Would you mind expanding on why it's mass surveillance and of no benefit to children? Like they're pretending it's to protect kids and getting what from us exactly?

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

There are very good explanations out there but the short of it is: every major internet service is now going to be connected to either your official piece of government ID, or a high resolution, well lit image of your face. Kids work around it but its a mass surveillance wet dream.

[–] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

I don't get it.

99% of people who are online, the government already knows who you are and what you look like? What part of providing an ID gives "them" any more information than they already have?

[–] yuri@pawb.social 2 points 2 hours ago

for the government to tie any traffic directly to an individual would require data from your service provider, which they generally don’t provide without some kind of legal reason.

fwiu this system would essentially make everything you view and do on the internet freely snoopable without any sort of legal order or reason. your traffic is always tied to your name or face, and you lose the layer of pseudo-anonymity from your ISP.

potential real-world consequence, you could be more easily sued by a production or broadcast company for piracy! right now if i torrent the right movie (without a proxy), i’ll get a letter from my ISP explaining that 20th century fox is asking them for my name and address so they can sue me. but the ISP won’t give the info without a legal order, and fox can’t sue anyone without the info.

so if this change happened, you’d have to hope your government decides to treat you more favorably than myriad other billion dollar companies and corporations. historically these are bad odds.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 16 hours ago

What the politicians get: A smug feeling of satisfaction, having done something they were told was good.

What the children get: Anxiety, incentive to cheat the system and to keep their Internet use secret from parents, a new reason to feel that the world is unfair to them.

What the budding "age verification" industry gets: Amazing new business opportunities.

What Facebook gets: A regulatory barrier to entry high enough to keep out any competition from some hypothetical new form of social media that would respect its users, since that is now illegal.

What spies and hackers get: Amazing new opportunities to steal everyone's personal data.

What those of us too stubborn to ever submit to "age verification" get: We'll be unable to use regulated social media and will have to make do with the Fediverse, possibly moving to instances hosted in whatever distant corner of the world still allows free use of communications media.

[–] kevinrns@mstdn.social 3 points 17 hours ago

@HumanOnEarth

Michael Geist makes several points, Cory Doctorow, the EFF have been explaining why.

[–] hub@cosocial.ca 14 points 23 hours ago

@Reannlegge it's victim blaming. The big tech he refused to tax is the one committing the crime. Not the teenagers and by extension every Canadian.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

The Liberal bill would force social media services — defined as traditional social media platforms, live-streaming services and adult content services focused on user-shared content — to restrict accounts for children under 16 years old.

However, services could seek an exemption if they implement what officials briefing reporters called adequate safeguards to protect children. The exemption wouldn't apply to adult content services.

AI chatbots will need measures to respond when a user expresses ideas of suicide or self harm or an intention to commit an act that could cause death or serious bodily harm to an individual, said officials. The bill would not require the companies behind the chatbots to report those interactions to police.

According to the bill, the maximum penalty for a violation would be either $10 million or three per cent of the company's gross global revenue — whichever is greater. Companies could face multiple penalties for repeated violations.

Full text of the bill here

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 5 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Yeah cause you know them kiddos wont be able to find ways around all and any locks big tech will put in place.

[–] TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

To be fair, kids clever and motivated enough to get around this type of gating generally aren't the ones at the greatest risk. I think this is more about creating a reasonable barrier to protect our most vulnerable.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

The kids motivated enough to get around this will help their friends get around this, who will have other friends who want to get around this. If I was still at that age and had any real motivation for money I could have been getting money for the stuff I found out how to get around. I was pulling for people before I was legally old enough to buy alcohol, I was getting around website blockers in high school and helping others do the same. I can promise you if one child can do it they are helping their friends do it who are then going to help their friends do it, what is one child going to do on social media if their friends are not on social media?

[–] TimothyOilypants@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 hours ago

It's just about increasing the friction. No door lock will stop a motivated thief, but it will discourage 75% of people from trying. The laziest/stupidest kids (read: the most at risk for grooming and indoctrination) will be the ones least likely to overcome this friction, so it's still a good harm reduction strategy.

[–] HumanOnEarth@lemmy.ca 3 points 18 hours ago

There's also a social function when laws like this pass. What "society" deems as not good or not appropriate helps shape a generation's habits, even if it's not the only thing that does.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 3 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

On its own, that's not a very strong argument - underage people can still get their hands on alcohol, but the sale of it is still restricted.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I know I was pulling for people when I was 15, only because I was confident and now had ID. When I was in high school I “accidentally” found out how the school was blocking webpages and was helping people get to pages they wanted to go to by simply deleting the entry for said page. In the morning after the system rebooted all the locks and logs were erased so I could do it all over again, except for every other Thursday or the first Thursday of the month or something like that because that was when the IT guy came to the school to do their thing, this was in the early 2000’s so it was not hard. If I were to be in high school today, it may be a little more difficult if I did not know what I know now about networking. Funny story about how I found out how the school was blocking things was I misspelt an address and it brought me to some porn site, so I went looking for where the blocked sites where stored.

In no way am I saying this is going to stop kiddos from using the traditional, or whatever they called it, social media and AI. “Life it finds a way!” I am not calling the internet life I am calling the children life.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 20 hours ago

The more I think about it, the more it's clear that the intent here isn't to prevent kids from using social media - it's about forcing the social media companies to implement "adequate safeguards."

There's an exception available for them if they do, and a surprisingly hefty fine for violations.

[–] Warehouse@piefed.ca 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Sure, but we don't have to give our biometric data to a US weapons manufacturer in order to purchase alcohol.

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 2 points 19 hours ago

Well, that's why I said "on its own" - the rest of the bill is extremely vulnerable to criticism.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 6 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

I'm really curious how this will affect the fediverse. Will lemmy.ca need to add age gating? :/

[–] ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 5 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That's a good question. The bill itself is pretty vague so far:

Obligation 27 (1) Subject to section 29, an operator must, with respect to every regulated social media service specified by regulations made by the Governor in Council under subsection (5) that it operates, implement adequate age-verification or age-estimation measures designed to prevent a person under the age of 16 from being able to have an account with, or be otherwise registered with, the service.

Adequacy of measures

(2) In order to determine whether the measures implemented under subsection (1) are adequate, the Commission must be satisfied that the measures

(a) are effective;

(b) do not involve the collection or use of personal information other than for age-verification or age-estimation purposes;

(c) provide for the destruction of personal information that is collected for age-verification or age-estimation purposes once the verification or estimation is completed;

(d) provide for the protection of personal information that is collected for age-verification or age-estimation purposes until that information is destroyed; and

(e) comply with any other requirement specified in the regulations.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 4 points 20 hours ago

For sure. Super vague. There are discussions happening on the mastodon side of this. And this bill is terrible.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 5 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

I really do not think the fediverse is what they are thinking of when they say traditional, or whatever word they used, when they thought of this. I think the closest they will come to the fediverse is Blusky.

[–] RagingNerdoholic@lemmy.ca 3 points 17 hours ago

I don't think they're even vaguely aware that the term "fediverse" exists, much less what it actually is.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 5 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/45-1/bill/C-34/first-reading

According to the full text, there's no such consideration regarding "traditional" the only thing that I can see that qualifies a "social media" service as "regulated" is the number of users, and that's apparently TBD by some yet to be appointed council.

Fediverse will be hard to enforce compliance, so I don't know what they'll do to try and force age gating on us.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 2 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

We will have to see because, like every other technological block in life the kids will find away around it before the adults do.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 3 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

If only the people writing these bills were as sensible as you. Unfortunately these people believe age gating works. All it'll do is require more personal data to be tracked everywhere.

[–] Jason2357@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I may by too cynical now, but I doubt the authors give a shit that kids will work around it. They are scratching the back of someone and they are getting what they want.

[–] quaff@lemmy.ca 1 points 5 hours ago

There's a clip in the CBC article linked in this post, the minister that tabled this bill was asked about age verification's effectiveness and kids getting around it in Australia.

The response was basically: Just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.. It's a brain dead take.

[–] Reannlegge@lemmy.ca 3 points 18 hours ago

Well you see all the failed things that happen in Australia have to be tried here: see phoenix pay as an example.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 7 points 22 hours ago

Like everyone else I haven't seen the text yet but from everything that's been said about it I guess it's yet more evidence that the same gang of idiots who led Trudeau astray have found Carney and his crew just as easy to manipulate.