The court reasoned sensibly: it's wrong to violate the rights of all citizens just to weed out a small group of violators. This is contrary to data protection regulations. The controversial Chat Control law follows the same logic: to find criminals, they propose monitoring everyone.
The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes. The only secure way is to verify not the person's identity, but the device's status (for example, that it's a children's device). This is called age assurance: we confirm age without knowing who exactly is in front of us.
> age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system.
this is fundamentally wrong and accepting this as an industry will only lead to required identity verification becoming the norm sooner or later
the important realization is age verification is in the end "just" a form of parenting tool
this means
- it doesn't need to be a "perfect", glancing at the age of a passport when buying adult products isn't perfect either, but it's good enough. And it doesn't require seeing the address, name, (in most cases) day and month, gender etc. on a id, nor any form of "noting them down".
- it doesn't need to be attestation based, unhackable or anything like that. It complements parenting, not replaces it.
- in turn it also shouldn't need anyones id, in most places children below 18 don't need any id but 16+ is still a age barrier
or to lay it out in rough design
- require multimedia devices sold to have a child "mode" functionality
- allow setting a age category or age (to auto determine and update the category), require a age set for this purpose to be kept private on the device and not shared, analyzed etc.
- require web sites and apps to have voluntary min age limits, similar to other products, block access _client side_ based on this information. The standard should allow region/country specific limits and reason tags.
- There are a bunch of edge cases omitted, like sites serving dynamic content/platforms in general. Requirements for parents to be allowed to define exceptions (in both directions) and handling of sides not having your countries age gating. Etc.
- properly educate parent about it
this provides sufficient functionality to support parents in parenting without requiring any identity verification or overriding the parents right to parent
yes, it's not perfect in many ways. But it doesn't need to perfect, it's "just fine" for what it tries to archive.
Or realize that there is no way to know who is using a device without looking at the device holders for all the time they use the device. It's like ordering alcoholics or cigarettes: the seller looks at you see the white hairs (OK) or see a 16yo face (documents please.) A device registered to an adult can be used by a child. I know, it's a failure of parental control, but how many teenagers managed to get adult magazines in the last 100 years? They will get adult devices too. So there is no way to create a 100% effective system. Kids and teenagers will find workarounds, everybody else will live a worse life.
It also means we don't need identity verification. Anonymous scratch-off cards sold in stores to adults, just like cigarettes, can be used to verify age. Or alternatively, device-only attestation. There's no reason to verify age upon every use of the product; only when it's sold.
This logic is sus. Just because we cannot have a oerfect system doesn't mean we shouldn't have it at all. Like alcohol age limitations, they can be worked around and wont ever be 100 percent perfect but I see regularly teens bouncing off the register at my local store.
So the metric should be case by case for each proposed solution. Most of things proposed are no good, but that doesn't mean there is not a sensible solution out there to limit net for teens.
> The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes.
No source but a possible counter-example: SIM card carries the date-of-birth of the user (because, really, part of the problem is that you cannot supervise what a kid does with their phone 24/7), age-restricted websites have a flag in their HTTP headers, browser get age from SIM card through the OS. Same goes with app stores etc.
Like copy-protection there's always a way to circumvent it, the name of the game is to make it difficult enough. And for parents, to make it very easy to set-up.
XKEYSCORE, the UK system brought in to allow warrantless surveillance for national security purposes and child abuse prevention, ended up being used for such minor offences as catching people dumping rubbish in other people's bin, or parents lying about their child's address to get into a better school district. In the United States, the same system was used for low-level offences like cannabis possession.
This could have been an http header. It's hard to identify people, but blocking child-locked devices should be easy, since the devices can be built to cooperate.
Then it's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids.
> And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.
...huh? This is completely backwards. We should be making laws that punish parents for failing to parent properly. Not laws that punish everyone.
If we pass a law that children under a certain age may not use social media, then giving your child a non-child-locked device should be treated the same way we treat giving your child alcohol or cigarettes.
People keep saying it’s the parents responsibility to keep their kids safe, and don’t give them the tools! This is such an obvious one. I should be able to lock down a laptop for a child, and then have the browser limit websites to those that are actually child safe. I don’t care if a government agency is the one issuing “child safety certs”. This gets around the whole “identify everyone no matter what” thing, and it means that parents don’t have to run an entire IT department level of security infrastructure to keep their kids safe online.
my kids are not teenagers yet, what am I missing? the iPad I let them use has child safety enabled and it seems to do exactly what the comment above you is suggesting.
In Western countries, the judiciary and the executive (which contains the day-to-day operations of the government) generally operate independently and can rule against each other. I'm most familiar with the US, and I think its constitution was the first to encode judicial independence - and constitutional review by the Supreme Court was established early on in US history. But all Western countries these days have had judges rule against executive policy and the executive obey it.
The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.
> The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.
Yeh. In the UK, the supreme court can not strike down primary legislation. It can rule executive actions are not following the primary legislation or unwritten constitutional rules, but if parliament passes a law that says oranges are now green, the supreme court is in no position to challenge it.
I checked your profile and you are cofounder of a company with branches all around Europe. At least the countries in the EU should have separation of powers, and the judicial (the courts) are independent from the government and there is a parliament which is more or less independent from the government too. Of course the government is usually backed by the majority of the parliament so the two of them often act together. The courts apply the law, whatever it is, but if the parliament or the government or the president (for presidential democracies) do something against the law or the constitution (or equivalent chart), there is at least a court that can undo that legislation and send it back for an overhaul. This is what happened in France.
Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.
Also all of these companies know from advertising data, and location data, that you are at school, who you are, etc. They would also know that all of your friends are also teenagers.
If the law is serious there are many many ways to enforce this without violating privacy.
Without further violating privacy. I would say that the data these companies are already collecting on people (including children, who many believe should be afforded extra protections from such companies) is a major, systematic privacy violation.
> Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.
How do you prevent kids uploading photos of themselves?
As french citizen what I can say is: Parliamentary time wasted. During the initial work the deputees that have initiated the project could have figured out that the constitutional court would, in fine, block the text.
Sometimes they do know but do it anyway (or even for that very reason) because it serves their political interests and then the great bill they were supporting is blocked by someone else, which can be blamed as needed.
I think Trump played that game a number of times, for instance.
What I find interesting is that Texas did it with just pornography sites, everyone complains. Then California, which included those that complained by Texas' law, says they're going to do it at the OS level, some people were okay with it but some still opposed it and possibly some others opposed it. Yet, they're still pushing forward with both?
Just like all the other policies that somehow manage to move at the speed of light across the globe. These politicians are seem to all be influenced by the same thing, with that usually being in opposition to the people that voted for them.
I always find it weird when people declare things “are” rights, as rights are things societies create. “Should be a right” seems like a more appropriate framing
It is unclear to me how you can regulate any digital service with respect to any demographic identity without regression to full identity check.
Parental controls are not a solution, either. People are free to use anyhow terminally they wish. If you wanted to change that then it again regresses to the same issue.
I love how the french can go from bieng, from bieng, French, to making complete rational sensical descions that they will then stick to but refuse to discuss.
Bravo vive la france!
Frankly, the proper solution is to ban social media regardless of age. We are already doing it with heroin and other similar substances and clearly social media are pretty bad for everyone and anyone.
Tobacco and alcohol are scientifically proven carcinogens, yet they are sold ubiquitously in the [western] world. I would argue they are more dangerous than social medias. Yet we don't see any push in banning tobacco and alcohol for 'everyone'.
We won't ban any of all these things because there are people with political power that make fortunes out of them. Whether that's alcohol, social media, tobacco or otherwise.
We will not go for the proper solution, not because it's not the proper solution but because powerful people won't allow it.
If you do look at the things we have indeed banned, you will find that they are mostly coming from outside our countries. It's not cut and dry, but it's very geopolitical pretty often.
Alcohol story is a lot more than just it being a good business, in vino veritas and all. There is a huge cultural aspect around it for better or worse.
I haven't seen children doomscrolling HN lately, have you?
But, whatever it takes. Social media in combination with mobile phones is destroying the latest generations. Add AI in the mix, and we're on the road to Idiocracy.
why don't you then take a break from social media and leave HN for your own sake instead of creating fake profiles to comment on posts and rid the rest of us from your stupidity?
The court reasoned sensibly: it's wrong to violate the rights of all citizens just to weed out a small group of violators. This is contrary to data protection regulations. The controversial Chat Control law follows the same logic: to find criminals, they propose monitoring everyone.
The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes. The only secure way is to verify not the person's identity, but the device's status (for example, that it's a children's device). This is called age assurance: we confirm age without knowing who exactly is in front of us.
> age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system.
this is fundamentally wrong and accepting this as an industry will only lead to required identity verification becoming the norm sooner or later
the important realization is age verification is in the end "just" a form of parenting tool
this means
- it doesn't need to be a "perfect", glancing at the age of a passport when buying adult products isn't perfect either, but it's good enough. And it doesn't require seeing the address, name, (in most cases) day and month, gender etc. on a id, nor any form of "noting them down".
- it doesn't need to be attestation based, unhackable or anything like that. It complements parenting, not replaces it.
- in turn it also shouldn't need anyones id, in most places children below 18 don't need any id but 16+ is still a age barrier
or to lay it out in rough design
- require multimedia devices sold to have a child "mode" functionality
- allow setting a age category or age (to auto determine and update the category), require a age set for this purpose to be kept private on the device and not shared, analyzed etc.
- require web sites and apps to have voluntary min age limits, similar to other products, block access _client side_ based on this information. The standard should allow region/country specific limits and reason tags.
- There are a bunch of edge cases omitted, like sites serving dynamic content/platforms in general. Requirements for parents to be allowed to define exceptions (in both directions) and handling of sides not having your countries age gating. Etc.
- properly educate parent about it
this provides sufficient functionality to support parents in parenting without requiring any identity verification or overriding the parents right to parent
yes, it's not perfect in many ways. But it doesn't need to perfect, it's "just fine" for what it tries to archive.
Or realize that there is no way to know who is using a device without looking at the device holders for all the time they use the device. It's like ordering alcoholics or cigarettes: the seller looks at you see the white hairs (OK) or see a 16yo face (documents please.) A device registered to an adult can be used by a child. I know, it's a failure of parental control, but how many teenagers managed to get adult magazines in the last 100 years? They will get adult devices too. So there is no way to create a 100% effective system. Kids and teenagers will find workarounds, everybody else will live a worse life.
1990s: ~%36 of all teens smoked
2020s: >%2 of all teens smoke
Kinda suggests that putting limitations in place actually produces results. Crazy innit?
It also means we don't need identity verification. Anonymous scratch-off cards sold in stores to adults, just like cigarettes, can be used to verify age. Or alternatively, device-only attestation. There's no reason to verify age upon every use of the product; only when it's sold.
This logic is sus. Just because we cannot have a oerfect system doesn't mean we shouldn't have it at all. Like alcohol age limitations, they can be worked around and wont ever be 100 percent perfect but I see regularly teens bouncing off the register at my local store.
So the metric should be case by case for each proposed solution. Most of things proposed are no good, but that doesn't mean there is not a sensible solution out there to limit net for teens.
> The problem is that any age verification system effectively becomes an identity verification system. And such tools rarely remain "just for kids"—they quickly become used for other purposes.
source?
No source but a possible counter-example: SIM card carries the date-of-birth of the user (because, really, part of the problem is that you cannot supervise what a kid does with their phone 24/7), age-restricted websites have a flag in their HTTP headers, browser get age from SIM card through the OS. Same goes with app stores etc.
Like copy-protection there's always a way to circumvent it, the name of the game is to make it difficult enough. And for parents, to make it very easy to set-up.
Source for this ever not being the case?
XKEYSCORE, the UK system brought in to allow warrantless surveillance for national security purposes and child abuse prevention, ended up being used for such minor offences as catching people dumping rubbish in other people's bin, or parents lying about their child's address to get into a better school district. In the United States, the same system was used for low-level offences like cannabis possession.
This could have been an http header. It's hard to identify people, but blocking child-locked devices should be easy, since the devices can be built to cooperate.
Then it's up to parents to give their kids child-locked devices and for stores to not sell unlocked devices to kids.
There is just such a HTTP header, for adult sites. It's not granular enough to set individual age ratings, just to mark a page as 18+.
<https://www.rtalabel.org/page.php?content=howtofaq>
Is that the "don't put my website into Google Safe search because it's porn" header?
Maybe we need a "it's not for kids but it's not porn either" header.
Child-locked devices can already whitelist/blacklist sites and apps. The issue is not capability.
And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.
I wish we would just pull the plug on ad-based social media altogether. The incentives add up to destroying society.
I don't think passively assuming you'll end up on the relevant lists is going to do it for websites that need to keep kids out for whatever reason.
> And before anyone blames the parents, parents will always be shitty. They are an impediment to children's health society must work around.
...huh? This is completely backwards. We should be making laws that punish parents for failing to parent properly. Not laws that punish everyone.
If we pass a law that children under a certain age may not use social media, then giving your child a non-child-locked device should be treated the same way we treat giving your child alcohol or cigarettes.
"parents will always be shitty"
Maybe cut nontechnicals a little slack? Their adversaries have invested literally billions of dollars in R&D.
People keep saying it’s the parents responsibility to keep their kids safe, and don’t give them the tools! This is such an obvious one. I should be able to lock down a laptop for a child, and then have the browser limit websites to those that are actually child safe. I don’t care if a government agency is the one issuing “child safety certs”. This gets around the whole “identify everyone no matter what” thing, and it means that parents don’t have to run an entire IT department level of security infrastructure to keep their kids safe online.
There's a reason why nobody is giving the parents those tools.
And it's the same reason why everybody keeps pushing the stupidier, most obnoxious and invasive tools to "protect the children".
my kids are not teenagers yet, what am I missing? the iPad I let them use has child safety enabled and it seems to do exactly what the comment above you is suggesting.
Apple does parental controls right. The easy path is parental controls.
Companies like epic and Microsoft dont. The easy path is just a default install
I suspect this is by design.
The title is unfortunately edited. The courts have blocked it. The government wants it.
The courts are part of the government no?
In Western countries, the judiciary and the executive (which contains the day-to-day operations of the government) generally operate independently and can rule against each other. I'm most familiar with the US, and I think its constitution was the first to encode judicial independence - and constitutional review by the Supreme Court was established early on in US history. But all Western countries these days have had judges rule against executive policy and the executive obey it.
The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.
> The details of how to override a ruling against the executive does differ between countries, and also on whether its considered just an interpretation of law or a constitutional question. Both the US and France have a written constitution that's binding on other branches, while the UK does not.
Yeh. In the UK, the supreme court can not strike down primary legislation. It can rule executive actions are not following the primary legislation or unwritten constitutional rules, but if parliament passes a law that says oranges are now green, the supreme court is in no position to challenge it.
I checked your profile and you are cofounder of a company with branches all around Europe. At least the countries in the EU should have separation of powers, and the judicial (the courts) are independent from the government and there is a parliament which is more or less independent from the government too. Of course the government is usually backed by the majority of the parliament so the two of them often act together. The courts apply the law, whatever it is, but if the parliament or the government or the president (for presidential democracies) do something against the law or the constitution (or equivalent chart), there is at least a court that can undo that legislation and send it back for an overhaul. This is what happened in France.
> At least the countries in the EU should have separation of powers, and the judicial (the courts) are independent from the government
In the US "government" generally refers to all three branches; is that not the case in Europe?
No, separation of powers
Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.
Also all of these companies know from advertising data, and location data, that you are at school, who you are, etc. They would also know that all of your friends are also teenagers.
If the law is serious there are many many ways to enforce this without violating privacy.
Without further violating privacy. I would say that the data these companies are already collecting on people (including children, who many believe should be afforded extra protections from such companies) is a major, systematic privacy violation.
> Seems like there are many ways to get toward the best of both worlds -- don't allow people to upload pictures of kids who are clearly under 15 to social media would get us a lot of the way there.
How do you prevent kids uploading photos of themselves?
YouTube kids is able to do it. They detect kids in regular YouTube and whether they are the account owner and move them to YouTube kids.
As french citizen what I can say is: Parliamentary time wasted. During the initial work the deputees that have initiated the project could have figured out that the constitutional court would, in fine, block the text.
Sometimes they do know but do it anyway (or even for that very reason) because it serves their political interests and then the great bill they were supporting is blocked by someone else, which can be blamed as needed.
I think Trump played that game a number of times, for instance.
What I find interesting is that Texas did it with just pornography sites, everyone complains. Then California, which included those that complained by Texas' law, says they're going to do it at the OS level, some people were okay with it but some still opposed it and possibly some others opposed it. Yet, they're still pushing forward with both?
Just like all the other policies that somehow manage to move at the speed of light across the globe. These politicians are seem to all be influenced by the same thing, with that usually being in opposition to the people that voted for them.
They need to ban smartphones for under 16s as well, this doesn’t go far enough.
Oh that’s interesting. Could that potentially be used as a blocker for Chat Control 2.0 at the European level?
This is the correct response. Privacy is a human right.
I always find it weird when people declare things “are” rights, as rights are things societies create. “Should be a right” seems like a more appropriate framing
"we hold these thruths to be self evident"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
It is unclear to me how you can regulate any digital service with respect to any demographic identity without regression to full identity check.
Parental controls are not a solution, either. People are free to use anyhow terminally they wish. If you wanted to change that then it again regresses to the same issue.
I love how the french can go from bieng, from bieng, French, to making complete rational sensical descions that they will then stick to but refuse to discuss. Bravo vive la france!
Frankly, the proper solution is to ban social media regardless of age. We are already doing it with heroin and other similar substances and clearly social media are pretty bad for everyone and anyone.
Tobacco and alcohol are scientifically proven carcinogens, yet they are sold ubiquitously in the [western] world. I would argue they are more dangerous than social medias. Yet we don't see any push in banning tobacco and alcohol for 'everyone'.
We won't ban any of all these things because there are people with political power that make fortunes out of them. Whether that's alcohol, social media, tobacco or otherwise.
We will not go for the proper solution, not because it's not the proper solution but because powerful people won't allow it.
If you do look at the things we have indeed banned, you will find that they are mostly coming from outside our countries. It's not cut and dry, but it's very geopolitical pretty often.
Alcohol story is a lot more than just it being a good business, in vino veritas and all. There is a huge cultural aspect around it for better or worse.
Funny that you’re saying that in a social media
I haven't seen children doomscrolling HN lately, have you?
But, whatever it takes. Social media in combination with mobile phones is destroying the latest generations. Add AI in the mix, and we're on the road to Idiocracy.
It's all about politics.
why don't you then take a break from social media and leave HN for your own sake instead of creating fake profiles to comment on posts and rid the rest of us from your stupidity?
What part of it's all about politics did you fail to understand?
Also, ad hominem are the tool of the really stupid. Be better than them!
That's quite ironic