It will make kids really good at bypassing the restrictions that get put in place, which will probably require them to go to some of the shadier places on the web, which could put them in more danger.

The people who made these rules don't understand the fundamental rule of the internet: any online restriction put in place, can be overcome with tools and knowledge that are also readily available on the Internet

Prob should double down the efforts rather than scrap it then right?

“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it” John Gilmore

I saw an interesting video suggesting that the real motivation is to give megacorps like Google a new business acting as "banks" for identity, i.e. the Internet would get so inconvenient that people would just save their identity with Google (or Meta, etc) and then use them to log in to other websites.

I probably explained it badly, but the video I saw is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAd-OOrdyMw

People in the comments pointed out that those companies would also have the ability to delete or suspend your identity verification if you did something they didn't like (or refused to do something they wanted). Reminds me of the SIN from Shadowrun .

Indeed. Anybody but the biggies will have an impossible task trying to convince people to verify their ID, so all the smaller sites will switch to only allowing registration/sign-in through Google/Apple/MS's Oauth, and depreciate the username/password option. When "signing in with Google/whatever", Google will simply pass a flag "adult" along with authorizing. In the end, they become the gatekeepers for the whole web, collecting tremendous valuable data in the process and gaining even more power over your identity.

Always keep in mind that the small players will always take the easiest option, and the big players want more control.

Internet monitoring should fall to the parents. When the government parents, they parent everyone and abuse their power.

There are tons of products to prevent access to apps and websites. If all else pass a law so users opt-in to restricted internet access.

This isn't the motivation in Europe where there's a deep skepticism about those - all foreign - companies.

There is no need for conspiracy-type thinking. "Think of the children" has always been a powerful and real motivating force, not just a cover for nefarious other stuff. You need to recognise that, even if it's wrong-headed.

Well, who'd have thought.

Makes identity theft much more likely though

It being a real and powerful motivational force means it's one of the more useful covers.

Just because it motivates the voters/customers doesn't mean it's the genuine reason behind a decision.

I cannot think of a single recent "think of the children" based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.

Can you?

If you're in the uk, feel free to sign this so that your signature can be dismissed or ignored in parliament in a few weeks when this petition is shot down:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/722903 (Petition is for: "Repeal the Online Safety Act")

Has anyone got any half decent ideas for how to improve age verification? Obvs without this draconian shit.

I had a thought once about doing it with NFTs, where a company could independently verify you with certain metadata, like 'is human' or 'is over 18' etc. Then you get issued your token, and these sites can verify you without de-anoninising you.

Not sure if that's a naff idea, but would be interested to know if anyone's got anything better

I cannot think of a single recent “think of the children” based action that was intended to and actually helped the children in a meaningful way.

Are you judging the motivation purely based on the effects? Otherwise, how are you working out what goes on inside people's heads?

I think given that we all agree that there are voters who think this will protect children makes it crazy to think that politicians must somehow know better. It is well-accepted online that politicians are out-of-touch when it comes to technology, so it's not like they understand the subject of this article.

The EU has something in the works with zero knowledge proofs. Which would be a good way to do this.

I still don't agree on the fact that this needs doing at all... But at least it's not as bad as the UK's half-baked nonsense

Exactly. A kid that wants to look at censored stuff won't spend much time making sure the workaround is safe. He'll just use the first free VPN that works. Which will probably sell his data. It's not like these kids will spend a considerable amount of time to choose the safest, most private and reputable VPN. Also, they won't be using the paid ones.

Unfortunately, even EU's solution doesn't support non-google-backed android.

It seems like they have replied and said they won't repel the act.

politicians must somehow know better.

No, no, the accusation is that politicians are lying.

Let's phrase this another way. Asking every single website in existence to implement and maintain an ID database and monitoring system is expensive, yes? So, why wouldn't private companies shift some of this responsibility off to a 3rd party who specializes specifically in this service?

If I were google, I would:

• One, be very excited about tying a user's account analytics to their government personhood; can't multiple-credit-cards your way out of that one.
• And two, already be looking at my own 3rd-party user login service as a means of beating out all competition in this space.

The only thing left to do is lobby. Politicians might not have this vision, but they do understand really expensive dinners.