- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Online services can now guess a user’s age with as little as a selfie or a phone number, according to leading age assurance providers. Age estimation providers in particular claim their processes are easy and, because they don’t seek to tie anyone’s identity to their estimated age (or use only existing data to make their guess), privacy-protective. As a result, policymakers are increasingly seeing age estimation as a potential panacea that enables providers to determine a user’s age while preserving their privacy, anonymity, and safety.
Even without legal requirements, companies are increasingly implementing methods to determine users’ ages. For example, just last month, Google committed to using machine learning methods to guess age, including analyzing users’ online activity such as sites browsed and YouTube videos watched. Apple is equipping parents and caregivers with tools to add their children’s ages when setting up an iCloud account, and to age-gate access to apps at the App Store level.
You must log in or register to comment.
What a predictable typical, mealy mouthed half acquiescence nothing statement from CDT, the “consumer protection” organization with an annual fundraising event called “Tech Prom” with all their tech funding. Glorified agitprop, compromised ass DC swamp huffers.
All age verification is bullshit and doesn’t work.
This is so, so stupid, for a myriad of reasons.
What’s more, certain groups of adults are more likely to bear the brunt when these supposedly “convenient” estimation methods fail. Nonbinary and trans people are likely to be misclassified by facial age estimation technologies and often do not have access to IDs reflecting their gender and name.
People with disabilities that affect their physical appearance often face misclassification, as facial estimation technologies struggle with variations outside their training parameters, and they may be limited from attaining IDs like driver’s licenses as well.
People of color are routinely misidentified by facial recognition and estimation technology—something that Yoti’s white paper acknowledges in reporting higher error rates for people with darker skin tones—and consequently may distrust facial scanning systems and prompts to upload more invasive documentation.
Finally, people from different socioeconomic contexts, particularly low-income people, and some immigrant communities may lack the documentation and IDs even if they want to supply them—in fact, millions of Americans lack government ID.
This creates a troubling pattern: those who don’t fit algorithmic “norms” must surrender more personal data to access the same services or eschew the use of online services that help people access information, seek employment opportunities, and speak freely altogether.
Not only is it a massive invasion of privacy, it doesn’t fucking work correctly anyway.
I am still in favor of the traditional way of age verification. Do you have a parent who keeps you from using our site? No? Then we consider you an adult.
My favorite was on the old Leisure Suit Larry that would ask questions about Watergate and stuff that kids just wouldn’t know.
I guess that doesn’t work as well with the internet.
Even humans are shit at estimating ages, especially outside your own race. I don’t see current AI/ml being able to do any better.
So… to keep you from having to give personally identifiable information, we just need a selfie, to put into our facial recognition program… that sounds soo respectful of privacy. No way AI has any means of, identifying a person from just a face. /s
This shit’s evil
