Why Age Verification cannot work even for its intended use?
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by Blender Dumbass
Aka: J.Y. Amihud. A Jewish by blood, multifaceted artist with experience in film-making, visual effects, programming, game development, music and more. A philosopher at heart. An activist for freedom and privacy. Anti-Paternalist. A user of Libre Software. Speaking at least 3 human languages. The writer and director of the 2023 film "Moria's Race" and the lead developer of it's game sequel "Dani's Race".
Short answer People are stupid. But seriously, even though we have a lot of talk about why Age Verification laws are bad ( for human rights ) and how we can fight against them ( EFF just made a comprehensive guide on the issue ) nobody seems to realize the underlying logical fallacy, or multitudes of them, that even brought us to this point to begin with. c:0 ↩ Reply
Incentive
Age Verification enforces a fallacious incentive structure, which reinforces a harmful feedback loop of stupidity. ↩ Reply
Or in other words... Why would you need age in the first place? I mean we all know the rationale with which we can somewhat agree. We need some kind of a system that prevents encounters of vulnerable people with harmful things. ↩ Reply
18 is the line by which we judge vulnerability. You are standing on one side of that line and you are vulnerable. You are a baby. And you stand on the other side and you are strong and adult. Yeah... to some extent we all see how absolutely insane such rigidity is. A lot of countries around the world cannot agree on the exact age. For some it's 18, for some it's 20. For some 16 is good enough. Countries usually complicate things adding more than one age for different activities. Sex usually gets a year or two of head-start ( with the age of consent ) and drinking, at least in the US, sometimes takes longer to get. You need to be 21 ( infamously ) to get some booze in the United States. ↩ Reply
But does that even solve the problem? Or, even worse, does it create another one? ↩ Reply
Babies start their journey in the life completely clueless about everything. It's called Tabula Rasa ( blank slate ). No knowledge. No experience. Maximum vulnerability. A small child, by definition will afraid of less things, trust too many people and get into situations which we ( adults ) might find less desirable, or even outright problematic. ↩ Reply
We believe that about 18 years of clueless cluelessness will give this child enough data, enough experience, with the world, that we could be calm about trusting this child with deciding things on his own. And sure, to some extend this makes sense. And about 18 years seems about right. Kind of, sort of... at the very least historically. ↩ Reply
But who are we kidding... 18 years? Really? Look at the 18 year olds with their spyware smartphones and tik-tok addiction. They are not ready for life. They are not ready for anything. They don't even read their contracts before signing. They are still clueless babies. c:1 ↩ Reply
Is 18 a wrong number? Or is something else a problem here that we don't see? ↩ Reply
Well let's look at it from the perspective of the child in question. We want to do something that interests us, but those adults say that it's not allowed. We are not grown enough yet. Okay... what's the solution? To becomes smarter? To show these adults that you are a mature member of society? To actually get to a point where they could trust you? Or is the solution simply - to wait? ↩ Reply
I remember being a teenager. And I remember looking at the calendar and thinking to myself: Oh... in this many years... or this many months... or this many days... I will be able to do such and such. Nobody is thinking about becoming smarter. What's that gonna give you? The law is talking about the age, not your actual ability. You become smart and mature and so what? Nobody will give you anything based on that. So only one option remains... waiting. ↩ Reply
Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Age was a very bad measure of maturity in the first place, but now that it's the target... oh boy... it's completely insane to rely on it for anything. And wait for it... those companies that provide age-verification, estimate it at best. This is an absolutely stupid level of guess-work based on nothing. In the end of the day, the answer might boil down to something so unrelated that it would be analogous to flipping a coin. ↩ Reply
But back to waiting... video-games and tik-tok and other "content" people "consume" to pass their time, is just an expression of this waiting. It is a solution to the monotonous nothingness, of living your life, knowing that you might be able to do something only in some distant future. But now you can only distract yourself. And there comes a point that this distant future actually arrives. But you don't care. You got used to doing this stuff. You got used to waiting. You got used to video-games and tik-tok and all this none-sense. ↩ Reply
And most importantly, you learned nothing. ↩ Reply
This is the harmful feedback loop of stupidity that I was talking about. And Age Verification only enforces it. It enforces the cluelessness of our kids. It makes the next generation dumber than this one, by actively putting sticks in their development. ↩ Reply
Yes, a lot of stuff online is stupid ( especially with the incentive structure of waiting ). But at the very least it has an ability to be good. With some motivation the nerdier kids can figure out the world by talking to people online and by reading articles. And for those who just want to wait... well... I suppose porn is a good way to pass time... or something... ↩ Reply
Circumvention
When I was a kid I knew when signing to platforms that I must lie about my age, to get all of the content and not just some of it. Usually the boring and uninteresting some. One time I even got into trouble for this. There was a girl in the neighborhood who's parents were mad about me talking to her online. The platform we used showed our ( stated ) ages and they thought she was half my age. While I was literally her age. Back when those parents grew up, there was no need to lie on the internet about your age. There was no gate-keeping. At least not to such a degree. ↩ Reply
By adding another gate we are training kids to circumvent them. They already found out that certain game characters could be manipulated into screenshots that could fool the age-verification bots. Maybe there will be dedicated software, or Blender rigs, or something of faces that could be used to circumvent all this stuff. How long until an age-very-blocker appears? There are ad-blockers and there are even cookie consent form blockers out-there. Why not an age-very-blocker? ↩ Reply
The worst part about it all is that obviously it is not going to do nothing. But it will make it so more people will be technically criminals. And that is scary. ↩ Reply
You know how jobs keep a record on what you did wrong, but not actually firing you for any of that? That record is needed so when they do want to fire you ( usually for something unrelated to your actual ability to work ) they could dust up the record and say you did this or that on such and such a date. They already compromised your position. ↩ Reply
Similar stuff is done by tyrannical governments. I think I heard that you cannot even get a high-ranking position in Russia if you don't have something so appalling in your history that they could destroy your life in an instant. ↩ Reply
If you think about it, Jeffery Epstein was in the similar business. But he just went about it the other way around. Instead of finding out what those people did, he just seduced those people into doing something that he later could use for black-mail. ↩ Reply
If anybody who even remotely wants freedom on the internet is automatically a sort of criminal, that makes it easy to lock people up for unrelated things. Just dust up a record of where this person circumvented this, or looked at that. And that's it. ↩ Reply
Recap
The law is stupid. In the best case scenario it is designed to better black-mail the population. And the consequences of it, if it will actually work, will be that people will keep getting dumber and dumber. ↩ Reply
Instead how about changing the Incentive structure? ↩ Reply
You can ask kids not to be 18, but to be adult. And if you get smart earlier, good for you. You deserved it. You get your freedom. It is still a bit paternalistic. But at the very least not ageist. Maybe we should consider also totally destroying paternalism. Which would be a very good thing. But, for the start, at the very least, we could destroy ageism. ↩ Reply
In the US I know there is a legal way to be considered adult before 18. Drew Barrymore did it at 14. That explains some of her rather risky roles at her teenage years. It was technically totally legal. She went in-front of a judge and proved that she is a capable adult. ↩ Reply
Maybe you could tell your kids that this is an option and that it would be a cool thing to do. Obviously to inspire them do assure them that you will not throw them out into the street, if they do that. So they would not feel like there is a second incentive structure that prevents their growth. This could actually sort of work. ↩ Reply
And if you live in a country where this is not a thing, where you can't go in front of a judge and become un-restricted. Maybe you could, as a parent, simulate this somehow in the family. Let's say, you could promise the kids that they could watch more vulgar R-rated films, if they reach a certain level of maturity. Or something. ↩ Reply
That would do much more good than trying to add Age Verification to the internet. ↩ Reply
Happy Hacking!!! ↩ Reply
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Troler
c:0During English class, the teacher asked us why does phishing not only succeed some tomes, it is growing in numbers. My answer was:
Short answer People are stupid
⤴ View Troler
c:1 They don't even read their contracts before signing. They are still clueless babies.
⤴ ViewI remember during a regional competition, we had to write aproval of our use of information. Most of the classmates were done in 30 seconds, I, on the other had, was reading the document and asking questions concerning some laws and regulations. I read it and then... I started reading the second time, making sure I understood something. It wasn't meant to be, since the teacher got angry from me taking up the time, can't begin until everyone is ready. She told me to sign the document already, I did so. I felt accomplished.
Troler
c:2If I am not wrong, in Japan there is no age restriction on media. The split is done between pornography and not pornography. If an 8 year old kid wants to read a comic about people getting mutilated, it is trivial to do so.
As I mentioned in one of my reviews, there is this 2024 Norwegian animated film called Spermageddon, which goes over how its become normal for kids to know about sex since a young age.
"You're talking about sex? Dad, I've been watching hardcore sex since I was 10", an actual quote from the movie. I suspect you might find it interesting. Fun fact, the movie was easily released in all European cinema theaters, the problem is getting to the USA market.
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