Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id.
Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id.
How does Florida expect a site to do it?
This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?
There's really no need for ID checking. Most porn sites already self-regulated by marking their content adult with meta tags/headers.
Parental control software picks up on that. [1]
Social media could do the same thing: make a social media adults-only meta tag for parental control software to use.
For the parents that care, and use parental control software, the ID laws won't stop their kids running into porn. The porn their kids are going to encounter is going to be on non-porn sites like twitter or reddit (or small sites that don't care about these laws anyway).
Maybe we needed a bigger push for more awareness or better parental control software but the ID law push is weird and unamerican to me.
This law might have never come up if we had better parental controls at every level of the software and hardware stack.
I'm a parent I have parent controls setup on my child's devices but it's very hard to dial it in properly and cover all the bases. It should be far more straight forward to manage than it is now.
I'm obviously pretty tech savvy and I would say 99% of parents are not going to get this right.
You’re right about parental controls, especially apple ScreenTime. I’ve used computers almost my entire life, I even work for Apple, and I still resorted to calling tech support about it. As far as I can tell, they don’t actually do anything useful, and instead just get in the way.
I do disagree that a technical solution could have avoided laws like Texas. It’s not about “protecting the children”. It’s never about the children. It’s just censorship. It’s just easier to go after a porn site than it is a library.
A solution to these issues is for the child to not have the device in the first place. A desktop computer in a central place with eye on it can go a long way in managing online activities.
As a parent, as a former child, as someone that grew up with computers in places just like you describe, let me say, in my personal and professional experience… lol
iOS parental controls are awful. The only way to get any decent control for my concerns that the moment is using the downtime features all day long. Effectively I've told iOS that he should be in bed for 23 hours and 55 minutes a day. It's ridiculous and extremely limiting.
Microsoft's parental controls are sort of ok. I also have separate control software for Windows and I have controls at the router. Of course, none of things can talk to each other to create a coordinated plan (say giving X number of screen time hours per day).
iOS controls effectively block adult sites and you can manually add sites to block and not allow apps being installed without your permission. What else do you need?
I'm not asked for ID when I order a drink. The bartender takes a look at my ugly mug and makes the call: I'm [painfully] clearly over 25.
Facebook has more than enough processing power to have an AI watch you reading a script straight to camera for 30 seconds to work out a rough age. If you're within 5 years of their idea of 18, surrender that ID, the same way you would if you were in a bar. Don't want to? Don't maintain a social media account. Don't have that drink.
The alternative is setting up a government-maintained 0Auth-style hand-off. They know who you are. The social media site could open a verification ticket, you authenticate with your government and they sign your ticket without the social media site getting any of your details. The trade-off with that is cost and your government now knows you're on TikTok. For some people that last one matters.
If you paired these laws with strong PII protection (see GDPR) to stop social media sites storing this stuff indefinitely, using your data against you, it might be an easier sell.
You have a bit more faith in a technical solution working at scale than I do, but I have to point out, that after repeatedly claiming that no one wanted an ID scan, your proposal involves an ID scan.
I also have to point out, that PII and GDPR protections are meaningless here. Under a government mandated censorship regime, the threat is the government, not some data broker somewhere.
The reason I have faith in a pure-technology solution is because setting up ID-linked database APIs will take time and querying it will cost social networks real money. When this was discussed in the UK, we were looking at 10p per check. That's $1m for Florida alone plus engineering to get it in.
They have innumerable GPU cycles they could redirect to a ML solution, and more importantly this is something that ML and facial recognition systems have been doing in prosumer-grade hardware for well over a decade. If I could set something up to do this in an afternoon, I believe Facebook probably could too.
My proposal only involves ID if you look young enough that the AI isn't certain or you don't want to upload a video. It's cutting out ID checks for 99% over 25yo.
But I do see this more about child safety than a censorship regime. Social networks are poison, even to adults. They're designed to trap us there, keep up "engaging" and not wander off to another platform. Our ability to make an informed choice about whether our kids are being damaged by them (and the people on them - who we have no control over) is seriously diminished. I've seen the stuff my daughters' 8yo friend uploads and the comments would change your mind. Yes, I'm biased, but I don't think that makes me (or this) wrong.
Bars do it by having you show an id.
Online pot dispensaries do it by having you upload an id.
Texas expects porn sites to do it by having you upload an id.
How does Florida expect a site to do it?
This is a legitimate question that I want the answer to. Presumably "check this box" isn't going to cut it. So if it's not the most common way to enforce an actual legal restriction, then what is it?