It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them".
And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)?
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device.
So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device.
Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa)
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification.
Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack.
It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that;
"age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look
which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of
corruption money following these actors pushing for it.
It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies
fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory
everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right
now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with
other technology too ...
I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011).
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated
If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.
Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage.
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)?
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane?
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device.
So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device.
Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
Here is a good article on it: https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-...
They already have your face.
I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.
I.....
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees
No way to opt out of the scan.
A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa)
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
Is there even an option at the airport to refuse face scanning? I assume that signs you up for a one way trip to a cavity search.
TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.
I completely agree with this, but my banking apps, my broker, my health insurance, my simcard provider all already require my face for identification.
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification.
Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack.
It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that; "age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of corruption money following these actors pushing for it. It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with other technology too ...
Who is the author?
I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011).
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
sry but at first, I thought it was about Anthropic's authentication.
Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated
I particularly like the form at the bottom for collecting your email address and adding it to a big list.
EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.
If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.
Has it ever occurred to you that this is intentional?
All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing
Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage.
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
Can we start a trend of wearing ski masks and other face coverings in public?