> Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online
Make me think of one word:
Collaborators
The company is happy to strip people from their privacy, for the sake of children, terrorists, or whatever other excuse governments use to justify their excessive intrusion into people's lives.
Privacy is very important to me. And having to verify your age/identity in anyway online seems very risky, open to abuse, blackmail etc. The privacy conscious can work-around the verification or decide not to access restricted websites anymore.
It's hard to deny the negative impact that unfettered access to inappropriate material has had on the younger generations. Some sort of verification seems like a net-positive for society.
The problem is that bypassing it whether via VPN's or accessing sites that don't comply will be so easy that the whole thing will be ineffective to a large degree. But maybe a little effectiveness is enough. If it helps prevent very young kids from accidentally stumbling upon inappropriate content maybe that will have a meaningful impact.
This is a good way to test if a service is actually federated: Does this affect people using other servers? If people using other servers can communicate with each other and not care what policies the central bsky server sets, then it's actually federated.
> Parents in all regions except the USA and the Republic of Korea can verify their age using face scan. KWS prompts the parent to hold their device in front of their face. A machine-learning algorithm estimates the parent’s age using the device’s camera.
> Face scan verification is provided by Yoti (yoti.com).
I installed it but there's no direct interface - it needs to be opened via some intent and I can't be bothered to figure that out.
I would put a lot of money on it not being able to detect you pointing your phone at a Veo3 video of an old person though. Maybe on iPhones where you reliably have a depth camera? Doubtful on Android though.
It only takes one smart kid to beat this, and there are plenty of those.
But now I really do think we need to reel in the youth having unfettered access to attention grabbing algorithms. I know this isn't really what this is for but it's a step.
That being said, I wish these verification services would be provided by the government (with ridged watchdogs for storage) and not by private companies.
Laws such as these are dangerous because it normalizes the idea that you should submit your most personal data - and the risks that come with that - in order to access a service. In the real world, as another commenter has said, we don't retain that information beyond the confirmation.
Just like the Ashley Madison leak, data will be leaked, and companies hide behind "third party" to limit their own liability. I would like to know who these third parties are however, and they should be required to identify themselves (with their names, addresses, photos being made public).
However, I actually welcome changes like this. And they are healthy and good for the internet.
Because when draconian laws such as these are passed it's our obligation to express our displeasure and disobedience. So we'll use proxies, VPNs and other tools we may not have even invented yet just to make it clear they are not welcome to control access to content, they can try, but must never succeed.
They will try to block such tools, and we'll need to make new ones, and, as a community of hackers, it's vital free access to information is protected at all costs.
So we need more of this, it should be the law in every country, because only then will there be a motivation to ensure such laws are not enforceable on a technical level.
The UK is in the middle of a huge scandal that prompted a national enquiry regarding actual physical harm done to countless teenage girls: in the hundreds for sure, probably in the thousands:
"PM announces national inquiry into grooming gangs"
Note that the PM eventually bowed and launched a national enquire due to pressure: it's not as if he's a white knight here.
For it was all covered up by local politicians and police (some of which whom, for sure, also abused the girls) for fear of showing certain communities in a bad light (that's the official statement of several police officers as to why the countless reports of rape weren't followed).
It's great to "think about the children" but the UK should first look into why the number of rapes in the UK went 10x from 2000 to now. Ten fold. 10x. In a quarter of a century. What happened to the UK?
So the UK protecting children: remains to be seen.
As a sidenote there feels like there's an hint of posing here by BlueSky too: many call that social network "PedoSky" and the reason for it is many people with very dubious behaviour who couldn't silence their critics on Twitter/X moved to BlueSky. You know which kind of people: those who'll say it's acceptable to be attracted by children as long you don't physically do anything to them, those men wearing women outfit and dancing salaciously under the pretext that it's "art". They are on BlueSky, that's a fact. Hence, maybe, the posturing by BlueSky now.
I see that announcement as a safe haven for pedos teaming up with a government actively involved in the coverup of massive rape rings operation.
But I take it we should all applaud because it's all done in very good faith?
Working with the UK government and other mass surveillance lovers to create the forcible use of digital I'd identity to be online, which so many lobby companies are creaming at the idea of getting the concracts for.
Protecting the children in the UK would actually be pushing for less wars, lowering taxes and improving healthcare and education. Providing good community centers and paths to economic independence.
These "think of the children" excuses are the same as "oh no the terrorists/drug kingpins" and all those other threats.
The threat is plutocracy and concentration of power.
Maybe the screenshots just don't show it, but I'm missing the "I'm under 18, just don't verfify me and dismiss the notifications" flow. Or are you just supposed to ignore constant nag screens if you can't verify?
12 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 31.3 ms ] thread> Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online
Make me think of one word:
Collaborators
The company is happy to strip people from their privacy, for the sake of children, terrorists, or whatever other excuse governments use to justify their excessive intrusion into people's lives.
It's hard to deny the negative impact that unfettered access to inappropriate material has had on the younger generations. Some sort of verification seems like a net-positive for society.
The problem is that bypassing it whether via VPN's or accessing sites that don't comply will be so easy that the whole thing will be ineffective to a large degree. But maybe a little effectiveness is enough. If it helps prevent very young kids from accidentally stumbling upon inappropriate content maybe that will have a meaningful impact.
It's worth thinking twice about this in a country that is actively censoring mainstream political speech in its media.
https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/kids-web-services/pv-service/...
> Parents in all regions except the USA and the Republic of Korea can verify their age using face scan. KWS prompts the parent to hold their device in front of their face. A machine-learning algorithm estimates the parent’s age using the device’s camera.
> Face scan verification is provided by Yoti (yoti.com).
They have an app:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yoti.mobil...
I installed it but there's no direct interface - it needs to be opened via some intent and I can't be bothered to figure that out.
I would put a lot of money on it not being able to detect you pointing your phone at a Veo3 video of an old person though. Maybe on iPhones where you reliably have a depth camera? Doubtful on Android though.
It only takes one smart kid to beat this, and there are plenty of those.
But now I really do think we need to reel in the youth having unfettered access to attention grabbing algorithms. I know this isn't really what this is for but it's a step.
That being said, I wish these verification services would be provided by the government (with ridged watchdogs for storage) and not by private companies.
Just like the Ashley Madison leak, data will be leaked, and companies hide behind "third party" to limit their own liability. I would like to know who these third parties are however, and they should be required to identify themselves (with their names, addresses, photos being made public).
However, I actually welcome changes like this. And they are healthy and good for the internet.
Because when draconian laws such as these are passed it's our obligation to express our displeasure and disobedience. So we'll use proxies, VPNs and other tools we may not have even invented yet just to make it clear they are not welcome to control access to content, they can try, but must never succeed.
They will try to block such tools, and we'll need to make new ones, and, as a community of hackers, it's vital free access to information is protected at all costs.
So we need more of this, it should be the law in every country, because only then will there be a motivation to ensure such laws are not enforceable on a technical level.
"PM announces national inquiry into grooming gangs"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7872pngj2qo
Note that the PM eventually bowed and launched a national enquire due to pressure: it's not as if he's a white knight here.
For it was all covered up by local politicians and police (some of which whom, for sure, also abused the girls) for fear of showing certain communities in a bad light (that's the official statement of several police officers as to why the countless reports of rape weren't followed).
It's great to "think about the children" but the UK should first look into why the number of rapes in the UK went 10x from 2000 to now. Ten fold. 10x. In a quarter of a century. What happened to the UK?
So the UK protecting children: remains to be seen.
As a sidenote there feels like there's an hint of posing here by BlueSky too: many call that social network "PedoSky" and the reason for it is many people with very dubious behaviour who couldn't silence their critics on Twitter/X moved to BlueSky. You know which kind of people: those who'll say it's acceptable to be attracted by children as long you don't physically do anything to them, those men wearing women outfit and dancing salaciously under the pretext that it's "art". They are on BlueSky, that's a fact. Hence, maybe, the posturing by BlueSky now.
I see that announcement as a safe haven for pedos teaming up with a government actively involved in the coverup of massive rape rings operation.
But I take it we should all applaud because it's all done in very good faith?
It's Orwellian stuff.
Protecting the children in the UK would actually be pushing for less wars, lowering taxes and improving healthcare and education. Providing good community centers and paths to economic independence.
These "think of the children" excuses are the same as "oh no the terrorists/drug kingpins" and all those other threats.
The threat is plutocracy and concentration of power.
Governments are very dangerous institutions. They hold a lot of power and can abuse it.