I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Ask yourself why you’re on Lemmy instead of Reddit, or FB, or Twitter.
That’s what I’m getting at.
Comparing one to the other is illogical, because even though they possess similar functions to Lemmy, they are completely different applications.
There is no algorithm here, no ads, no tracking. There are actual enforced rules and human moderation, and the mod logs are public. I am not having my feed tracked to sell me bullshit, and no one needs my ID.
That’s my I am here and not there. Hell, I like Lemmy’s differences so much I pay a sub every month even though it’s free, so providing an ID for access is a mere formality, and I’m personally fine with it since it’s an easy way to lock underage people out.
However, the big tech companies are not asking your permission to spy on you, as has been proved by the Guthrie case.
Privacy is a big reason.
How do you even expect a decentralised service run by hobbyists to even implement age-ID in the first place?
Yes, but again, they do not have my face or my actual ID. They can make a profile from my posts and it would resemble what I believe but in theory, after long posting on Lemmy or Piefed - they could implement tools to do the same thing.
Yes, they do: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-nest-doorbell-camera-nancy-guthrie-privacy-concerns-3639806/
If you haven’t given it, your neighbor’s doorbell has. If you’ve used a search engine, you’ve been recorded. If you have a smart phone, they know absolutely everything about you.
You do not have privacy anymore if you are using electronics equipped with a wireless connection.
It’s silly to pretend that an ID requirement is endangering your privacy when you live in a world where you are constantly tracked.
But the bigger evil is the effect social media has on developing young brains, so I’m fine with an ID requirement as a means of locking children out, until a better solution presents itself
We’re talking specifically about my face as provided by me via my own social media accounts.
I’d still like to know how you think this is remotely enforceable on the Fediverse, much less all websites. How can people here even afford it?
Thank you for the discussion. Have a nice day.
Thank you for sharing your perspective here. I found your comments interesting.
I’m not necessarily advocating for ID verification, but to answer your question: most instances require an application to join anyway, so this could simply be tacked ontop.
From what I understand aussie.zone already does something like this. To join, apparently they require a picture of you at a bar with a beer to prove that you’re over 18. Not a perfect method but procedurally not that different from checking IDs.
How is it enforced on them? How can many even afford it?
This doesn’t scale at all. Also, I’m not sure why aussie.zone is doing that because Australia’s social media requirements specifically only apply to large websites.
And even if it did, there’s no way that if aussie.zone was looked into over compliance that such a method would be considered acceptable by the regulators.
It’s not scalable for hobbiest run social media like lemmy. It would probably put a cap on how many people could sign up on some of the big instances, which could have the effect of more instances being created and the fediverse becoming even more decentralized so the load could be shared.
And how on earth would a regulator chase hundreds of different instances hosted all over the world to force them to implement age-ID?
The same way they chase 100s of different pot shops and liquor stores to make sure they aren’t selling to anyone under 18