Technology

Steam's age verification is entering your credit card details.

Nice, same birthday

I'm born 1.1.1970

Age verification if intent was to make it not tied to real ID would be a system where you could go into any store and buy a card you can scratch off for a code to put in.

But, governments want to track and get rid of anonymous accounts. They don't actually care about age requirements. They want a 1984 type control of citizens to know what they are thinking or at the very least scare off people from expressing thoughts like politicians should be held accountable for fear of current or future consequences from a government that may decide it is treasonous.

IRS should already know what I owe and not worry about who logs on to pay it.

These lists would effectively function as whitelists, blocking everything that’s not on the whitelist. Parents can then turn on a specific whitelist for their kids if they so choose, and they gain access to a curated list of age approved websites.

Yeah, i'd say if they were serious about "protecting children", they should provide a "child safe" DNS to log onto for your kids' devices.

People have been forgetting that home routers come with something called parental controls.

When my wife and I first signed up with Virgin as our ISP there was parental control turned on by default. Had to put in my credit card info to be able to flap.(Edit: Goddamn Autoassume! FAP not FLAP) This was 2021ish? So before the current stupidity.

Also, it's easy to feel like this is all being pushed by parents who just straight up refuse to properly parent their children...but it's mostly being championed by Puritan lobby/pressure groups. They think even totally consensual, CIS/HET amateur porn is disgusting and sinful. They don't want to see, so they're on a mission to make it so literally no one can see it.
With help from companies and people who have a vested interest in creating a panopticon-esque surveillance state. And the rest of the people involved in passing it are too old or ignorant or paid too well by the other two groups to stand in the way of it, or to have cut out the really egregious shit from these bills before they were passed.

Governments know about parental controls. They know it's the most effective, most efficient, and least destructive way to deal with this. They don't care. And they don't care about the children. If they cared, they'd develop their own parental control software, offer it for free, and encourage it's use.

If they really wanted to get draconian about it, as they are doing now with age verification, they would pass laws to prosecute parents who don't use parental controls for negligence.

But it's not about the children. At all. It's about preventing you and me, and all of us from talking to each other and entertaining ourselves. It's about turning the Internet into TV, a one way faucet of entertainment and information controlled by the wealthy .001% where us peons can't talk back.

These age verification laws are just the first step. They kill small forums and games like Urban Dead, and leave only sites controlled by megacorporations that can afford the age verification infrastructure and the massive corporate fines if a single kid sneaks in. Once you get used to this, it's easier for you to accept not being able to communicate online at all, or start your own forum, or YouTube channel.

I hate to point out the obvious, but they didn't accidentally confuse the two..

It is possible to build an age verification system, where you use your actual ID with a cryptographic process without any personal data. The technology has existed for decades now.

Trying a service and scanned my ID. We will see

Zero-knowledge proofs are a good concept. They've been possible for a long, long time, and allow age check without surveillance.

So why are they not being used? Because age check is just a cover. These people want to do surveillance, not protect kids.

So it's a good counter. Want age check? Do it like this. Oh, you don't want it that way? Why not, pray?

Whether it works (it has, previously) or not (as with the current bullshit from the US), it does bring to the public debate that this is unnecessary surveillance.

Maybe in alternate timeline where tech companies have historically acted ethically.

In this timeline where each new company and/or ceo is less ethical than the last, I know that any type of identification will be mismanaged at best or used maliciously at worst

All trust is gone between these companies.

I wouldn't be surprised if Discord's face identification is used to find good looking kids, and then messages ICE to arrange shipment to an island.

You're still thinking too small. They want to be able to see what everyone is doing and saying, no anonymity.

You need to trust your government or trust it to not turn evil to be willing to see them take on the task of knowing every single online account you use. And hope whoever comes into power doesn't find comments you made in a past a threat that it wasn't before. Like something as benign as the belief politicians should be held accountable could be flagged as treasonous for daring to question the government's credibility.

Which is the real goal of online verification. Police citizens and eventually kill off or curb sharing of thoughts and ideas for fear of current or future retaliation depending on who comes into power. Automated flagging of potential abnormals based on profiles generated from linked citizen online accounts is the end game.

The idea that this would help stop malicious foreign actors itself seems like yet another false belief that this type of system would be used for the good of citizens as opposed to tracking and move towards Big Brother.

Seriously. We need a functional government and world leaders who can manage id systems and verification with privacy and security in mind, and act reasonably in the public's interest, just like they do for driver's licenses, voting, taxes, etc.

looks outside

Oh no

The thing is usually for the bank account you have gone through rigourous checks already to open or maintain and account to prove your age. So face verification via an app is redundant.

We know it’s bull anyway but it’s at least a valid reason for no.

I’m the same as you. I’ll switch to browser and TBh if they piss me off enough I’ll start using cash