Who Would Benefit From California’s Age Appropriate Design Code? Apparently Porn Companies, Privacy Lawyers, And Medical Disinfo Peddlers. But Not Kids

from the who-is-this-actually-helping? dept

This week we’ve been writing about California bill AB 2273, a dangerous bill that has effectively sailed through the California legislature with little pushback, because it’s wrapped up in “protect the children” language and no one wants to be seen as not wanting to “protect the children.” But, like so many bills that frame themselves as “protecting the children,” this one does no such thing, and likely puts everyone’s (not just children, but them too) privacy at much greater risk. Eric Goldman posted a long, detailed breakdown of just how bad the bill is. I highlighted how it’s literally impossible to comply with, using Techdirt as an example. And, then I also covered how the bill came into being, because a UK baroness/Hollywood filmmaker pushed it on California lawmakers who took it and ran with it (she has already gotten a similar law passed in the UK, and is pushing for it elsewhere).

Within all of those articles, we’ve described the many, many, many problems with the law, how its very premise is based on myth rather than fact, and why it will be a disaster for the internet. And yet the bill has very little official opposition, and a massive amount of official support. So, today, I wanted to look at who is likely to benefit from this bill becoming law, mostly using the official supporters listed in the Senate Floor Analyses presented during the third reading in the California Senate a few days ago.

But, before we even get to that, I wanted to point out one organization that might be, by far, the biggest beneficiary of the law going into effect: the world’s largest porn company. Reporter Shoshana Wodinsky, who covers the privacy beat better than any other reporter out there, wrote up a Twitter thread about this.

In short, one of the aspects of the bill is that if your site is “likely to be accessed” by someone under the age of 18, there are a bunch of requirements. And one of those requirements is that any such site must “estimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty.” Given that nearly any site has to think that at least some high school students may visit, that covers effectively every site. And, at this point, you have two choices: either you try to block all such “under the age of 18” people from visiting your site… or you have to have a “reasonable level of certainty” of the age of those children.

The issue with both of those options is that the only way to do that is by using age verification technology. Age verification technologies have always been a huge mess. They don’t work well, they’re often easy to get around, and they’re usually incredibly intrusive and dangerous to privacy. And it turns out that the biggest provider of age verification technology is… MindGeek, the massive (and massively secretive) company behind Pornhub (and basically every other porn site).

MindGeek runs an age verification technology called AgeID. Indeed, MindGeek was a supportive lobbyist in favor of a similar law in the UK, because they knew it was basically the only option most companies would turn to. In fact, concerns about how this was giving the world’s largest porn company detailed private information on basically every internet user was one of the reasons why the UK dropped its original age verification law. As Wodinsky highlights in her thread, AgeID’s privacy policy is a mess. It admits to collecting plenty of personal data, and appears to allow the company to do plenty with it as well.

So, in an effort to “protect the children,” California may effectively be forcing everyone to hand over tons of personal data to the guys who run Pornhub — a company that just recently had to remove the majority of its videos after an investigation showed many videos involved child sexual abuse.

Giving that company all our data is supposed to protect the children?

Really?

And, now, let’s look at the list of actual supporters. The list is long. And I’m not going to go through all of it, but there are some surprising (and some not-so-surprising) names on it.

SUPPORT: (Verified 8/22/22)
5Rights Foundation (co-source)

Common Sense (co-source)
Attorney General Rob Bonta
Accountable Tech
ADL West
Alcohol Justice
American Academy of Pediatrics, California
Avaaz
California Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
California Lawyers Association, Privacy Law Section
California Public Interest Research Group
Center for Countering Digital Hate
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Humane Technology
Children and Screens
City of Berkeley
Consumer Federation of America
Consumer Federation of California
Do Curious Inc.
Eating Disorders Coalition
Epic
Fair Vote
Fairplay
Je Suis Lá

Joan Ganz Cooney Center – Sesame Workshop
LiveMore ScreenLess
Log Off
Lookup
Me2b Alliance
National Hispanic Media Coalition
NEDA
Oakland Privacy
Omidyar Network
Outschool, Inc.
Parents Together Action
Protect Young Eyes
Public Health Advocates
Real Facebook Oversight Board
Remind
Reset Tech
Roblox Corporation
Smart Digital Kids
Sum of Us
Tech Oversight Project
The Children’s Partnership
The Signals Network
The Social Dilemma
Tiramisu
Ultraviolet
Two individuals

We already discussed 5Rights, the group out of the UK who “sponsored” the bill. Some of the others seem to just be random “for the kids” charities who do good work and likely signed on because this bill is to “protect the kids” and they don’t have the knowledge or expertise to understand how problematic it is.

But there are some inclusions worth calling out. First up: California Lawyers Association, Privacy Law Section. It seems a bit unseemly for them to be endorsing this bill. As we’ve discussed, realistically, the only thing this bill “protects” is the employment of privacy lawyers. Because under this law, basically every website is going to need to hire privacy lawyers to write a “Data Protection Impact Assessment” (DPIA) for every single feature on their website, and every new feature that they launch. Those DPIAs will need to be reviewed every two years as well. Legal liability attaches to these DPIAs, and so you’re going to need a privacy lawyer to write them.

In other words, this bill is a “full employment for privacy lawyers” kind of law.

I mean, I noted that Techdirt probably will require at least a dozen different DPIAs, and possibly more, and we’re just a tiny blog. I shudder to think how many DPIAs any site with actual features will have to create.

And thus, it seems not just a little self-serving to see the official Privacy Law Section of the California bar endorse it. I mean, in general, it seems kind of unseemly for the California bar to be officially endorsing any laws, considering that members will likely have to be on both sides of disputes. I was kind of curious about what sort of advocacy the California Lawyers Association deems acceptable, and the organization indicates that its advocacy is just about “promoting excellence, diversity and inclusion in the legal profession and fairness in the administration of justice and the rule of law.”

I do not see how this law that will just make a ton of legal busy work achieves any of that.

Those with economic interest in passing this bill are on the list as well. There is a large and growing business of companies who are pumping up the (unproven) claims of “social media addiction” in an effort to sell stuff to overly concerned parents (note to parents: there are plenty of free tools that help you do this without having to pay these companies, and also there’s value in teaching your kids how to be good digital citizens and when to recognize they’re in an unsafe digital space).

Some of these are… well… sketchy. One of the “supporters” of the bill is the organization “Do Curious Inc.” I’ve read over their website a few times now and I have no idea what they actually do beyond spreading general fear about “screens” and telling people they should go outside more. And, yeah, I’m all for going outside and putting away your screens. But… I don’t know that we need a company to help us do that.

But, and here’s where it gets really bizarre, reporter Shoshana Wodinsky (again) discovered that the guy who runs Do Curious, Douglas Perednia… is apparently the same dermatologist who at the beginning of the pandemic got propaganda rag The Federalist to publish an article recommending that we purposely infect young people with COVID.

So good work, California, you’ve got medical disinfo peddlers supporting your bill.

There’s another supporter of this bill that I want to call out separately, because it’s a bit hidden. At the end there, it lists “two individuals.” But one of those individuals is revealed later in the document to be Tim Kendall. The California legislature seems taken with Tim, and his resume suggests why: he was “the first Director of Monetization at Facebook” and was also the President of Pinterest.

That resume has made him a popular name on the “prodigal tech bro” circuit of former techbros who got rich and then claimed they “saw the light” and are now working against tech. As Maria Farrell (who coined “the prodigal tech bro” term) notes, these stories are always a little too perfect.

Indeed, Kendall basically gets the second most screen time in the documentary The Social Dilemma (after the proto-prodigal tech bro, Tristan Harris). You remember The Social Dilemma, don’t you? That was the documentary on Netflix (the company that originally perfected algorithmic recommendations to keep you coming back — though the documentary conveniently leaves out Netflix’s role in all that) that manipulates you with misinformation to convince you that others are manipulating you with misinformation.

Anyway, I find it interesting that neither in The Social Dilemma, nor in the “endorsement” for AB 2273, does anyone mention that Kendall founded and runs Moment, an app that was pitched as a tool for weaning you off of your supposed screen addiction.

In other words, his startup is helped out quite a bit by continuing the narrative that the internet is bad and dangerous and addictive for kids.

It seems like maybe some of that should have been disclosed?

Anyway, since we’re talking about the Social Dilemma (again, a movie that is deeply manipulative and full of disinformation), I should note that the makers of that movie are also listed as supporters of the bill, as is the Center for Humane Technology, the organization founded by Tristan Harris, the only person to get more screen time than Kendall in the documentary.

It’s almost as if there’s an entire industry built off the claims that tech is inherently bad and we need to be protected from it — and they have every incentive to continue to promote that narrative, even as the data frequently contradicts the claim. As you scroll through the list, you can see other examples of such organizations as well.

And, yes, it’s reasonable to be concerned about children. But so much of the problem with “for the children” legislation is that it’s not good legislation and won’t fix any actual problem. And no one feels willing to speak up about it, because then they’ll get attacked as not wanting to protect the children.

But this bill doesn’t protect the children, as we’ve explained at great length. Its drafted so poorly and so broadly that it will create all sorts of problems. Lumping everyone under 18 into a single category of “children” is ridiculous and disconnected from reality. Having it apply to websites “likely to be accessed by a child” rather than those actually targeting children (and again, without distinguishing what kinds of children) is a problem. Requiring sites to know the ages of visitors (i.e. age verification provided by the largest porn company in the world) is a problem. Requiring every website to file useless paperwork regarding every feature and allowing the Attorney General to demand those papers be handed over with just a couple days of notice is a problem.

The bill doesn’t help the children. It seems to help the world’s largest porn company, a bunch of privacy lawyers, and the burgeoning industry of folks who are now building their careers around getting everyone (especially parents) to fear technology (including one guy who advocated infecting people with COVID).

It’s not exactly a good look.

And yet, everyone tells me Gavin Newsom is likely to sign the bill.

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Comments on “Who Would Benefit From California’s Age Appropriate Design Code? Apparently Porn Companies, Privacy Lawyers, And Medical Disinfo Peddlers. But Not Kids”

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That One Guy (profile) says:

'Conflict of interest': The Bill

I am shocked, shocked I say to find out that a bill touted as for the children is backed by a bunch of self-serving individuals and companies merely looking to exploit children and line their own pockets. Who ever could have seen that coming other than anyone with a pulse?

Now I really want someone to publicly ask the supporters of the bill why they’re in such a hurry to force any site operating in the state to give a bunch of highly personal data to a company who owns and runs one of the bigger porn sites as the response would likely be hilarious.

Anonymous Coward says:

Is it a coincidence that Devin Nunes represents California, and has a strong interest in ending online anonymity? California is enacting a bill which could potentially eliminates online anonymity, and maybe require all sites to only allow access through an account with a real name attached.

There the fundamental problem of online identification, there is no practical way of checking that the credentials belong to the person presenting them. Note two factor authentication assumes that the person setting is the person they have identified themselves as. That is it gives greater protection to the person setting up an account, but does nothing to validate who they are.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re:

‘It’s a bad law but it’ll probably be blocked before it comes into play so so what’ is a strange response to articles like this and yet here we are with two in a row on this article alone…

If a politician put forth a bill to burn down every other house to jack up property values for the ones that remain the fact that they’ll almost certainly be stopped from doing that does mean the attempt should just be shrugged off.

This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: It will affect TD, you're commenting on TD, therefore...

Do you use any online platform that operates in/out of California? Because if so it very much will be affecting you since this will change how they have to deal with every visitor unless they want to go with the downright joyful task of essentially creating two different versions of their platform, one for just those within the state and another for everyone else.

Bill Solinino says:

They will have to

Yeah they will, because residents of other states are going to have a fit about this bill and only Congress who has jurisdiction over all states can pass such a bill. Other states will have a problem. If it was just porn then fine, but states especially conservative ones that are very pro privacy are not going to take this law lying down. The internet is a federal telecommunication industry. States cannot regulate your phone calls. It will not survive courts, not because the courts may or may not agree with the bill, but if it effects every other state in a bad way, then the bill over extends its jurisdiction and therefore will be thrown out once it hits the courts.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

The internet is a federal telecommunication industry.

The internet itself is not an industry. It’s a means of sending information between computers in completely different places. There is a telecom industry which controls who gets access to the internet and how good the access is, but this isn’t to be confused with the many industries which exist in a physical capacity but also operate on the internet.

States cannot regulate your phone calls.

What do you mean by regulate? State wiretapping laws vary in how much consent you need to record a phone call. State driving laws can control whether and how you can use your phone while driving. State police can use IMSI catchers to spy on your unencrypted communications or prevent you from making a call.
And regardless of whether states can “regulate” phone calls, states almost certainly can regulate internet websites. A website owner “simply” (by which I mean, not simply) can create a version of a website which follows California’s laws, while users in other states see a different version(s) of the website. In practice, this is very expensive and difficult for most people, so the average website owner typically will have only one version of the website. So for most website owners there will be three options: begrudgingly implement an age verification system made by a third-party, ignore the California law entirely, or use IP addresses to shut down all access to the website from California.

but if it effects every other state in a bad way, then the bill over extends its jurisdiction and therefore will be thrown out once it hits the courts.

Courts in one state don’t care (and aren’t supposed to care) about how their own state’s laws affect people in other states. Courts in other states can’t do anything about laws in California. Attorney generals might be able to sue, but even in 2022 most government officials understand too little about the internet to recognize and care about this California bill. A lot of officials from other states might even be in support of the bill.

Perton Quayle says:

Yeah all these conservative websites

Yeah, your telling me these conservative websites like Bitchute or Rumble are going to listen to California law. Trust me, unless your a really big website, you will ignore California law and trust me if it has the effects techdirt by the time 2024 comes around it will be pushed back. I guarantee not every website will follow and the law will end up in federal court one way or the other. The only ones that can really regulate the internet is Congress. Yes in the end, some websites will not do business in CA. THERE WILL BE A FIGHT.

Rufus Crown says:

Would not techdirt just block there website out of California once the law is enacted

Techdirt I think would probably Bloch there website from Cali if this law went into effect. There site could not run and therefore it’s goodbye getting great tech news to California. Maybe big ones will comply but the privacy advocates in other states will probably fight it once there citizens especially in these Republican states will not be obey it causing federal courts to get involved. Will see the outcome of this bill but I am sure even if enacted there will be a fight and maybe even a Balkanized internet but I am sure the federal courts will eventually be involved

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3

AC’s can have history? That’s Interested. Since I am the AC that made both “Based in CA” comment AND the “Rebuttal” comment (thought I guess it’s impractical for most people to verify that claim). I find this very … dubious. Especially since I’m pretty sure I’ve never (in any capacity) mentioned “prostitutes” on Techdirt.

So, I find that accusation very mildly offensive. Further more, I see no way that talking about not being a lawyer relates to the behavior described (unless one includes immature interpretations of abbreviations).

I will also note that other people have made similar points below to the one I made in “Based in CA”.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:4

Hmmm. Upon Further reflection, I believe my above comment represents a misinterpretation (AND misreading) of the comment above it.

It makes more sense to assume the comment (2 levels up from this) was referring to the insulting comment and NOT the “Based in CA” comment.

(And I misread the latter part of the comment, which cause parts of my previous comment to not really make sense in context)

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LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Medical facts

So good work, California, you’ve got medical disinfo peddlers supporting your bill.

I’ll allow that your partisanship clouded your judgement here.
(Either that or your medical practice understanding is nil).

It’s not exactly an unheard of idea. In fact: it’s FDA and WHO accepted policy for some viri.
It’s called live virus vaccination. No different than pox parties for chickenpox.

The U.S. military uses live virus vaccines for
The Flu
West Nile
Adenovirus
Yellow fever
Malaria
etc.

27 of the mandated vaccines (the number a soldier takes depends on station) the US Army NonCUS uses are live.

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Naughty Autie says:

Re:

Actually, I think it’s your own partisanship clouding your judgement and informing your ignorance. The Federalist article makes the claim that children are being injected with the unaltered Covid virus when the vaccines actually carry messenger RNA from it, which is not even the whole inactivated virus present in other jabs. Maybe do your research first next time?

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Naughty Autie says:

Re: Re: Re:

So what would you like? Ear infections, diarrhoea, pneumonia, encephalitis, deafness, blindness, autism with severe or profound intellectual disability, or death? And that’s just measles. So yes, advocating for someone to be deliberately infected with any vaccine-preventable disease absolutely is quackery, since there’s every reason for the vaccines to exist.

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LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2

Except none of those issues relate to covid your playing apples and or oranges intentionally.

COVID 19’s death rate is very low.
Mostly over 70, immunocompromised, or respirationily deficient.

In children it’s nearly a non-factor.

And it’s beyond amusing how in 2019 and early 2020 the people complaining about the vax and declaring they wouldn’t take it: most were Democrats who wanted to denounce Trump.
Today it’s the very core base that would still support him outright.
The Dems did a very good job of scaring the hell out of the ultra-conservative citizens.

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LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4

I’m reading just under 1mil, 70 thousand deaths out of 330 million.
Or, less than 1%.

Most had other complications before covid, or will old.

And that totally ignores that many of those death were not caused by covid itself but rather covid was a factor in combination with a pre-existing condition. Or, covid was a factor, not the sole cause.

While other countries had less reported cases, percentage of population factually puts them at a much steeper cost.

So make all the comparison lies you want. We’re the third largest country, with the third largest population. And like Brazil, but unlike China and Russia, over 70% of our population live clustered in less than 25% of our total land area.

Combined—More deaths were in the 5 largest cities than the rest of the country as a whole.

Want to play the numbers? NY state was nearly closed. The city totally shut down. Yet they had higher death toll numbers than Texas. Despite taxes having 3 of the top 10 most populous cities in the country.

In reality, we came out better, as of today, in our handling of the pandemic than the vast majority of the world. Try again after you look up the factual numbers.

Toom1275 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:7

Democrats, including Harris running around saying they wouldn’t take the vaccine developed under trump

What actually happened out here in the non-hallucinatory world:

There were legitimate concerns over Trump’s documented efforts to pressure the FDA into releasing the vaccine before safety and efficacy trials were done solely because he wanted a “win” before November. Since he failed to corrupt the process and the vaccines turned out to be safe, everyone the extremist propaganda Lostcause parrrots lies were against the vaccine took it now that their one and only concern was moot.

Anpnymous Ahole Problem's says:

Re: Re: Re:5

China kicked everyone’s ass with the zero tolerance policy-and no Monkey Pox either, because cluster fucking, and monkey sex is not allowed.

The latest round of Covid is only because a public health officials son was patient zero, and he flew the virus in from Germany, and in China, he likely avoided mandatory quarantine.

And, no doubt he was an intel target sprayed with the virus by German intel, in order to send it to China, which had up until then had no new cases due to zero tolerance and lockdowns.

Anonymous Ahole Problems says:

Re: Re: Re:6

Lol–thanks for that hot tip!

As I noted, one of them appears to have moderator privileges here at TD, and routinely Cloudflare’s and IP blocks, as well as nym block’s, based solely upon the content of speech they don’t like–it’s bizarre by any standard of moderation, as I am sure you know, based on your credentials.

Please join me in flagging these vile AC-holes, every time they show up, in EVERY discussion.>>>>>>

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Toom1275 (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:5

States facts contrary to news stations but fully based on actual facts. Not politics and spin.

You aren’t fooling anyone into pretending the lies you’re ignorantly parroting here come from anywhere but the extreme-right sources you deny you exclusively hew to. No other source ever presented the baseless projection that anyone not Republican would refuse the vaccine purely for political reasons.

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LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2

Nice of you to join the beyond disingenuous apples not oranges commentary. Covid will eventually stabilise into just another coronavirus.

Covid is deadly to less than 1 in 100 non-vaccinated.
Polio is deadly to over 30% of the non-vaccinated. And over 10% of vaccinated.

An honest discussion would compare influenza and covid 19, and other coronaviri.
The wise thing is to take the vaccination. But your chances of dying without a vaccine is minimal. Somewhere in the range of wining the lottery, or getting struck by lightning. Or dying in a plane crash.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4

Carry water? ironic given how you chose to ignore statistics.

Well, when you explain to me how the city of New York with its 80%+ registered Democrat population had more deaths from covid than entire states?
You go on and explain how the states of New York matched the state of Texas, despite Texas having three of the country’s largest cities and maintained the country’s least aggressive reaction policies? All whilst having a considerable larger population than New York.
I promise you can skip the state wide practice and NYC policy of sending infected seniors back to care centres where infections ran quickly across entire nursing care populations.

You go on freaking in your brain about the blatant propaganda fear mongering over “anti-vaxers”. All few thousand idiots across the country.
All few thousand across the world’s 3rd largest political holding with the world’s 3rd largest population.

We’re far better off in actual statistics than most of Europe, all of Africa and South America, and a good chunk of Asia.

Your toll numbers are intentionally without context.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:5

Meanwhile you are ignoring the number of people hospitalized by Covid, who would have died absent treatment. Also, at times Hospitals were full, causing problems treating people with other serious conditions. There are also those people suffering from long Covid. Covid is still a more serious problem than the Flue.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6

…actually no, I don’t. The vaccine is likely the reason so many of them survived. Giving us stable healthcare workers to help care for the bill.

Viri spread in dense populations. And when so many of your country live in such dense population areas a virus has a prime field of choice.

Nobody with a brain denies the benefit of the vaccine.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6

Covid is still a more serious problem than the Flue

For now, yes. Spanish flue decimated our population. Today it’s just another bug.
Most, emphasis, most, viri will transition to a low-mortality form eventually. Combined with “herd immunity” which the republicans appear to be totally misunderstanding even now, and generational genetic marker protections, it will faze out.

In time when enough previously infected, combined with vaccinated, have children’s of their own, their children will spend a few days in bed when they reach 30.

Vaccination is an important step many on the right fail to fully understand. It is the slow genetic March that makes viri a minimal concern.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:6

What Lodos doesn’t want to acknowledge is the resurgence of measles in Samoa and polio in the Middle East, because he’ll gladly gobble the cock of whoever vaguely promises they might get Hilary Clinton into legal trouble.

Unfortunately for him, the average Techdirt reader already has plenty of practice when anti-vaxxers attempted to shitpost on the “anti-vaccine content moderation” thread.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:7

resurgence of measles in Samoa and polio in the Middle East,

… I can’t acknowledge what I don’t know and nobody else said here yet.

You, like so many blinded by trump hate to anything factually he may be on par with, are so ignorant to the difference between anti vax adults and over caring very cautious parents.

NYT just did a great writeup on polypharma.
It the blind and ignorant that can figure out how a new untested over time vaccine may concern parents.

It’s ok most like
Trump: take vaccine
Dems: never tan man
Biden: take vaccine
Dems: yes master

Most childhood vaccines Are tested with adults first for years before the first test study child takes one. In a hospital environment with close monitoring.

So no, I’m not going to call out concerned parents and lump that group into the same as never-vaxers.

Anti-vaxers are idiots. Luckily there’s only a few thousand of them.
That’s very different than loving concerned parents from all parties and all walks of life raising children in what NYT called a “generation of guinea pigs

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Anonymous Ahole Problems says:

Re: Re: Re:10

You are literally arguing with bots. These AC’s and their affiliated Lego Building Champions and Adults Who Play With Transformer Toys here are not real people in the sense that you or I would consider “real.”

Can you recall a single instance where they posted anything of ANY substance whatsoever? Where they contributed to anything but schismogenesis?

I can’t, and if you can, please point me to it.

Take a look at how they are discussing the Covid above, and then, read this:

Feedback Loops Create Autism

It could be the case that this condition can be clearly evidenced to be a disorder of stress-fuelled and co-reinforcing vicious and virtuous cycles whose components are all the known associated symptomatic traits; which themselves arise initially as a response to external stressors (which can still further promote them); but whose implementation promotes even more stress, thus making them seem more “necessary” to the afflicted individual (a feedback loop).

Apply the entire Covid script under these protocols and we can see the highest level controlling factor at play, they are creating feedback loops and thus a form of Autism in the populations through the presentation of events via the media, in all its forms. This is inclusive but not limited to, art, music, film and theatre.

So–why waste the time to arg’s with bots? Flag button is over there-will you join me in flaging these bots off of this forum?>>>>>>>>>>>>

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:9

Nuke, no. I want to keep looking until something is found that is actually naughty.
The difference between myself (a non-member of either large party), is I’ll accept facts and move on to whatever is next.
I’m no different in approach than the people who have been investigating trump before, during, after his presidency. Other than my personal target.

When we are very different is I won’t ignore facts just because of who says them.
If I come from an unreliable source such as MSNBC, WaPoo, the White House press secretary, Biden, or trump…
, assuming I care, I’ll wait to factual sources such as NYT, NYP, WSJ to confirm it before making a decision on accuracy.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6

Let me lay this out to you, since you’re anonymous, thus a coward hiding in a tiny hole.

Volume means Jack fucking shite to me. Raw numbers are piss.
Percentage is reality.

Disagree? Sod off.
Don’t like it?
Sod off.

Despite the failures of the president in dominating control during the covid duration by todays in office, the US is one of the most successful by percentage of population.

Oh, and if you’re too stupid to get vaccinated… I hope your death is long, slow, and excruciatingly painful.

Fuck people. Cancer upon the earth.
That clear thing up for you you tiny bit of fungus?

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Anti Defamation League Sponsored Post says:

Re: Re: Re:5

Hello, Mr/Ms./Mrs. Lost In Lodos! I see you have a “Techdirt AC-holes” flagging problem.

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Anonymous Ahole Problems says:

Re: Re: Re:7

Projection, much schismosperger? Provoni is an interesting case that challenges your racist supremacist perspective, huh? Ouch, the guy discusses you much! Albeit the Iran thingy was hilarious–and accurate.

As to your schismogenetic condition–there is a reason people around the world call you Shatan and try to genocide you–whoever “you” specifically are.

So, ac-bot your condition, your bullying, stalking and other harassment:

Feedback Loops Create Autism

It could be the case that this condition can be clearly evidenced to be a disorder of stress-fuelled and co-reinforcing vicious and virtuous cycles whose components are all the known associated symptomatic traits; which themselves arise initially as a response to external stressors (which can still further promote them); but whose implementation promotes even more stress, thus making them seem more “necessary” to the afflicted individual (a feedback loop).

Apply the entire Covid script under these protocols and we can see the highest level controlling factor at play, they are creating feedback loops and thus a form of Autism in the populations through the presentation of events via the media, in all its forms. This is inclusive but not limited to, art, music, film and theatre.

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Re:

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ageverificationprovidersassociation (profile) says:

MindGeek is NOT an age verification provider

Thanks for setting out your concerns about the ADCA so clearly.

First, we want to reassure you and your readers generally about anonymity. The purpose of the online age verification sector is to allow users to prove their age to a website, WITHOUT disclosing their identity.

This can be achieved in a number of ways, but primarily through the use of independent, third-party AV providers who do not retain centrally any of your personal data. Once they have established your age or age-range, they have no need (and under EU GDPR law, therefore no legal basis) to retain your personal data.

In fact, the AV provider may not have needed to access your personal data at all. Age estimation based on facial analysis, for example, could take place on your own device, as can reading and validating your physical ID.

And the AV provider then only tells the sites you are accessing “yes” or “no” as to whether you meet their age requirement. The provider also retains no records of which sites each user visits.

You suggest that Mindgeek’s AgeID product makes them an AV provider. This is not accurate. The age checks are carried out by independent third-party AV providers. AgeID (which they have discontinued in any case) was a federated login system, allowing you to re-use an age check completed for the first MindGeek owned website you access, on any of their many other websites.

This is less necessary today, as AV providers, through an EU-funded project http://www.euCONSENT.eu have created general interoperability. So the check you do today to order wine for delivery can be used tomorrow to confirm access to an adult site.

There is plenty of information on our website http://www.avpassociation.com and we would be pleased to address any other concerns you may have. But rest assured, technology is smart – it can do almost anything you want it to – and proving your age online without disclosing your full identity is not beyond its capabilities.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Age estimation based on facial analysis, for example, could take place on your own device, as can reading and validating your physical ID.

That gives information about the images or identification presented to the software, and those do not necessarily have any relationship to the person actually using the computer. That is unless the validation is monitored by a human present where the validation is being carried out, it will be possible yo cheat the system.

Also, how often do you re-validate, as as for every site visit is a huge pain, and if on launch of browser, it is easy for the person age checked to hand the session over to an underage person.

Also image analysis is unreliable, as there are adults who look like children, and children who look much older that their age, and the first in particular is something that needs a means of being verified as an adult.

Age Verification Providers Association (profile) says:

Re: Re: Shared devices and accuracy

Thanks for raising these points.

There can be an assumption that online age checking should only go ahead if we can find the perfect way to ensure 100% of underage access is prevented.

EU, Australian and UK laws have so far taken a more pragmatic approach – stop most kids see most innappropriate content most of the time. So we do not need to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Of course, you can log into a porn site, leave your PC open and your 8 year old can then take over. How is that different from Dad leaving a copy of an adult magazine on the coffee table for his kids to find? Tech will never prevent that; or if it does, it would require a disproportionate level of inconvenience to all users so would not be tolerated.

Estimation is proven to be getting more and more accurate by the day. +/- 1.5 years mean average error has been proven in testing, for example. You can of course reserve such AI for checking that people look over 25 instead of 18, which would reduce to a handful the numbers of those under 18 who pass such a test.

And there are extensive antispoofing mechanisms so false beards, or filtered photos do not fool the tech.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

EU, Australian and UK laws have so far taken a more pragmatic approach – stop most kids see most innappropriate content most of the time.

And yet, here you are, dissatisfied with the “good” that already exists by insisting that we need to start using photographic verification. What part of EU, Australian, or UK law has demanded that?

And there are extensive antispoofing mechanisms so false beards, or filtered photos do not fool the tech.

Look up the Scunthorpe problem. You will not be able to intercept all false positives – or detect earnest attempts to evade your enforcement. From there, two things will happen: either you acknowledge there is a problem and abandon your plan, or double down and cause so much inconvenience that your plan gets thrown out anyway.

Age Verification Providers Association (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Response

The laws in the UK, EU and Australia will be requiring online age assurance; the method is not specified so consumers will have a choice between traditional age verification and the newer age estimation techniques.

Obviously if age assurance ceases to protect most children from most harmful content, conduct, contact and contracts for most of the time, then its value would be questioned and policymakers may change their plan. But most children will not have the time, capability and resources to use sophisticated evasion techniques, and counter-measures will continue to respond to new attacks.

LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:2 Actual solution.

A quick way to solve this and so many other issues in this country is a national free rollout and requirement to have and carry RealID by every legal citizen.
Then a person can simply insert or tap their RID to verify age.

A few tweaks to the legal immigration status card covers legal immigrants. A passport or visa, most of which have smart chips now and NFC, covers legal visitors. Problem solved.

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Anti Defamation League Sponsored Post says:

Re:

TRUST BIG TECH! TRUST THIRD PARTIES!!

Then, eat this garbage:

The provider also retains no records of which sites each user visits.

You suggest that Mindgeek’s AgeID product makes them an AV provider. This is not accurate. The age checks are carried out by independent third-party AV provider

Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Imagine believing that having to scan your face to access a website is not an invasion of privacy because the providers pinky swear not to store your data.

Given that the overwhelming majority of child endangerment is from within families, I guess it’s mandated cameras in every family home and it’s totally fine and not any kind of privacy invasion because there is a promise not to store data.

Age Verification Providers Association (profile) says:

Re: Re: Data protection

We must trust others with our data in life all the time – banks with our financial info; Facebook with our vacation photos; our health insurers with our medical situation. Most of these are regulated to some degree, and at least face commercial pressure to take good care of our data.

In Europe, there is GDPR which offers a higher level of data protection and has probably made people more comfortable with sharing their data. The California Bill includes minimum standards for age assurance technology including the requirement not to abuse data used in the age checking process.

In addition to the law, we advocate for audit, certification, international standards (eg BSI PAS 1296:2018) and, through admissions’ procedures for interoperability networks, further controls on which providers are able to operate – and the larger sites which use their services will do their own due diligence.

Age Verification Providers Association (profile) says:

Re: Re: Does facial age estimation use personally identifible data (PII)?

In a word, no. The process requires only a basic mapping of facial features which would never be sufficient to identify the subject of the image. It is only enough to feed the artificial intelligence algorithms to compare the figures to those from thousands of other images used as training data.

Facial recognition is different, and requires far more data to uniquely identify an individual, whether they are alone or in a crowd.

n00bdragon (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

That’s complete horseshit and you know it is. I would love to coat that in some more politically correct language but there is simply no rational way you can take a picture of someone’s FACE with enough detail to determine their age but not enough to individually identify them. Either your “age estimation” is so bad that it can’t tell who it’s looking at or it isn’t, not that anything you say on the matter would make any difference because by necessity the entire process is opaque. JUST TRUST US.

You’re not inherently trustworthy though. That’s fine if some people choose to trust you, but not everyone does. But now thanks to the force of government power, they’ll have to trust you. And if you should violate that trust, no one will ever know. And if they did find out, you wouldn’t be punished.

You should quit your job and go work somewhere that lets you sleep at night with what you do.

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This comment has been deemed insightful by the community.
Naughty Autie says:

Re:

The very much misinformed dermatologist wants to infect people with the unaltered live virus, whereas vaccines contain either attenuated (cannot reproduce) virus, inactivated (dead) virus, or – as in the case of the Covid vaccines – only a part of the virus. In all three types of vaccines, the aim is to provoke a level of immunity with the minimum of harm to the recipient, whereas infecting someone with the actual full live virus exposes them to all the risks of the disease, no matter which risk category they’re in. Are you any better informed now?

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LostInLoDOS (profile) says:

Re: Re:

And yet multiple flu vaccines over the last decade actually caused viral infections. Especially in attempts to target swine flu.

I personally think there’s enough data to support 2 of the covid vaccines for children, in the risk/reward comparison.

But given the near-100% survival rate of children I can’t say there’s or room on what is, for the target groups here, a worthwhile consideration for parents and their children to discuss.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:

But given the near-100% survival rate of children I can’t say there’s or room on what is, for the target groups here, a worthwhile consideration for parents and their children to discuss.

One reason for vaccinating children is to protect the adults around them who they could infect.

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