Call me a cynic, but I absolutely do not believe that companies "know that the days where they can just shrug off child predators using their products is coming to and end". I don't believe they give a fuck at all. In fact, if somehow a case made it to court and the court laid the blame at the foot of, say, Facebook, or whatever company, for a child being harmed, they still wouldn't care because the money they make simply existing as is so wildly outstrips any fine they could possibly be levied that it doesn't make economic sense to do anything differently.

There is real damage being done now and no one seems to care enough to stop it. Why go through all this negative PR about privacy violations if you can just keep doing the same thing?

Now, I can't claim to know what the "real reason" these laws are being passed is, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be because it gives more accurate data on users to sell and it is cheaper to advertise to your users when they directly tell you their age. Now, you can freely show pornographic ads, gambling ads, whatever, to your adults without ever having to worry about buying user data to know who will receive it. If a kid sees porn, well, you shouldn't have let them on an adult account.

related testimony from a fellow friend of the fediverse against a bill in Colorado from last night: here, starting at 7:12pm

Sure. There is no solution except asking the parents to monitor their kid.

End of story.

We don’t need age verification laws of any kind. We need proper parenting.

Do not accept the premise of assholes.

I agree that we don't need age verification laws. At the same time, I disagree that there is no other solution. The certainly is no ONE solution and there are no solutions that will capture all edge cases, but seriously going after specific companies for their lack of care in moderation will certainly help. Better moderation tools for federated social media will certainly help. Better education for parents on how to moderate in the modern internet will certainly help. Better tools for parents to create their own gated systems for their own kids will certainly help.

Everytime somebody posts something complacent like this telling us not to worry I remember a piece of speech by Arnim Zola in the Winter Soldier movie.

"Hydra was founded with on belief that humanity could not be trusted with it's own freedom.

What we did not realize is that if you try to take that freedom, they resist.

The war taught us much, humanity needed to surrender it's freedom willingly.

[...]

For 70 years, Hydra have been secretly feeding crisis, reaping war. And when history did not cooperate, history was changed.

Hydra created a world so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice it's freedom, to gain it's security"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E486XjhYHh8

Most of these systems have tools in place to help parents. The parents don’t give a shit—that’s the actual problem. Everything online is avoidable. There’s always a block button. Having your priest get touchy and not knowing how to handle it is waaaaay different than CR33PYGIRL6969 trying to be a perv online. Push block. Done.

Having been in this advocacy space for a while, when it comes to the internet, most parents I talk to just don't understand. It's important to also state that many parents are working multiple jobs, are maybe single parents, and have very little time and energy for anything. That is not a personal failure, that is a systemic failure. At the same time, society is continually moving to an internet-first paradigm for everyone including children, and there is not much these parents can do to affect this situation. You need an internet connected device for schoolwork, for public transit, for after-school programs, and for socializing (because it's where your friends are, which is a reality we need to wrestle with).

Provide me with a scenario where a child is online and approached by someone of ill will and the child cannot just block them, and/or go to their parents?

It is my understanding that all social media applications have a method to block other users. The same thing goes for games with social aspects, like Roblox.

If the scenario in which this happens is due to poor parenting, then the problem is poor parenting. As far as I’m concerned I should never ever have the effects of someone’s poor parenting touch me in anyway.

That is a completely different premise.
A) putting "Catholic church" and "protect children" in the same sentence is already a bold move
B) if I place my child in the boy scouts I do have some expectations on them to protect the child, correct. But that's not the all or nothing situation you mentioned in your example

My point is the same as with DNS Blocking: It is proposed under the umbrella of "think about the kids", but it doesn't work for what they propose it and it is a first step in creating the base of a censorship infrastructure. The govements (and by that I mean all of them not just the US) should hold the platform's accountable for shit they mess up now and don't accept "Sorry we can't do that at scale" as an answer. Google and meta should act much harder on reports by the community. interestingly, they CAN act fast and hard for copyright stuff or other things which would reduce their earnings.
As long as the governments won't act based on existing measures, I can't take any new ones serious

If you don't understand how a child can be manipulated by an adult online, I don't know how to help you.

And then the parents find out because they monitor their online conversations.

PARENTS ARE AT FAULT FOR NOT MONITORING THEIR CHILDS ONLINE COMMUNICATION.

End of the fucking story.

Do you know where your kid is? Do you know who they talked to today? Do you know the names of their friends online and where they chat? Do you know what websites and apps your child uses?

If you said no to any of these, your child should be rehoused.

Nope. The stats show that most child predators are either someone known to the child already, or other minors who don't know better. 'Stranger danger' is a moral panic that is not rooted in reality.

It was literally never about the children

There is a lawyer's wet dream of evidence against thousands of real-world non-speculative child rapists and abusers with names, phones, emails, and literal video evidence and written admissions of guilt of systematic rape, torture, abuse, and child sex trafficking that are legally usable in court.

What has been done about it?

Not one. Single. Arrest. Because the guys implementing the tracking are the same ones raping and torturing children.

This is not a policy or tool to protect children.

This is a way for the exact same sadist pedophiles to track children's identities so that they can use that plus data broker data to figure out what kids are most vulternable and target them to be raped, tortured, and abused.

Yes, that is common.

But just Google child predators in video games.

There are laws that make cism illegal in pretty every country. And most countries and companies are pretty quick with takedown requests. So why do we need age verification? CISM is illegal for everyone

Now for other stuff that is legally age gated in one country, but it is hosted in another country which has another legal age limit. Which one counts now?

Does the lawmakers have the reverse law in place, that when a page requests the age bucket, even if there is no legal requirement, does the pagebget fined as well? Otherwise it just leads again to the "cookie banner issue".

If you want to make a point...present a real source not a vague hint to google.
What is the issue? Do you mean NPC predators in games? Probably should be 18+ rated then...

If you mean multiplayer....no age bucket check will prevent predators on the servers....

There is such thing as parental responsibility, if someone just lets their child consume higher rated media online without any discurse its a parental failure.

What is next? Does the blueray player need to verify with photoID that everyone in the room is older than the movies rating?

You need to gain a lot of empathy and understanding for human beings that are being crushed under the heel of our systems.

In America other countries have at least done something.

True, but the whole systemd age verification system is coming from the US mostly right? I guess the UK and Australia too but I think the US has a much bigger impact.

Oh come on Marvel is literally US military propaganda I'm not even sourcing that it's all over the movies

Oh thank god we can protect the human traffickers' right to make a profit off abused women from slums 😍 I was so worried

What will likely happen is that if you try to log into your Facebook account you will get a message that says "Your Operating System is not currently supported. Your user experience will be limited to Groups labeled "Everyone"."

That's basically it. Your personal user experience will be limited to "kid friendly" areas of the Internet. (Same with apps and games.)

Well, that makes no sense because that means that using an unvetted machine is more beneficial for groomers and predators than a vetted one. Meaning they'll be incentivized to use that, instead of some perfect system where they'd be easily trackable and held accountable.

You are misleading yourself.

Consider a vehicle. We understand that there is a threshold of age and responsibility to operating a vehicle safely, but we don't hold the vehicle manufacturer responsible for driver error if the driver is under the age of licensing.

You are suggesting that an os maker can be held responsible for user decisions, which is both unenforceable and legally unsound.

Correct. Right now the OS maker is not responsible. That exactly why Meta is pushing so hard to change the laws to make them responsible.

Your analogy is a good analogy. In your car analogy, today, no one blames the car manufacturer for a drunk driver, but we do blame bars and bar tenders. In many states, bars have to be licensed and if the bar tender allows some one to get drunk and drive home the bar and the bar tender can be held liable. This situation would be like if bars got together to lobby state and national governments to make it so that the car manufacturers had to install breathalyzers in every car so that the bars could reduce their liability and responsibility.

The problem the predators would have if they are relegated to the "kid friendly" sectors is that those sectors are much better policed by users and the corporations.

It's not really the public content that is the problem, the problems really come when a predator can lure a child into a private chat. That's when the predator can start their process of grooming that eventually leads to blackmailing the child (grooming is a process and it's damn evil and damn sinister). By relegating the users to "kid friendly" areas, the opportunity to pull kids into private spaces is greatly diminished.

Now, will the predators stop being predators? No. But if the platforms have strong child protection policies that make it more difficult for the predators, then they will move on to a website that has weaker policies. Which is just about the best an organization or platform can do, make the predators uncomfortable enough that they go hunt someone else's kids.

I don't think you've thought this analogy through, or else you haven't had much experience with bars. Drinking establishments have a duty to "cut off" intoxication, but that ends at the door.

The us military has a history of being very interested in recruits from tweens and teens online. And obviously the us military isn't alone in this.

If what you are suggesting is true, that "it's all OK because protect the kids", it would be fairly awkward to explain this practice.

That part of the speech is perfectly standalone and applies to many regimes outside the US

I didn't understand your disagreement. Yes just like a bar shouldn't be responsible for a person that gets plastered drunk after they leave, Facebook shouldn't be responsible for the actions of a predator that goes to a porn website to lure kids. Just like the Catholic Church shouldn't be responsible for a public school teacher that rapes her students at school. The only times any of these organizations are responsible is when the abuses happen while using their services.

I don't get why this is controversial.

I can't speak for the military's recruiting practices. Yes, I fully agree that the military's recruitment practices are very predatory, and should be reigned in. Politically, I personally think "enlistment" shouldn't be an option at all. It should be random draft. Every year the military should tell Congress how many new recuits they need, and Congress should approve a draft of 18 year olds for that many new recuits. The draft should be random, with no deferments or other ways out of service other than health reasons as determined by a military physician. (But that's way off topic.)

My disagreement with your posture is your implied insistence that protecting children is the only goal of these proposed laws. The military example should have shown you that this is obviously not the main goal of these laws, but you seem to want to ignore this.

Most ppl agree with protecting kids from mature content.

This law(s) is framed in a way to be unenforceable, yet the laws are coming regardless. This would suggest there is another reason for the laws.

• How would the law work for new Linux server rollouts?
• Over 18 only, no learning Linux in school?
• Change working age laws so no under 18 can administer servers?
• Consent on every automated install? How would that work?
• If servers are excluded from the law, will ppl just use a server install and add a DE on them after?
• How do we validate who is actually at the keyboard? (Hint, you can't)

Are you seeing how unworkable this proposed law is yet?

We don't prevent kids from going into hardware stores that carry dangerous tools, we assume children are accompanied by a responsible adult. This is no different.

Do not besmirch The Regime.

I m sry, I must have missed something, OS that doesn't comply with age verification laws?! What is that?

I don't even understand how this is supposed to protect kids from child predators. Do child predators not want to hang out online where they can interact with kids? So not having age verification enabled keeps you siloed to where the kids are.... Meaning if anything it helps predators pretend to be kids better.

Now claiming it as a way to protect kids from porn... I guess makes more sense. Because we all know that sketchy porn sites care about laws.

You don't understand how this protects kids because you haven't been taught to think like a monster. That's okay. But I have had lots of training in child protection.

The way "grooming" online often works is to get the kid to a place where the predator can start blackmailing the kid, but that's a process. That often starts on chat apps. Those can be in video games or social media platforms, etc. The predators identify kids in the apps and then will start chatting with them. It will start off innocuous, talking about the game or whatever, but eventually it turns into the predator trapping the kid into a secret (it's always about secrets). The predator will ask the kid "Hey, want to see some porn?" or something like that. And of course a 13 or 14 year old kid is going to be interested in that. Then "don't tell your parents" always follows. Once they have agreed to the secret, the trap is set. The predator brings the kid darker and darker porn and makes the kid feel more and more guilty and uncomfortable. Eventually it turns into, "Send me photos of your self or I'll publish these chats" (or worse, like in person meetings).

This is why "This is the parent's responsibility" is cruel bull shit. Parents can't be everywhere all the time and these predators make sure they stay out of parents views. The parents are victims too.

Everyone that says "This isn't about protecting the kids" is half right. It's not really about protecting the kids, it's really about protecting Meta and other developers from liability. Users love private messengers, and internet companies love them too. But it's a problem for Internet companies because they are the dark corners that make the internet companies liable. And they do have a responsibility to protect users on their websites, and they can't just claim "we didn't know", because they damn well know.

So, their solution is to require the OS to record the user's age, even if that's just "18+". The websites can call the age from the OS, get the "verified age" (they really don't care what "verified" means, that's the OS maker's problem) and then open their doors to the customer. (If the kid is using their parent's account or what ever, the internet companies don't care. They did their due diligence.) But if the OS returns "<18" then the websites can lock down the user's account. They can automatically turn on parental controls, require a parent's consent, etc. Most importantly for child protection, they can turn off or very strictly limit private messaging (all of the online problems start with private messaging). They can basically do a lot of the things they are doing now, just off loading the liability onto the OS maker. Which, personally, I think is better for the parents too. It's much easier for parents to monitor the OS then it is for them to monitor hundreds of websites and games.

And Lemmy, Mastodon, and fediverse users (and especially hosts) should want this too. Hosts on the fediverse do not understand how much liability they are taking upon themselves (if they did, they wouldn't be hosting).

It's a website that doesn't require a user to report their age.