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It's not kid's privacy, it's adult's privacy at risk. The only meaningful way to have age verification is to have ID verification (and even that isn't actually enough even with China's much more strict ID system). The entire idea of being anonymous on the internet must be destroyed just for a chance that kids might get off the phones.
Parents can do that already anyway! You can simply not give your kid a smartphone if you wish. You can lock it down via various methods if you want to. There's not a bunch of smartphone drug dealers passing out free samples to children.
The parents who just hand their 3 year old a phone to babysit for them are the same parents who are just gonna let their kid scan their face to make the Instagram account. We can see by their choice that they're fine with their kids being online.
Not only is it very easy to bypass (as we saw with people even using video game characters with it) and you could just use your parents/older friends like the kids in China do but it's an obvious lie and Discord already leaked tons of users just a little bit ago. If you seriously believe that they're deleting everything, I got a bridge to sell you if you want.
As I mentioned, the UK manages porn sites perfectly well without mandatory ID verification. It may not be completely impenetrable, but that's fine. Surely you would be happy about this fact, rather than demanding something that you say is bad? You seem to be arguing that a) the current system is insufficiently robust and must be reformed and b) a more robust system would be bad. Why not be happy with our imperfect system?
That is a very naive position. It's technically correct, in the same way that I can technically go and live in the woods. In practice, peer pressure is immensely powerful, and parents find it extremely difficult to tell their kids 'every child in your class has a smartphone, but you can't have one'. Even if successful, it still causes parents a huge amount of stress having to constantly re-fight the battle every day. That is why we have rules around kids smoking and drinking. Technically, we could abolish age restrictions and just say to parents 'it's up to you'. In reality, humans are a social species that work around norms. The free for all status quo simply allows those norms to be set by tech companies, rather than by parents.
And why exactly does Pornhub or AgeGo want a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am? Leaving aside the fact that big companies do, in fact, obey the law as a rule, because breaking it is bad for business, you seem to imply that these companies are holding on to data that they have explicitly promised to (and are legally obliged to) delete for the sake of being evil and creepy, in spite of no actual benefit to them.
Yeah, I’m not a big fan of the UK system (from my understanding, users have to buy a card from a retailer that validates age, typically in person?), and it has some obvious and well-documented faults. But it’s still not quite as stupid as asking people to upload their photo ID.
That’s presuming you can get the system without getting OFCOM and that whole related mess — the ease of the system for normies may well have made that more palatable politically! — but my guess is that they’re separate results of different political drives.
I haven't heard of that one. Ofcom lists a bunch of acceptable methods here, but none of them involve buying a card from a shop.
Let's go over the acceptable method
Requires your face, thereby identifying you.
Requires banking details, thereby identifying you.
Vague enough that maybe it doesn't require it somehow for the "digital identity wallets" but questionable as to how the digital identity wallets verify it then without identifying you.
Requires your credit card details, thereby identifying you.
requires your email for the purpose of linking it to other things you use your email for like banks and utility, thereby identifying you.
Requires you to have your mobile network confirm you, thereby identifying you.
This is obviously identifying you.
You claimed "without mandatory ID verification", meanwhile every single one includes a form of mandatory identification. And despite that, it still fails as I've outlined in another comment.
Not only is it easy to bypass through the many many many sites that don't bother because they aren't big/based in the UK, but they also have obvious weak points for any non retard child to do.
Stuff like facial age estimation has been bypassed by video game characters and YouTube videos (and perhaps AI videos too), credit card/ID can be bypassed by just grabbing your parents wallet, mobile network operator age just use your parents or a friend's number.
It leaves the "in China 80% of kids are still gaming" problem left unsolved.
That isn't what I said. My exact words were '90% of them use third parties like AgeGo which don't require you to upload ID'. That obviously means uploading e.g. a driving licence, not age estimation through the camera.
Because yes, in order to use age estimation, AgeGo will need a short video clip of my face, which will then be deleted once the verification is complete. If this counts as 'identifying me' then fine, I don't care. It's worth it if it makes it harder for children to watch porn.
Sure it will.
I will quote my earlier response here.
So what reason does AgeGo have to keep a grainy, 3 second video of my face at 2am?
Because there are many parties who wish to know for savoury or unsavoury reasons what embarrassing things people are doing when they think they’re alone - the security services among them - and consequently that information is very valuable.
I’m not saying that the ID company is saving face-key dicts, but I wouldn’t be very surprised if they were. And if this became rolled out all over the country and users got used to the system it would be very easy for the government to quietly or publicly justify getting the company to cough up ids. Especially when losing government accredition would immediately torpedo their business.
You may consider this excessively paranoid and you might even be right but the insistence on ID at a time when the government has been very clear that what you do alone in your room puts you as a thought criminal or potential rapist doesn’t inspire confidence in me.
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