an annoying know-it-all in the very first sentence.

Should every single platform online be compelled to implement age-ID?