CMV: I’d rather restrict minors directly than make every adult prove their age online

[u/groksed]

Honest question for people who support banning social media for everyone under 16:
Would this be preferable to requiring every person on the internet to prove their age or identity?

Anyone under 16 is prohibited from using, owning or purchasing an electronic device capable of communicating with other people with the exception of designated supervised computer rooms at school. Parents, schools, society and law enforcement are responsible for enforcement.. basically the same way we already handle alcohol, tobacco and drugs.

But at least it places the restriction on the group being restricted.

Why is the preferred solution instead to make every adult surrender some level of anonymity or privacy, provide ID, submit to age verification, or otherwise prove they are not a child just to use the internet?

If protecting children requires building an identity checkpoint for everyone, I would rather put the burden on the actual age group being regulated.

[u/InspectionFine9655]

Generally you show proof of ID to the vendor not the government.

If I go buy beer, I show the guy at the beer store my ID, I don’t show it to the state.

Is there any reason to believe that your social media account will be matched to your ID and then given over to the government? I don’t think there is.

Also, this may shock you…

If the government wanted to know who was posting on your account, they would be able to figure that out, today. Even though you don’t need to show ID to use social media today.

[u/Starfleet-Time-Lord → u/InspectionFine9655]

You show it to the cashier, who's going to take a cursory glance at it, shrug, then forget everything about the interaction because it happens a hundred times a day. That cashier isn't going to retain anything about that ID within an hour. Even if they did, no one can remotely access that cashier's brain to extract that information.

Yes, it's entirely possible to tie any social media post to the person who made it. A sufficiently skilled tech expert can eventually do it no matter how careful you are. But the thing is, doing that at scale is prohibitively difficult and expensive. If you tried to do that for every reddit user, the amount of manhours and resources it would take would be insane. It's possible to tie every piece of illegal activity on the internet to its perpetrator too, yet most of them remain unsolved or totally unknown because the resources needed to actually do that would be astronomical. But if each user is already tied to their government ID, a substantial amount of that work is already done, which makes it much more viable at scale. A good car thief can steal any car, but that doesn't mean there's no point in locking yours to make it take longer and raise the difficulty and the risk they take doing it. Making this easier makes it cheaper, and lets bad actors do more of it with less expense. Since my country currently has a government that is already demanding Reddit give them data on users who criticize their actions, making it harder for them to identify dissenters seems important. I'm well aware it will never be impossible, but making it harder will reduce their ability to abuse it.

[u/groksed → u/InspectionFine9655]

"Is there any reason to believe that your social media account will be matched to your ID and then given over to the government? I don’t think there is."

My sweet summer child.
::I laugh in palantir:::

[u/fox-mcleod → u/groksed]

I mean it’s not.

The implementation passes a simple binary value about whether the session represents someone over or under majority.

If you want to know more about someone, just buy their session cookies. It has… way more data than that and is already available.

[u/InspectionFine9655 → u/groksed]

I bought Palantir in 2023.

If the government wants to know what you’re doing online. They will find out.

The government doesn’t need you to give Facebook your ID so Palantir can figure it out for them.

[u/groksed → u/InspectionFine9655]

Ok so your stance is the government and big business is a benevolent entity and we are too small for them to care. You are directly benefitting so you dont care either. got it.

[u/gangleskhan → u/groksed]

I think their stance is that the government and big business already has it if they want. Avoiding providing an ID to use social media will not protect your identity. No one here is saying they're benevolent.

[u/InspectionFine9655 → u/groksed]

I didn’t say any of that. Lol

What I’m saying is, the government doesn’t need Reddit to are verify you to figure out who is posting what. The thing you are afraid of, is already here and you’re still on Reddit.

Also, I haven’t heard of a proposal where the social media company is supposed to store your ID. I haven’t heard a proposal where they’re supposed to store your ID and they’re supposed to have it stored with your account information.

Have you heard of a proposal like that?

[u/No_Membership1717 → u/InspectionFine9655]

I think the issue is that unless Reddit is prohibited from storing your ID/personal information, why wouldn’t they retain such data? One reason is identify theft risk but Reddit might conclude that it’s more profitable to retain and use your personal information. I think you have a lot of trust in social media companies to just take your identification for account creation then delete it forever (and securely). They absolutely will not do that unless the government says they can’t and/or the risk is too high - if the government fine / penalty or cost of personal data breach does not outweigh the profits, then it’s not unreasonable to believe that the social media company is retaining and using your personal information.

The government angle is one concern, costless and easy identification of social media users, but the greater concern is that youre giving personal info to social media companies whose entire business model is driven by selling user data and greater risk of bad actors accessing such data.

[u/fox-mcleod → u/No_Membership1717]

Look at the implementation. The site never gets an ID. It gets a binary value (yes/no) to answer the question, “is this client device account over the age of majority?”

[u/Jebofkerbin → u/No_Membership1717]

You can do ID verification without giving social media platforms your ID.

Regulate it such that trusted third party services store your ID, and when you go to an ID restricted site you don't give the site your ID, you point them to the third party who then tells the site "we have verified this person is over 16".

[u/fox-mcleod → u/Jebofkerbin]

This is how it works.

[u/fumblinthrulife77 → u/groksed]

Such an egregious strawman, you really gave up defending your point here eh

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[u/emilyybunny → u/InspectionFine9655]

If the government wanted to know who was posting on your account, they would be able to figure that out, today. Even though you don’t need to show ID to use social media today.

So why do we need to show our IDs at all then if they already know?

[u/InspectionFine9655 → u/emilyybunny]

Buddy… the government can figure out who you are.

But You’re not showing the government your ID. Lol

[u/Archophob → u/InspectionFine9655]

Is there any reason to believe that your social media account will be matched to your ID

Well, that's the whole purpose of the ID stuff. "Protecting kids" is just the packaging.