Apple Launches 'Age Assurance' Tech As US States Mull Social Media Laws (reuters.com) 53
Apple announced a new feature allowing parents to share a child's age with app developers without exposing sensitive information, as lawmakers debate age-verification laws for social media and apps. Reuters reports: States, such as Utah and South Carolina, are currently debating laws that would require app store operators such as Apple and Alphabet's Google to check the ages of users. That has set up a conflict in the tech industry over which party should be responsible for checking ages for users under 18 -- app stores, or each individual app. Meta, for instance, has long argued in favor of legislation requiring app stores to check ages when a child downloads an app.
Apple on Thursday said it does not want to be responsible for collecting sensitive data for those age verifications. "While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us -- regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps," Apple wrote in a whitepaper on its website.
Apple on Thursday said it does not want to be responsible for collecting sensitive data for those age verifications. "While only a fraction of apps on the App Store may require age verification, all users would have to hand over their sensitive personally identifying information to us -- regardless of whether they actually want to use one of these limited set of apps," Apple wrote in a whitepaper on its website.
This really is a no-brainer (Score:2)
Plenty of stuff out there is not appropriate for kids. Securing network via filtration is pointless on a mobile device, and kids are more than smart enough to get around various other mechanisms to access things they shouldn't be able to, including social media.
The principle has always been that something that could be secured in real life (18+ shops and events) should also be able to be secured in the cyber world, but there was never a practical way to validate it that didn't also risk exposing the token a
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How has banning smoking for underage kids worked out? Drinking? Sex? War on drugs? Yeah legislation always works/s
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Social media companies are a lot easier to regulate than drug dealers. They register with the government, and follow laws - provided the government makes them. Drug dealers don't. Your kid can get drugs from any of a million drug dealers who are interchangeable, and materialize in and out of the ether.
Regulating smoking seems to have gone incredibly well, nobody under 25 smokes anymore.
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Your kid can get drugs from any of a million drug dealers who are interchangeable, and materialize in and out of the ether.
A lot like the internet then.
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The article wasn't talking about "the internet", it was talking about social media. There's 3 or 4 relevant social media companies. Not millions.
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The article wasn't talking about "the internet", it was talking about social media. There's 3 or 4 relevant social media companies. Not millions.
But they are easy to change. Myspace is gone, Facebook is for old people, Snapchat and Tiktok will soon have had their day in the sun. Kids will go wherever on the internet they want to go. Most of them are smarter than 99% of lawmakers and will pretty much laugh at your rules.
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The open internet of web rings, independent forums, IRC networks doesn't exist anymore. It's not a place they can go.
One or two social media companies opening or closing every 5 years is no problem for the courts to keep up with.
It's like child porn. You can't eliminate it, but you can drive it underground where 99% of the population will never come across it.
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I couldn't care less if they found "adult content".
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What are you talking about? Because you decided to limit your access doesn't mean the world did. Copyright has been illegal since the beginning with computer illiterate people accessing it. Porn, even in the jurisdictions that ban it for children is still accessible, unmoderated.
It's like child porn. You can't eliminate it, but you can drive it underground where 99% of the population will never come across it.
So out of sight, out of mind. 99% of the population will never come across it just like smoking, drinking, drugs.... /s
Re: This really is a no-brainer (Score:2)
18-24s still smoke in the US. In fact, e-cigarette usage is greater in the 18-24 category than any other age range, and increasing.
https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/ph... [cdc.gov]
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People usually use the word "vape" to refer to e-cigarettes. They don't "smoke". If you combine all forms of nicotine - which is the statistic you should be using - nicotine use has declined dramatically in teens over the decades since anti-smoking campaigns began.
I notice your source, as well as every media article I've read in recent years, neglect to mention that statistic. Probably because it contradicts the narrative of there being a "teen vaping epidemic".
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To put it more succinctly: As teen cigarette use declined, some teens decided to vape instead, but not enough to stop the proportion of teens vaping OR smoking to continue declining.
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Does it work 100% of the time? No, of course not. With that said, it's a barrier that still has to be defeated. A 16, or 12, cannot go into a liquor store and buy beer without someone failing to do their job. Instead, the kid will have to bribe someone old enough to go make the purchase. This is adding friction.
Also, smart phones can be locked down with more controls but I'm not sure your average parent is technically inclined enough to handle mobile device management systems but I'm sure it's a fixable pro
Re:This really is a no-brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
and there is no rational reason for Google and Apple to be unwilling to associate the age of the cloud account holder as an AVS somehow
I strongly disagree.
There is no need for anything but the device to know the age of the user.
Device: Query site for age limit (Easy enough to do with X-HEADers in the data stream)
Site: Age limit: Older than 18
Device: If age less than 18, stop. If age greater than 18, proceed.
If a parent is too busy to ensure their child is using a device correctly configured to their age, they are too busy to be allowed children.
As a site, it's not my job to rise your child. Nor do you really want my values and morals transferred to your child because I'm quite sure I do not want yours contaminating mine. Put the power directly in the hands of the parent - not in third parties where it will be abused.
The entire age verification argument is not about "But the children!" - it's about power and control over everyone, not simply the children. Remember that their religious texts correctly point out [biblegateway.com] that children taught in the shibboleth results in adults that will, for the most part, never break their early inculcation. As an example of this, see states such as Oklahoma's Superintendent of schools, or Texas' attorney general, or the Speaker of the House of Representatives, or any number of the Georgia GOP state house. The issue is not their faith per se- it's their willingness to force their faith and religious law on to those that do not share it.
Seems to be headed there (Score:2)
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Why should Apple or Google be responsible?
Seems to me that the end point that is subject to an age requirement should be responsible.
If bob's dildo shop on 5th avenue in required to sell to customers only 18 and older, it should be bob's dildo shop's responsibility to ascertain their customer's age, not Apple or Google.
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The parent who buys their kid a phone is a really good source of the kid's age. It's not leak-proof, but most other approaches leak like sieves.
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If Bob can't fulfill its legal obligation to sell online only to permitted customers, then Bob shouldn't be selling online.
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Should you really be posting online if you can't prove that it's legal for you to be posting in your jurisdiction?
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I dunno. Maybe. Maybe not.
But it certainly isn't my responsibility to enforce the law.
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Isn't that kind of the point though? Is it Bob's responsibility to enforce the law? That's more or less what we're talking about here. After all, age restrictions traditionally applied at point of sale because it was a safe assumption that clerks at stores, theaters, what have you could realistically assess the customer's age, which they could do through visual assessment and/or checking ID. Those laws do push the responsibility of enforcing the law on to regular people rather than law enforcement officers.
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Isn't that kind of the point though? Is it Bob's responsibility to enforce the law?
no. It's his job to COMPLY with the law. He is the one doing the selling, so he needs to be the one doing the complying.
Holding Apple and Google responsible is like holding Visa responsible if an underage kid uses a Visa card to buy alcohol.
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no. It's his job to COMPLY with the law. He is the one doing the selling, so he needs to be the one doing the complying.
If you make this argument, then there is no difference between complying with the law and enforcing the law. Take good Samaritan laws, for example. They criminalize apathetic behavior in the face of various issues, accidents, crimes, etc. Those laws, however, normally have an exception in terms of personal danger. For example, they might require assisting a person in medical danger, but if that danger is drowning in a river, they don't force you to swim out to save them. If someone is being mugged, they m
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The "side I am on" is that uninterested third private parties should not be responsible for policing transactions between first and second parties. If the govt wants to have age-based purchasing requirements, responsibility for implementing them should fall squarely on the govt and the people selling the goods.
On that note, financial institutions are required to "know your customer". Why shouldn't dildo shops also be subject to that standard?
The desire to hold Apple and Google responsible is virtually sole
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The "side I am on" is that uninterested third private parties should not be responsible for policing transactions between first and second parties. If the govt wants to have age-based purchasing requirements, responsibility for implementing them should fall squarely on the govt and the people selling the goods.
By and large then, we agree. However, going back to Bob. The basic fact is that Bob can't fulfill his obligation to sell online only to verify customers. No variation of Bob is able to do that. The only way to do it is to force the chain between the customer and Bob to do the enforcement. So this seems to be the crux of our misunderstanding. I see Bob as a stand in for every seller online. In the statement "If Bob can't X, then Bob can't Y" as X being "verify customer" and I hold that it's impossible for Bo
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The "side I am on" is that uninterested third private parties should not be responsible for policing transactions between first and second parties. If the govt wants to have age-based purchasing requirements, responsibility for implementing them should fall squarely on the govt and the people selling the goods. On that note, financial institutions are required to "know your customer". Why shouldn't dildo shops also be subject to that standard? The desire to hold Apple and Google responsible is virtually solely because they have a lot of money and are viewed as "being able to afford it". I think it is that simple. In my view, the more reasonable alternative is that the govt should have its own "age verification" site. Online vendors should be able to tap into that during the checkout process and get verification that the transaction is govt approved. Basically, just like how ID.me works. This would put the onus of enforcement squarely on the govt, the party that created the issue in the first place. Make the govt figure out how to determine how old someone is, and just pass a "yes/no" token or whatever back to the vendor's site.
The thing is there is no perfect way to do that, because all the underage have to do is get someone else to login or someone to fake it. There is no realistic way to tell who is actually operating the device and protect privacy because you know the government system will be easier to hack that it is to make fake IDs, and in order to be of any use the system would need to know enough to be a privacy nightmare. Ultimately there is no good way to do this but if its going to be a requirement it absolutely can
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Don't let perfect be the enemy of good enough.
The real solution of course is to not have age limits on purchases. But hey, don't let freedom stand in the way of onerous govt regulations.
But fact is, if something like id.me is good enough for logging into govt websites, it should be good enough for online dildo purchases.
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I don't remember the signup requirements. I signed up with them many years ago.
I signed up with them because a lot of places that offer military discounts do verification with them. So, I probably had to supply a DD-214, among other things.
They are, or at least were, used by the Veteran's Administration, Social Security Administration and the IRS, as well as a bunch of various state government entities.
If it is good enough for all them, it should be good enough for Bob's Dildo Shop and everyone else, as far
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If Bob can't fulfill its legal obligation to sell online only to permitted customers, then Bob shouldn't be selling online.
But registrations suck.
Re: Seems to be headed there (Score:2)
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You can't just walk into a CVS and buy a beer though. That's age restricted. Why should it matter if the store is online or brick and mortar?
Also, you can EASILY design a porn site that blocks all imagery behind a paywall. Would it upset other people that want free content? Sure but if you are serious about age restriction, it can be done.
Any physical store has to follow the age restriction laws, so why should online get a pass? Both are stores.
Is any of this 100% going to stop teens? Of course not but it a
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You can't just walk into a CVS and buy a beer though. That's age restricted. Why should it matter if the store is online or brick and mortar?
Also, you can EASILY design a porn site that blocks all imagery behind a paywall. Would it upset other people that want free content? Sure but if you are serious about age restriction, it can be done.
Any physical store has to follow the age restriction laws, so why should online get a pass? Both are stores.
Is any of this 100% going to stop teens? Of course not but it adds friction and will cause some to not bother. Laws don't stop people from doing what they want, they only encourage you to not do things by fear of repercussions.
It's illegal to murder someone and yet people are still murdered every day. That doesn't mean we should stop having laws that say you can't murder someone.
And there are already repercussions for buying age restricted items when you are underage, put the responsibility where it belongs on the purchaser or the purchasers parents but only if the government can find out in a way that is not unconstitutional and has actual proof just like every other crime.
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If bob's dildo shop on 5th avenue in required to sell to customers only 18 and older, it should be bob's dildo shop's responsibility to ascertain their customer's age, not Apple or Google.
As much as I'm not a fan of online age checks in general, having your device transmit a cryptographically signed token indicating that you've already been age checked by Apple, Google or Microsoft is a lot better than Bob's Online Dildo Shop potentially keeping a copy of your ID.
The other problem with your brick and mortar age checking analogy is that your friendly real-world local dildo supplier is doing business under the laws of the municipality in which it occupies. The internet is global (at least in
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You make an interesting point about the Internet being global, but you also pretend like the real world stops existing when we talk about online. If our Swedish dildo store allows customers from deep red states to buy stuff and then ship it to the US address, at some point the USA government could get involved and pressure Sweden to stop selling stuff to US citizens without doing age check.
Is this enforceable? Hard to say but it's not a lack of technology that's the problem here.
Sadly, the real problem here
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You make an interesting point about the Internet being global, but you also pretend like the real world stops existing when we talk about online. If our Swedish dildo store allows customers from deep red states to buy stuff and then ship it to the US address, at some point the USA government could get involved and pressure Sweden to stop selling stuff to US citizens without doing age check.
That's the thing though, until you actually buy something, business isn't being transacted. Sure, inside the US we've kind of gotten used to the idea that certain products aren't allowed to be sold in various states (California, I'm looking at you) and if you're a US-based dotcom company, you do have to comply with the myriad of idiotic state laws outside of the state in which your company actually resides (because you're still within reach of that other state's legal system). On an international level th
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I guess from the standpoint of which laws you need to follow, I'd say it depends which country you reside in. USA isn't going to send you to China or NK or Russia, so feel free to ignore their laws if you are not going there. As you said, they will just block you.
So that just leaves trying to keep up with the EU and any of the countries below that have more specific laws. You don't want them to cut you off if those sales amount to much. You get the gist.
It's a lot of work and I imagine you are not going to
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Apple's app store is the equivalent of Bob's Dildo store. The dildo manufacturer isn't on the hook, so while should the app developer be?
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Isn't it better to have one or two solutions vetted by companies with the resources to do it right than having every little shop across the world roll their own with little care for how much data they're leaking to literally everyone?
Does this mean App Store porn (Score:1)
I have to think that once Apple provides a way for people to specify the age of some users, it opens the door to Apple also allowing much more adult-oriented apps on the App Store as they can realistically claim parents have the means to prevent children from accessing the adult material.
Could be even nice to have checks in app, like a NSFW post (or whole subreddit) on Reddit could not be read if you were under-age.
Re: Does this mean App Store porn (Score:2)
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I have to think that once Apple provides a way for people to specify the age of some users, it opens the door to Apple also allowing much more adult-oriented apps on the App Store as they can realistically claim parents have the means to prevent children from accessing the adult material.
Could be even nice to have checks in app, like a NSFW post (or whole subreddit) on Reddit could not be read if you were under-age.
No, it means Apple wants to sequester, mine, keep and sell everyone's private data, even if you don't use any Apple devices or software. Being the gateway to porn is one way to do that.
I predict this will fail...laughably.
Re: Does this mean App Store porn (Score:2)
Apple don't want responsibility? (Score:2)
Apple parental controls are horrible (Score:5, Informative)
1. Create Apple account for your kid. Pair it to an adult account.
2. Login into a device (tablet) with kids account.
3. Any application installed on a tablet requires requesting approval. This approval cannot be local and is a multi-step process.
a. Request approval, which results in a text message sent to an adult for approval. It is hard to tell what is being asked for reading a text.
b. For an adult to approve, for some unknown reason, you have to perform highest level authentication (i.e., with your apple ID credentials). This process sometimes breaks down, requiring multiple requests and approvals. It is also not instant with a significant delay between approval and being able to install.
c. There is no notification back that approval was granted (it is a tablet without phone number, I suppose you might get text notification if that was a phone.
I was honestly shocked to see how unpolished this feature is and not "just works". Also, there is no obvious "screen time monitoring" on adults device for kids device. For example, I can't use my device to find out if the tablet is being currently used and for what purpose. I can't remotely lock it or restrict use to specific apps (i.e., no more games).
Doesn't Apple already have... (Score:2)
personal identifiable information about each iphone user? If you use Apple Pay, I'd imagine that have all that transaction data. If the phone has gps, they have all your location data.
I'm not an Iphone user, so maybe Apple doesn't have this information but that would surprise me.
I don't blame Apple or anyone other app store for not wanting to do age check but if we were to parallel this to meetspace, if you go to a store that sells age restricted items, the store itself is liable for checking ID for age ver
Zero Knowledge Proofs (Score:3)