Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for privacy. But between setting up the birthdate when creating my children’s local account on their computers, and having to send a copy of their ID to every platform under the sun, I’d easily chose the former.
I’d even agree to a simple protocol (HTTP X-Over-18 / X-Over-21 headers?) to that.
To bring charges under those sorts of laws there’s going to have to be some external evidence of harm. Either the kid is acting in a way that causes an agency sufficient concern that they investigate the family, or the government mandate much stricter monitoring of exactly who is doing what online. The former case is unlikely, but should probably be persued vigerously when it does hapoen, and the latter case is something I imagine we all very much want to avoid.
By providing a simple, privacy conscious, way of taking some of the burden of vigilence off of the parents (the child is less likely to stumble on inappropriate material) it makes it easier for them to provide actually beneficial guidance, and reduces the risk of law enforecement getting involved to investigate minor transgressions.
if they are claiming the new laws are for kid safety there must be existing already some external evidence of the need, no?
There’s fairly clear evidence at a societal level that access to, for instance, hardcore pornigraphic material is harmful to children, but that is very different to having evidence that a particular child is currently being exposed to it.
exactly. so why do we need more laws that also happen to provide massive leak able tracking to corporations and govs without warrants, etc?
I’m not sure what you mean by “massive leak able tracking” in this case. It’s literally a flag that indicates the user’s age bracket, and means sites don’t use the really invassive options.
setting that flag involves the leakable process.
putting burden for safety on corps is not a healthy thing.
The burden is still on the parents, but this would actually provide a useful tool for them to address that burden.
have you seen any existing tools be so bulletproof that kids cant get around them?
No, and this wouldn’t be impossible to bypass either. I don’t think the aim is 100% perfection, so much as harm reduction, and I don’t think you’ll get more than that no matter how onerous the law becomes. Most kids, most of the time, are not going to be trying to circumvent it, and it would still be up to the parents to look out for cases where they were.
The current proposal requires storing and transmitting a flag that can take one of four values (under 13, 13-16, 16-18, 18+), and prohibits sites using other means of age verification. It’ll work adaquately to stop kids accidentally seeing pornography, and hopefully things like andrew tate, giving the parents some space to do their part to help their kids learn how to understand what they migjt be exposed to.
why are the harm reduction methods we have now not being used?