This is what they are OK with. As long as responsibility is out of their hands in any legal sense instead of actual solutions that don't undermine privacy. They are OK with it.
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
It's not even this. It never had anything to do with responsibility, or child safety, etc. It has everything to do with tracking users which makes collected information more valuable to data brokers. Secondly, it let's them justify advertisement fees in the age where where some traffic is from AI agents.

excuse me i have a little class i'm using norman reedus and death stranding
100% this.
There's a smart mart where I grew up that was built in the late 90s. https://www.yelp.com/biz/smartmart-memphis-2
Basically what it sounds like. A fully automated neighborhood convenience store before automation was really a common thing. Actually very similar in appearance and function to the automated Carl's JR. in Idiocracy.
When I was in highschool my friend's mom used to just give her ID and send her down to the smart mart to "buy my smokes." That was 20 years ago, but I'm really not sure how tf it would be any different with this tech?
I think they even had some kind of early frt that was supposed to scan the face of the purchaser and match it to the id. Funny thing about genetics, you often share similar facial features with the person who gave birth to you.
Also, this is a bit of a tangential point, but even if you weren't trying to "abuse" the automated system's safety features, there were still unintentional glitches that resulted in kids being exposed to things they weren't supposed to be exposed to. Like when I was 16, I was bored and went to smart mart one night to get a drink. Somehow ended up receiving a free pack of zigzags with my Yoohoo.
The network state tech already glitches all the fucking time. They've repeatedly exposed sensitive government data and put all of us at risk of identity theft while claiming to have some kind of technocratic elite status that makes them qualified to lead America and do the stupid shit they keep on doing. This age verification bullshit is just the latest very poorly disguised invasion of privacy in the name of safety, and it is so fucking obvious nothing good will come of this.
In reality, they don't know wtf they're doing other than gaining more control that will enable further exploitation. And it's not even like we have a say in whether we choose to use the enshitified tech. They're forcing it on us. Idiocracy has become mandatory reality thanks to the nanny network state full of "libertarians" who despise regulations, until it comes to regulating the private lives of citizens.
Since it's their shitty private monopoly being shoved down our throats (still paid for with out tax dollars) and not government in the traditional sense, it can't be oppression, and we should thank these technocratic experts for steering us into the fucking ground.
And that's not even taking into consideration how creepy and concerning it should be to anyone with two fucking brain cells, that we're obviously enabling a network of wealthy pedophiles, (who have repeatedly proved themselves to be above justice), to have the ability to just create a database of children across the U.S. that they will then be able to track and locate every time they use a device or walk past a surveillance camera with live FRT. What a fucking nightmare.
But what if the age verification system asks for your video verification + legal documentation? Like many platforms do these days? They need you to frame up your face in on-screen cutout and then provide your documents, then it goes through a review process.
I'd just buy my child a VPN to avoid this shit.
Anyway it’s not about Age Verification, it’s about control, coercitive control. You go to an environmental manifestation and your dad get a call, that type of thing
Conspiracy brain.
Read the debate about age-verification in the places where it's been implemented.
Yeah it's for deanonymizing your online activity so they can sell it to data brokers, who will then sell it to anyone who can pay. Anyone, including ad agencies, fascist governments, law enforcement, religious extremists, people who hate you for existing, etc. It's not theoretical it's right there in the open. Maybe the literal people taking your ID won't do anything to you directly, maybe, but the data about you they sell without a second thought will be bought by people who will and do.
No it isn't. No Labour MP (for example) put forward that argument in favour of it when it was implemented in the UK. The law in the UK is popular, because porn use among children is seen as a problem.
Oops I fed a troll. Imagine anyone not telling the whole truth! Heavens to betsy, the inhumanity!
Imagine Keir Stamer telling the whole truth …
I understand this argument with US politicians, and especially the Republicans, who can all be assumed to be in the pocket of big business, but I don't think you've gone through any of the UK politicians in support of this to see what their business connections are, never mind the majority of them. For example, pulling the first MP I found speaking in favour of age verification on Hansard, what makes you think Iqbal Mohamed is in this for the benefit of data brokers? (He's not a Labour MP, I should say) Have you ever heard of him before today? What about Lewis Atkinson, who also supports age verification? His job before politics was in the NHS.
There is this extreme cognitive dissonance about this debate, where people are unable to deny the obvious truth that, unlike us, most people are in favour of age-verification regulations, yet insist that this simply does not feature in the motivations of politicians in implementing such regulations.
I'm not a troll. I'm not naïve. But I am also not so idiotically cynical as to believe that the motivations of politicians are wholly based on servitude to business, wholly divorced from the motivations of the general public even when those motivations align.
The law does nothing but push adults and underage users to unregulated platforms. They (the general public and the politicians) don't understand the internet. You don't understand the internet if you think this accomplishes anything. The only way for children to be safe on the internet is by educating their parents.
This is binary thinking and is false. The law does do something by putting up an obstacle to seeing porn. Hundreds of thousands of children are seeing porn by accident, way before they are ready, not because they're horny little teenagers. Yes, those who are highly motivated will find it, but you should not be this absolute.
The cost of this law in privacy violation is not worth the benefit it brings to children. But it still does bring a benefit, and you're unlikely to convince anyone if you can't see where they're coming from on that.
it still does bring a benefit
If you think it's a benefit, pushing everyone to use less moderated platforms then sure. You clearly don't understand the internet. If you click a link and are exprected to show a video with your ID and face visible, what do you do? I say it is extremely dangerous and criminal for a government to demand this from their citizens. So many people will have their identity stolen, I guarantee it, it's already happening and will get much worse. https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/25-percent-of-kids-will-face-identity-theft-before-turning-18-age-verification-laws-will-make-this-worse/
Even if you assume that the politicians aren't being intentionally evil, in the best case they are acting from a position of negligent ignorance. It doesn't really matter what their reasons are for supporting this, or what they intend for it to accomplish, the reality is that these kinds of laws will be used for the things I said. Someone should have told them that. Someone likely did tell them that. They decided, in the best possible case, that protecting children from seeing naked people or swear words is worth the dystopian surveillance of the general population. They're fucking wrong and this kind of legislation only shows how ignorant and/or complicit they are. Maybe you could think like one fucking step beyond the political talking points to the real effects this will have.
As long as the platform can pretend there are no children it doesn’t need to provide safety features for them. Thats what this is about.
Adults can be exploited more freely and legally. As a bonus they are getting more personal information of having you provide proof that you are of exploitable age.
That kids will fake it will be blamed on the parents and not them.
Just like HR and legal department at any company, this isn't to protect the customers, this is to protect the owners.
The US federal courts had an interesting opinion there: parents may always allow their children to access protected speech. Even with sex-related materials, the Supreme Court has stated
the prohibition against sales to minors does not bar parents who so desire from purchasing the magazines for their children.
They regarded as constitutionally defective laws that impose a single standard of public morality. Instead, they'd allow laws that "support the right of parents to deal with the morals of their children as they see fit". Laws that take away parental control are also impermissible.
“It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder.” Prince v. Massachusetts, supra, at 166.
In another decision, they regard & defend parental responsibility & discretion in leaving access open to children, and they find measures "enterprising and disobedient" children can circumvent preferable over unacceptable alternatives.
The Commonwealth argues that central blocking would not fulfill the state’s compelling interest as effectively as the access number does because minors with phone lines could request unblocking or could gain access to unblocked phones. It also argues that a parent who chooses to unblock the home’s phone to gain access to sexually explicit material for himself or herself thereby places dial-a-porn phone service within the reach of minors with access to that phone. In this respect, the decision a parent must make is comparable to whether to keep sexually explicit books on the shelf or subscribe to adult magazines. No constitutional principle is implicated. The responsibility for making such choices is where our society has traditionally placed it — on the shoulders of the parent. See Bolger v. Youngs Drug Products Corp., 463 U.S. 60, 73-74, 103 S.Ct. 2875, 2883-84, 77 L.Ed.2d 469 (1983) (parental discretion controlling access to unsolicited contraceptive advertisements in the home is the preferred method of dealing with such material).
Even with parental control, the Commonwealth is undoubtedly correct that there will be some minors who will find access to unblocked phones if they are determined to do so. As the Supreme Court noted in Sable, “[i]t may well be that there is no fail-safe method of guaranteeing that never will a minor be able to access the dial-a-porn system.” 109 S.Ct. at 2838. Nonetheless, the Court did not deem the desire to prevent “a few of the most enterprising and disobedient young people,” id., from securing access to such messages to be adequate justification for a statutory provision that had “the invalid effect of limiting the content of adult telephone conversations to that which is suitable for children.” Id. at 2839. We hold that because the means used, requirement of an access code, substantially burdens the First Amendment right of adults to access to protected materials and is not the least restrictive alternative to achieve the compelling end sought, the statute cannot survive the constitutional attack.
So, according to them, presenting such content to children ought to be left up to their parents, and laws shouldn't infringe on their right to do that.
I grew up in Italian-canadian households, so even as a little kid I got diluted wine at meals. As a teen I thought it was illegal so didn’t talk about it, then one day had a hotel room tossed by narcs who left empty handed yet left all the beer in the tub that we were obviously all drinking… only one of us was drinking age, and the room was in their name, so the narcs never even commented on it. In your home, in B.C. anyway, you have discretion about what the kids consume, as long as it isn’t abuse.
Most age verification providers also require video with the person's face doing specific movements, which is then matched with the ID, so stealing an ID probably wouldn't be enough.
Not that it'll stop kids from trying, and sending their parent's ID to some random sketchy company without their knowledge anyways.
Google/Youtube only requires either a selfie or an ID...
Hence why I said most.
Regardless though, you know they're gonna up the ante as they go. The more normalized it becomes to share more data, the easier it is for them to ask everyone for it too.
Yes. None od these laws prevent children from viewing porn or whatever. It just forces them to do this or go to unregulated sides.
I remember kids in hs saying they were using VPN to bypass stuff.
My parents would have beat my ass if I did something like that. That was a pretty good deterrent.
IF they find out.
My mom kept her purse by the door, mostly, not in her bedroom. If age verification had been an issue, I would have sneaked downstairs at night, slipped out her DL, taken a photo, and registered on whatever sites I needed.
If they sent some sort of verification to her email, I'd just log in, answer it, and delete the email. Of course I know her passwords, I showed her how to do it, and I'm always fixing some dumb thing she did.
Any kid is going to figure this out faster than me.
Actually, it's been proven to be a very ineffective deterrent in child psychology studies. It just teaches them to not do it when your actively present and try even harder to not get caught.
Plus the lifelong psychological scars of being assaulted by a figure you trusted to keep you safe from harm but those are a separate topic.
Yep. Corporeal punishment doesn't make good kids; it makes good liars and sneaks.
Corporeal punishment
What about spiritual punishment?
I still don't trust any of my relatives enough to open up properly. It eventually gets used against me in an argument anyway.
Don't worry, over the coming years they will find all the loopholes and tricks and close them off one by one until we're all securely tagged with electronic brain implants that can detect when you're thinking about lying about your exact age.
I suspect we'll violently throw off the chains of capitalism before we get to mandatory brain implants, but we'll see.
If a website requires a photo of a person ID or something like a drivers license, this is not "age verification", it's "identity verification".
That leads down a whole other rabbit hole of being tracked online.
Also if something like a website or pc starts asking me to upload documents with personal identifiable information on it (that not related to banking, healthcare, or a government service, I will straight up stop using it and block at my network level.
"Well, Mr. Smith... I see here that your son used your ID to access illicit materials on the internet. Did you not think to secure it? You realize you're criminally liable for allowing a minor to access inappropriate material? And I see you were at the government protest last week... such a poor role model you are, Mr. Smith..."
Can even just find a picture of a random ID card. Maybe mock one up in Photoshop. Like, what's actually being fucking verified? That it's a picture with a human face? I mean, if it's ID or facescan, those facescan shits have already been tricked with images of video game characters.
reminder that South korea has been doing this shit with KSSN for games. anybody thinking IDs would stip kids is kidding themselves.
It's going to create a cottage industry of virtual humans. They completely exist on paper, but not in real life.