Google Decides To Pull Up The Ladder On The Open Internet, Pushes For Unconstitutional Regulatory Proposals
from the not-cool dept
It’s pretty much the way of the world: beyond the basic enshittification story that has been so well told over the past year or so about how companies get worse and worse as they get more and more powerful, there’s also the well known concept of successful innovative companies “pulling up the ladder” behind them, using the regulatory process to make it impossible for other companies to follow their own path to success. We’ve talked about this in the sense of political entrepreneurship, which is when the main entrepreneurial effort is not to innovate in newer and better products for customers, but rather using the political system for personal gain and to prevent competitors from havng the same opportunities.
It happens all too frequently. And it’s been happening lately with the big internet companies, which relied on the open internet to become successful, but under massive pressure from regulators (and the media), keep shooting the open internet in the back, each time they can present themselves as “supportive” of some dumb regulatory regime. Facebook did it six years ago by supporting FOSTA wholeheartedly, which was the key tide shift that made the law viable in Congress.
And, now, it appears that Google is going down that same path. There have been hints here and there, such as when it mostly gave up the fight on net neutrality six years ago. However, Google had still appeared to be active in various fights to protect an open internet.
But, last week, Google took a big step towards pulling up the open internet ladder behind it, which got almost no coverage (and what coverage it got was misleading). And, for the life of me, I don’t understand why it chose to do this now. It’s one of the dumbest policy moves I’ve seen Google make in ages, and seems like a complete unforced error.
Last Monday, Google announced “a policy framework to protect children and teens online,” which was echoed by subsidiary YouTube, which posted basically the same thing, talking about it’s “principled approach for children and teenagers.” Both of these pushed not just a “principled approach” for companies to take, but a legislative model (and I hear that they’re out pushing “model bills” across legislatures as well).
The “legislative” model is, effectively, California’s Age Appropriate Design Code. Yes, the very law that was just declared unconstitutional just a few weeks before Google basically threw its weight behind the approach. What’s funny is that many, many people have (incorrectly) believed that Google was some sort of legal mastermind behind the NetChoice lawsuits challenging California’s law and other similar laws, when the reality appears to be that Google knows full well that it can handle the requirements of the law, but smaller competitors cannot. Google likes the law. It wants more of them, apparently.
The model includes “age assurance” (which is effectively age verification, though everyone pretends it’s not), greater parental surveillance, and the compliance nightmare of “impact assessments” (we talked about this nonsense in relation to the California law). Again, for many companies this is a good idea. But just because something is a good idea for companies to do does not mean that it should be mandated by law.
But that’s exactly what Google is pushing for here, even as a law that more or less mimics its framework was just found to be unconstitutional. While cynical people will say that maybe Google is supporting these policies hoping that they will continue to be found unconstitutional, I see little evidence to support that. Instead, it really sounds like Google is fully onboard with these kinds of duty of care regulations that will harm smaller competitors, but which Google can handle just fine.
It’s pulling up the ladder behind it.
And yet, the press coverage of this focused on the fact that this was being presented as an “alternative” to a full on ban for kids under 18 to be on social media. The Verge framed this as “Google asks Congress not to ban teens from social media,” leaving out that it was Google asking Congress to basically make it impossible for any site other than the largest, richest companies to be able to allow teens on social media. Same thing with TechCrunch, which framed it as Google lobbying against age verification.
But… it’s not? It’s basically lobbying for age verification, just in the guise of “age assurance,” which is effectively “age verification, but if you’re a smaller company you can get it wrong some undefined amount of time, until someone sues you.” I mean, what’s here is not “lobbying against age verification,” it’s basically saying “here’s how to require age verification.”
A good understanding of user age can help online services offer age-appropriate experiences. That said, any method to determine the age of users across services comes with tradeoffs, such as intruding on privacy interests, requiring more data collection and use, or restricting adult users’ access to important information and services. Where required, age assurance – which can range from declaration to inference and verification – should be risk-based, preserving users’ access to information and services, and respecting their privacy. Where legislation mandates age assurance, it should do so through a workable, interoperable standard that preserves the potential for anonymous or pseudonymous experiences. It should avoid requiring collection or processing of additional personal information, treating all users like children, or impinging on the ability of adults to access information. More data-intrusive methods (such as verification with “hard identifiers” like government IDs) should be limited to high-risk services (e.g., alcohol, gambling, or pornography) or age correction. Moreover, age assurance requirements should permit online services to explore and adapt to improved technological approaches. In particular, requirements should enable new, privacy-protective ways to ensure users are at least the required age before engaging in certain activities. Finally, because age assurance technologies are novel, imperfect, and evolving, requirements should provide reasonable protection from liability for good-faith efforts to develop and implement improved solutions in this space.
Much like Facebook caving on FOSTA, this is Google caving on age verification and other “duty of care” approaches to regulating the way kids have access to the internet. It’s pulling up the ladder behind itself, knowing that it was able to grow without having to take these steps, and making sure that none of the up-and-coming challenges to Google’s position will have the same freedom to do so.
And, for what? So that Google can go to regulators and say “look, we’re not against regulations, here’s our framework”? But Google has smart policy people. They have to know how this plays out in reality. Just as with FOSTA, it completely backfired on Facebook (and the open internet). This approach will do the same.
Not only will these laws inevitably be used against the companies themselves, they’ll also be weaponized and modified by policymakers who will make them even worse and even more dangerous, all while pointing to Google’s “blessing” of this approach as an endorsement.
For years, Google had been somewhat unique in continuing to fight for the open internet long after many other companies were switching over to ladder pulling. There were hints that Google was going down this path in the past, but with this policy framework, the company has now made it clear that it has no intention of being a friend to the open internet any more.
Filed Under: aadc, age appropriate design code, age assurance, age estimation, age verification, duty of care, for the children
Companies: google
Comments on “Google Decides To Pull Up The Ladder On The Open Internet, Pushes For Unconstitutional Regulatory Proposals”
I see a plan which is very attractive to an adverting giant, provide age verification services to all sites, and gain universal tracking identifying people across time and the Internet space. Bring up a new device, and the first age verification ties that device to your previous history.
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DON’T GIVE THEM IDEAS, GODDAMN YOU!!!
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Project Dragonfly was a thing, this is probably a refinement of the blasted thing, so…
They probably had this in the backburner the whole time.
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ok then show us your real name and your search history
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Where did I indicate that I greed with that plan?
From wiki: “Don’t be evil” is Google’s former motto.
The rest is just boring specifics.
Goody. Mandating porn ID and, by association, tying porn use with that ID.
Sounds like Google is advocating for, among other things, government mandated collection of adults’ fetishes tied to their names.
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There are QAnon freaks who are less paranoid than you lot
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… said the person posting anonymously.
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Oooh, I can’t be arsed to sign into the comments on some third rate hack’s blog, obviously that must invalidate the fact that you nutjobs take running jumps into paranoiac fantasy every time a government body says ‘hey, maybe the cyber utopia that tech companies have been promising for 50 years isn’t going to magically manifest without any effort on our part’
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… said the person still posting anonymously.
You don’t need to sign in or create an account to post under your real name so are you a hypocrite or just lazy? Come on now, if you don’t have a problem with the idea of tying your name with your actions/words then use your real name in your reply on this ‘third rate hack’s’ blog.
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
So, objecting to age verification is now the way to Stand Up Against Big Tech.
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So, from where did you get that?
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No, its standing up for your right to remain anonymous, and have an Internet that no made so child safe as to cease to be interesting and useful, other than online shopping and video streaming.
Re: Re: Fun while it lasted...
Keep in mind GOP politicians are calling for cancelling visas of foreign nationals who support Hamas and deporting them back to their home countries.
Freedom of speech…go to know ya
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The GOP viewpoint is that only they and their supporters should have any freedoms, and everybody else should be forced into slavery, or the crematorium.
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To clarify: time and time again, politicians trot out “we need to fight back against Big Tech” to support some terrible idea or other. Sen. Blumenthal, for example, seems to operate in a continual “a noun, a verb, Big Tech” mode. But with Google now endorsing some form of these bad ideas, there has been an ironic turnabout. One can now legitimately say that the California AADC and its ilk are what Big Tech wants. The question is now just how eager the government is to give it to them.
(Very eager, I suspect.)
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While Google pushes the narrative they are still against it… Hopefully there huge backlash to this.
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Same.
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Tell that to Facebook (They supported FOSTA)
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Atleast Facebook is willing to tell you straight to your face where Google is trying to gaslight everyone.
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Good point.
I wonder if this has anything to do with (possible) growing discontent with the way Chrome is headed.
I don’t use Chrome or track is usage numbers, so maybe Google has nothing to worry about on that front.
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🤷
“using the political system for personal gain and to prevent competitors from having the same opportunities.”
More like corruption than entrepreneurial.
The text of those model bills would be very interesting to see. I expect that they would make clear a great deal of what the “policy framework” obscures with vague sales-talk.
Google: “I oppose age verification except when it’s done by me.”
Oh no who could’ve seen this coming aside from everyone?
I don’t know why we still have Danes! We supported the “Pay Dane-geld Policy” proposals. I have no idea what went wrong…
So Google came out with the narrative saying they are against mandated age verification while secretly saying they do support it…
The EU is drafting a “Voluntary” code of conduct for age appropriate design under the DSA. Maybe Google tries to align obligations.
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What is age appropriate design other than styles of presentation and content attractive to the target age group? It seems to me by that logic, age appropriate design will the increase engagement of children, whale adult orientated design will cause children to look elsewhere for their entertainment,
'Our enemies are supporting our actions, do they know something we don't?'
Politicians meanwhile will continue to pretend that their unconstitutional bills are aimed are reigning in Big Tech, even as the same companies they are name-dropping as the enemy back and support their efforts.
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Sad, but true thing is this will continue until there’s 1 left.
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My bet’s on Connor MacLeod!
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Age verification is not rocket science
You are right to point out that Google is not arguing against online age assurance, rather it is proposing appropriate, proportional methods that suit each use-case.
The comments on this article again focus on the fear that age assurance will be the death of online privacy. But if we can put a man on the moon, we can prove your age online without disclosing your full identity. The French data protection authority, CNIL, has developed a cryptographic method which guarantees anonymity. Facial age estimation can be conducted on-devie, with your image never touching a server, and no personally identifiable information being transmitted beyond a simply “yes” or “no” in answer to an age condition question. (A point California’s Attorney-General will doubtless make forcefully at the appeal hearing, as the judge who provided the injunction against the CA AADC clearly did not appreciate this point, and that was a fundamental basis of her judgement.)
The Internet was never designed for children, and as we spend more of our lives online we need to make it age – not identity – aware. This can be achieved anonymously, and through interoperable solutions such as http://www.euCONSENT.eu at very little inconvenience to the user.
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The real issue is not determining an age from a dace but rather the security and reliability of the process, while not making it intrusive and a reliable tracker of a person Internet use. An on device age determining system is easily bypassed, and an online verification only verifies the age of the person asking for verification, and unless made very intrusive cannot detect the change of user at a device.
An age verification either makes it easy to lie about age, and is little better that the landing page that says only proceed if you are over 18, or is an intrusive and system that enables user to be identified. The problem is not estimating the age of the face presented to the system, but rather ensuring that the face belongs to the person using the device, and that they continue to be the users of the device after age verification. Also, make sure any verification cookie or token is tied to a particular device during its lifetime, otherwise they will be shared.
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But if we can put a man on the moon, we can prove your age online without disclosing your full identity.
Why am I reminded of those arguing that encryption can be ‘safely’ sabotaged if only companies would Nerd Harder…
Just because we were able to land a person on the moon does not mean it’s possible to land a person on the surface of the sun(and get them back anyway).
That one thing was done means that that thing was done, no more and no less.
Facial age estimation can be conducted on-devie, with your image never touching a server, and no personally identifiable information being transmitted beyond a simply “yes” or “no” in answer to an age condition question
It’s certainly a good thing that people always look their age and/or it’s impossible for cosmetics to change that otherwise that sure seems like it would not only be trivial to bypass but be riddled with false positives and negatives that would require more invasive measures to ‘confirm’ someone’s age, utterly negating the entire point of ‘anonymous’ age confirmation.
The Internet was never designed for children, and as we spend more of our lives online we need to make it age – not identity – aware.
It wasn’t ‘designed’ for anyone, young or old, some sections just so happen to be more appropriate for different maturity levels and if that means you don’t think a particular site is appropriate for your kids then that’s your job to deal with as their parent, not the problem of everyone else to do your job for you.
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“if we can put a man on the moon, we can prove your age online without disclosing your full identity.”
Bullshit
Successfully completing a human rated lunar exploration is not the same, in any way, as verifying the age of people.
How is it that you are not able to understand this?
The old saying about putting a man on the moon – so why can’t we do whatever – is old and tired, it needs to be put away in the attic along side the thigh master, betamax and quadraphonic.
“The French data protection authority, CNIL, has developed a cryptographic method which guarantees anonymity”
Yeah, sure they do. Marketing folk will tell you whatever you want to hear.
“The Internet was never designed for children,”
It wasn’t designed for parents either.
There is no such thing as an idiot proof device. Idiots can be very creative in their ability to do really idiotic things that you have not thought about.
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…said nobody mentally competent, ever.
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If you checked this site, you’d also know that even the EU agencies investigating the issue agree that it’s not possible to make what you’re disingenuously pushing for possible.
Also, the porn “industry” tried in the 90s with worse tech and it still didn’t work.
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If you’re going to trot out anti-encryption rhetoric from 2016 in defense of age verification then I’ll trot out its retort:
Just because we can put a man on the moon doesn’t mean we can put one on the sun.
Your absurd and contradictory claim regarding CNIL isn’t helpful either.
Your proposed system would discriminate against people who look young as it’s heuristics-based. Would adults who look young for their age have to upload their State ID before being able to access pornography?
What relevance does encryption have here beyond transport-layer security of sending the “yes/no” to the server? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re using the word “encryption” as a stand-in for “techno privacy magic”.
I’m not convinced you’re a serious participant in this debate. The same proposal you’ve brought forth has been made in the past and has been shot down due to its unfixable flaws.
It’s a PR move most of all. They want to pretend to be “concerned” with the chiiiiiiiiiilllllldddddddrrreeeeeeeen to score points with parents who don’t bother to learn about the parental controls built in to the devices they hand their kids to make them shut up for an hour.
Google doesn’t have to care about any competitors, they own everything already and no one can compete with them. If that weren’t the case we’d already have viable alternatives to YouTube in response to their increasing hostility to users.
The ladder isn’t being pulled up, it was already turned to ash years ago.
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Google Decides To Pull Up The Ladder On The Open Internet, Pushes For Unconstitutional Regulatory Proposals
Uncommonly stupid and uninformed post. If Google (and others) fail to adopt rules to protect minors from online misbehavior, there will be a legislative solution that will be far worse.
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I’m rather confident that bad legislation will occur regardless. Using the potential for bad legislation is not really a useful lever to force your opinion into place.
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Just wondering. Precisely what exact damage happens to children when they view pornography? Do they grow up to become perverts or gay, or lesbian, or rapists, or something socially evil? Citations please.
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Where’s the harm in kids learning to drive from Fast & Furious movies?
Re: 'I'll just pay a little bit of danegeld, I'm sure that'll appease them...'
… did you stop reading halfway through the title? The government has indeed been trying to moderate the internet and time and time again it’s been slapped down due to that pesky ‘first amendment’.
Major companies joining them in their unconstitutional efforts is not them attempting to dodge more draconion laws, it’s because they understand that as major companies with significant resources they will be able to deal with any of the costs that result unlike smaller competitors that they might have otherwise had to deal with themselves.
As for ‘protecting the children’ I’ve been hearing rumors of these things called ‘parents’ that are apparently designed to deal with that issue, so that might be worth looking into.
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show us your full name and your search history if you think politicians are “protecting the children”
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Why are you mindlessly parroting the lie that these rules “protect minors?”
enshittification
Enshittification is the goal of incorporated entities, not some sort of degradation.
A modern corporation needs to gather customers fast and this means being nice to people. The internet makes this process extremely fast compared to the past, as word automatically spreads about the new “Nice” Company electronically. World-wide.
The goal however, is to make their product or service popular by being nice, until such time as they have what they determine to be enough customers dependent on that product or service to be able to drop the niceness facade and turn full corporate, because they can at that time afford to compete effectively against younger stiil-nice corporations.
GIF comes to mind immediately.
It is in effect, the natural maturing of a modern company. Corporate Adulthood.
Any corporation that does not use this method today will likely fail in the marketplace because of all the other corporations selling similar products or services that do use this “be nice” method, competing against it.
Enshittification is both expected and inevitable, because it is the natural and intended maturation of an incorporated entity.
It is how a baby legalized make-believe entity becomes a full grown legal imaginary person.
Locking up the system
More age verification? More this and that to make Things harder for NEW sites to popup and compete?
WHY the hell not?
Its been the standard for this country for about 70 years.
Buy up all those small competitors, and EAT them alive. Either take their ideas of BURY THEM and use them LATER.
Why make a better product when you can STOP others from creating something EQUAL to your own?
THEN you SAVE money and cut corners to MAKE MORE MONEY, insted of improving the product.
A Candy bar made in the 1960’s is no different then one made TODAY??(thats BS)
Who thinks BEER hasnt changed in that TIME? From a bunch of different companies to 2? that OWN them all?
Yeah, you’d think they wouldn’t pull this shit not only after California’s law got shot down but also right in the middle of their anti-trust case.
Who knows? Maybe they’ll do something really crazy like collude with russian botnets to flood their own platforms with porn this Thanksgiving, while also destroying the graphics cards of anyone supporting their competition.
Think about it. They could kill Biden’s push for Net Neutrality, become the de facto age verification provider for the entire internet, and double down on their monopoly by pulling up the ladder, all at the same time.
All it would really take would be for them to double down on their new Be Evil motto.
But I’m sure the odds of that happening are slim. I’m sure that whatever enshittification measures they’ve already agreed to with Congress behind closed doors are way less draconian than that.
Sure would be super convenient, though, if somebody riled up the “porn bad” crowd during the holidays when the rest of us have to put up with them. Then politicians could claim they have a mandate or whatever to write Google a blank check.
Anyway, that’s the plot and entire contents of my flash fiction tech suspense thriller entitled “2023: Arguably Not As Bad As 2020, But Close.” I’d love to hear feedback, writing tips and corrections from other fellow aspiring fiction authors. Not gonna lie, I feel like the ending needs work.
I am constantly confounded by what Mike thinks a government is actually for. What is the law for, if not to get powerful entities to behave in ways they are not incentivised to but which benefit the society in which they operate?
And this is why I no longer use Google as a search engine. They handed over way more than enough data on me in the past, and that was to those that paid for it. Fuck ’em.