Which is not what anyone is calling for.

Pornhub just blocked Texas. We are very much using children as an excuse for big government.

Big government forced licensure upon motor vehicle operators because early on they demonstrated a tendency to cause societal harm. There is a place where libertarian ideals have to be curtailed for the greater good.

You didn’t answer the question. It’s one thing for the government to have your ID and tied to a physical activity. Do you want Facebook to have a copy of your ID? Do you want the government to be able to ask Facebook who said something that offended them for your real ID?

There have been cases where the cops arrested someone for criticizing them on Facebook

https://theconversation.com/mocking-the-police-got-an-ohio-m...

The cops also raided a newspaper for criticizing them

https://kansasreflector.com/2023/08/12/in-marion-county-news...

We have to be free to criticize the government anonymously

The law appears to require Facebook offer "anonymous age verification" through a third party (so ID is not shared with Facebook), and requires that third party must not retain or share PII used for verification.

For reference: https://flsenate.gov/session/bill/2024/3/billtext/er/pdf

The Texas porn law similarly required no records be retained, with pretty steep penalties ($10k per record) for noncompliance.

What are the positive effects of blocking Pornhub?

What? That's literally what we are talking about!

No, we're talking about stopping children having social media accounts.

How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID?

Do you have another method to prove age? One that doesn't require ID, and can be implemented as of today?

> How do you imagine that will be enforced? Perhaps by... ID?

Emphasis mine. It's that that which I'm disputing.

This law does not require you to have an account to go onto a website. It is a law that requires you are age-checked to hold an account on social media platforms. These are different things.

Holding an account —broadly speaking— allows you to post, like, comment, follow and be profiled in an enduring fashion. Some of these can have life-long implications that 12 year olds aren't equipped to evaluate. How many adults can identify unhealthy social media usage and do something to stop it?

I don't know how age verification will work in practice. Checking a government ID is one way but if you're handing that off to a third party service, it's expensive. They don't need to know who you are for certain. A similar check is when you buy alcohol. If you look young, you're asked for ID.

When I buy alcohol, I'm not because I look like a man with kids nearing his forties. It would be far cheaper for Facebook to have an AI watch a video of you speaking to camera, with ID as a fallback. Many social media platforms are ingesting gigabytes of our faces every day so. They probably already know the rough ages of their users.

But going on a website (eg Youtube) doesn't require you have a profile. Going on Facebook business pages doesn't require it. If anything, laws like this might mean that things like Instagram have to be more open to preserve their reach. Not a bad outcome, IMO.

When you buy alcohol, it’s very easy to see whether they are taking and storing your picture. You can also buy alcohol with cash leaving no digital footprint.

And is AI the new blockchain that will magically solve every problem? And most children over 14 don’t have government IDs either.

If you don’t want your kids to be on Facebook, use parental controls. It’s the parents responsibility.

I live in Florida for context. The same government officials talk out of the left side of their mouths about “parental choice” and now this law says children can’t be on social media even with parental consent.

Parental choice exists where parents can make informed choices.

You don't know how much their child is being affected by platforms that have been designed to be addictive, that go out of their way to spur conflict and argument (sorry, "engagement"), and that have so few parental controls that it's near impossible for a parent to actually vet what's going on, who's interacting with them.

You're not even allowed to give your kids alcohol. There's clearly some precedence for protecting kids from their parents' inability to make informed choices.

And ML models for detecting age have existed for a long time. It's not magic unicorn dust. It's just one way to avoid this ID stuff that everybody is upset about.

Then educate the parents and tell them about parental controls.

But would you be okay if I used that same argument about why open computing platforms are bad because adults don’t know enough about computers to avoid malware and ransomware?

And how do you know they're not a child?

Bars do it by having you show an id.

Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id.

Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id.

How does Florida expect a site to do it?

This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?

There's really no need for ID checking. Most porn sites already self-regulated by marking their content adult with meta tags/headers.

Parental control software picks up on that. [1]

Social media could do the same thing: make a social media adults-only meta tag for parental control software to use.

For the parents that care, and use parental control software, the ID laws won't stop their kids running into porn. The porn their kids are going to encounter is going to be on non-porn sites like twitter or reddit (or small sites that don't care about these laws anyway).

Maybe we needed a bigger push for more awareness or better parental control software but the ID law push is weird and unamerican to me.

[1] https://www.rtalabel.org/

> Parental control software picks up on that. [1]

That's client side. This law specifically makes this a server-side issue; the service cannot let a minor make an account.

How do you do that without ID?

By not having this law and doing it client side. My opinion is the law is bad.

This law might have never come up if we had better parental controls at every level of the software and hardware stack.

I'm a parent I have parent controls setup on my child's devices but it's very hard to dial it in properly and cover all the bases. It should be far more straight forward to manage than it is now.

I'm obviously pretty tech savvy and I would say 99% of parents are not going to get this right.

I can’t speak for PCs or Android devices. But iOS devices already have parental controls built in as do Macs

iOS parental controls are awful. The only way to get any decent control for my concerns that the moment is using the downtime features all day long. Effectively I've told iOS that he should be in bed for 23 hours and 55 minutes a day. It's ridiculous and extremely limiting.

Microsoft's parental controls are sort of ok. I also have separate control software for Windows and I have controls at the router. Of course, none of things can talk to each other to create a coordinated plan (say giving X number of screen time hours per day).

iOS controls effectively block adult sites and you can manually add sites to block and not allow apps being installed without your permission. What else do you need?

Some control over when certain apps can be used.

That has nothing to do with “protecting the children” from sites you don’t want them to see or apps you don’t want them to use at all.

But does have everything to do with parental controls.

Besides the easiest way to know what you kid is doing online is to watch them -- much easier to do if I control when they use it.

A solution to these issues is for the child to not have the device in the first place. A desktop computer in a central place with eye on it can go a long way in managing online activities.

As a parent, as a former child, as someone that grew up with computers in places just like you describe, let me say, in my personal and professional experience… lol

You’re right about parental controls, especially apple ScreenTime. I’ve used computers almost my entire life, I even work for Apple, and I still resorted to calling tech support about it. As far as I can tell, they don’t actually do anything useful, and instead just get in the way.

I do disagree that a technical solution could have avoided laws like Texas. It’s not about “protecting the children”. It’s never about the children. It’s just censorship. It’s just easier to go after a porn site than it is a library.

My sibling in the universe, we are talking about an actual LAW. WRT Texas, a law that is on the books and enforced TODAY.

Get informed.

I've just answered in a sibling thread.

I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25.

Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you were in a bar. Don't want to? Don't maintain a social media account. Don't have that drink.

The alternative is setting up a government-maintained 0Auth-style hand-off. They know who you are. The social media site could open a verification ticket, you authenticate with your government and they sign your ticket without the social media site getting any of your details. The trade-off with that is cost and your government now knows you're on TikTok. For some people that last one matters.

If you paired these laws with strong PII protection (see GDPR) to stop social media sites storing this stuff indefinitely, using your data against you, it might be an easier sell.

Thank you for answering.

You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan.

I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.

The reason I have faith in a pure-technology solution is because setting up ID-linked database APIs will take time and querying it will cost social networks real money. When this was discussed in the UK, we were looking at 10p per check. That's $1m for Florida alone plus engineering to get it in.

They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too.

My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo.

But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.

“Think of the children!!!” Has been used for a very very long time to enact terrible laws and quietly remove rights. It is everywhere you look.

Right, definitely wouldn't want that. But do we just have to accept the negative impact the internet can have on children as a necessary evil then?

So you would be okay giving your ID to Facebook or any other site before you can access it?

No, I wouldn't. I'm just wondering if we have to accept the consequences for children or if there's some alternative solution.

How do you propose that social media sites verify your age without showing them your ID?

By showing a third party their ID that doesn't share the actual ID with eg, Facebook. That third party would then share their status with Facebook. Facebook doesn't get the ID, but does get to verify that they're of age (or not).

So now the government still has a way to match a user with a real person and we have to trust a third party company with our ID?

And I should have to do that as a 50 year old guy with grown kids for “the children”?

How about if parents are concerned about their kids, they should use the parental controls that are already available.

And this isn’t theoretical for me. I live in Florida.

If we have to accept the negative impact of bullets in our childrens' bodies from spree killers and cops as a necessary evil to preserve the Second Amendment then yes, we should accept the negative impact of the internet as a necessary evil to preserve the First.

Kids-only internet (moderated by child development phds, idk) you need specific, cheap hardware to access. Less walled garden, more sandbox. It wouldn't be a place for entrepreneurs.

Registration and access maintained at the county level or smaller so that community standards and relationships shape adoption and use.

Low age cutoff with actual adults trying to connect put in jail and on a list.

I’m struggling to parse anything you said.

I'm arguing for a completely separate kindernet. While on packed public transportation.

Who is going to pay for it and who is going to decide what’s appropriate? If the government decides, what happens when a party is in control of government that has opposite views than yours?