I was against these kind of policies, but now that I saw Elon’s position I’m reconsidering.
My logic: The enemy of a paedophile is a friend of kids.
I’m 40 years old and was never into social media at all, so it’s easy for me to say: yeah it’s shit don’t use it make it illegal idk.
But seeing how angry the nazi pedo gets over these plans, it makes sense. His whole business revolves around making people addicted and depending on his stupid website. And not just him, because kids will just pick their poison or just double fist all of it.
If only was about what is good for his business…
They want to keep people poor ignorant and powerless.
Why? People in that state are the easiest to manipulate, use and abuse.
I don’t think we should be taking advice on children from somebody in the Epstein Files. Even if it might have just been him being a pathetic loser begging to go to the cool kids’ party like he’s 13 in body and not just in personality.
Elon Musk being against the social media ban on under 16-year-olds is him basically reaching a good conclusion from the wrong equation, because he’s not doing it out of privacy concerns about how everyone would probably have to verify themselves to prove that they’re older than 16 years old. He’s doing it because it would not be good for his business.
I’m not sure how they could implement this without requiring ID verification on every single internet user. I guess I’m not familiar with the topic enough to say if there is another way that they could pursue, but even if there is, at the same time, I’m not too confident in the governments opting for the other options. I’m from neither Spain nor Greece, so I guess I can’t speak on this, but I’m just referring to governments as a general group. And because a lot of different countries are trying to do this at the same time, I’m also not too confident about my own country not doing this at some point, sooner or later.
But the problem is not doing it right. If the page asks only “is this cert from a person older than 16 y.o.?” with an answer that can only be yes, no or bad cert, problem solved. The page doesn’t say which user has that cert and the authority doesn’t give any personal data except “older than 16”.
What’s the argument against a ban? I don’t see a downside to banning social media for kids. In theory they would be forced to build in-person social connections and local communities. After 16 they can expand into the social media space. Personally, I think it should be tied to something like drinking age.
It depends how it will be implemented. Do you want to send your ID to Facebook etc.? Or do you want to make a video call before you can use a social media site? Will only the big players be required to keep your age verification details, or will each forum, each Fediverse site be required to gather and keep your personal ID?
Exactly:
not so terrible way to do it: to verify your age you get redirected to government run service, you authenticate with you digital ID, get redirected back to original site with information about you age only
terrible way to do it: tell each site to handle age verification on their side
Knowing Spanish government they will go with the terrible way.
So now the government has absolute detail on every single thing you need to authenticate for, online. Nothing could go wrong there.
I don’t think there’s any good safe way for verification to even be achieved, even if there was a good reason for it, which, honestly, I think there isn’t.
Agreed this way is bad, but there can be a safe way of doing it. Basically, your digital ID has a way of signing that you are over 18 without giving any details. Estonia’s digital ID can do this. Imagine your digital ID has a way to sign documents with your age, but no other information. That way sites can know you’re over 18, without knowing your name, and the government doesn’t know what site you’re signing up to.
A less technical example of how this could work for the sake of explanation: You ask the government for a piece of paper that says you’re over 18. They don’t ask why you need it. All it has is a government stamp on it, saying you’re over 18. You give that piece of paper to someone trying to verify you’re over 18. They now know nothing about you other than that you’re over 18, and the government knows nothing about your activity other than that you want to prove your age for some reason.
Kids can still just use a VPN to get around this, but at least it doesn’t compromise the security of adults.
Kids can still just use a VPN to get around this, but at least it doesn’t compromise the security of adults.
And I can just sell my “you’re over 18” paper to some kid and he can use it. Spanish government proposed anonymous age verification certs some time ago. It’s also better solution than letting privet companies handle the verification but it doesn’t really solve anything. One leaked cert can be used by all the kids in Spain. If it’s truly anonymous you will never know who leaked it. If it’s not anonymous then… you know.
Well, I can also give my younger brother my ID to sign up to a site he shouldn’t be allowed to. It’s not perfect either. The advantage of this method, is that my digital ID that generates the certs can require authentication (e.g. a pin, or biometric) and sign a single cert which is valid for a single instance (this minute of this day) for a single site. It’s still anonymous, since this can be signed client side, but it can’t be abused.
If someone maliciously leaks their own certificate, and people start using third party software to sign stuff, that’s pretty dangerous, as your cert can be used to sign stuff with your ID attached as well if you want, meaning people could impersonate you for a lot of things, so you’d be pretty dumb to do that, and should report to the police that your ID has been compromised and get a new one issued.
