Supporting an EU-Wide Digital Majority Age for Teens: Online Access with Parental Approval
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Meta is supporting proposals to establish a common Digital Majority Age across EU member states, whereby parents need to approve their younger teens' access to digital services, including social media.
  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 hours ago

    I don’t want age verification for social media — I’d rather parents, who in 2025 probably grew up with connected devices, be responsible for it — but if they do force this, it should be part of the operating system. Sort of like Apple Pay and Google Pay where sites and apps can essentially put some boilerplate code in that’s easy to implement and all the sites/apps get back is a yes/no answer. Users only have to go through the process once. It protects privacy way more than giving your info to every “social media” site that comes along.

    It’s not ideal but it’d be way more workable than having to provide ID to every site that has social media functions. I mean, you could classify any random forum or site with a comment section as “social media” if the definition is too broad. Things like Fediverse instances wouldn’t have to each write their own implementation. (Eventually, there would be trusted, mature libraries, obviously, but that could take awhile and presumably would need to be part of every browser/app language but also at least some code for every back-end language to store the data.)

  • Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    18 hours ago

    Of course they would. Not only would they get their hands on data users fully voluntarily give them by using their platform, but they’d get their hands on verified IDs and quite reliable family tie information. The potential loss of users is definately worth it for them (from their perspective).

    • imecth@fedia.io
      2·
      11 hours ago

      Yeah… no, they already have access to all that. It’s the good ol’, if it’s gonna happen anyways might as well get behind it and get some good PR.

    • TJA!@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      16 hours ago

      In my opinion we would need an EU service that does the verification while sharing as little information as possible with facebooks services.

      I think the EU service should only send back, if the person is allowed to use Facebook. A single yes or no. Which could mean both, that the person is either old enough or has their parents consent.

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.spaceEnglish
    29·
    20 hours ago

    As the age verification technology would forcibly deanonymise all EU users, opening a huge new vein of behavioural surveillance data to the zuckerbots.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.netEnglish
    710·
    19 hours ago

    I’ve been thinking about it and here’s my proposal:

    • total ban on hosting/streaming videos with kids below 16. Anyone uploading content with kids is immediately banned. Platforms hosting content with kids are prosecuted.
    • treat mobile phones like cigarettes. Parents giving phones to children < 16 are fined. If you want to track your kid get him a smart watch.

    Who’s with me?

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      a heavy handed approach, but I don’t see one that is not heavy handed, private, and effective enough.

      slight modification: mobile phone is ok if it only has a small screen like on old feature phones, no capabilities for mobile data but only calls (that’s probably a software limitation), and no social media apps (or any installable apps).
      perhaps wifi capability with a weak antenna, or a wifi interface that only supports low speeds.

      private communications is a question though, because phone calls and SMS are anything but private.

      hey people, this could work!

      and its not like we need to ban kids from the internet, but to only allow them with the active supervision of a parent.