Reddit Starts Verifying Ages of Users In the UK (bbc.com) 51
Reddit has begun verifying users' ages in the UK to restrict access to "certain mature content" for minors, complying with the UK's Online Safety Act. The BBC reports: Reddit, known for its online communities and discussions, said that while it does not want to know who its audience is: "It would be helpful for our safety efforts to be able to confirm whether you are a child or an adult." Ofcom, the UK regulator, said: "We expect other companies to follow suit, or face enforcement if they fail to act." Reddit said that from 14 July, an outside firm called Persona will perform age verification for the social media platform either through an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport. It said Reddit will not have access to the photo and will only retain a user's verification status and date of birth so people do not have to re-enter it each time they try to access restricted content. Reddit added that Persona "promises not to retain the picture for longer than seven days" and will not have access to a user's data on the site. The new rules in the UK come into force on 25 July. [...]
Companies that fail to meet the rules face fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of worldwide revenue, "whichever is greater." [Ofcom] added that in the most serious cases, it can seek a court order for "business disruption measures," such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK."
Companies that fail to meet the rules face fines of up to 18 million pounds or 10% of worldwide revenue, "whichever is greater." [Ofcom] added that in the most serious cases, it can seek a court order for "business disruption measures," such as requiring payment providers or advertisers to withdraw their services from a platform, or requiring Internet Service Providers to block access to a site in the UK."
Censorship is fascist! (Score:1)
Please, help us circumvent it!
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Who elected the fascists?
Anonymity has legitmate uses (Score:2)
Hiding personal stupidity is not one of them.
Might be a sour grapes thing. I looked for value in Reddit for a long time. Still see it come up on some search results--but cannot recall a case where any useful information was found on Reddit, no matter what the google "thought" in recommending it.
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For Subreddits Dedicated to Porn (Score:1)
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These Companies Are Fucked (Score:4, Interesting)
an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport.
You have to do the full Know Your Customer(KYC) registration for Reddit? Their next earnings report will be discussing a massive plunge in visits and ad revenue.
This whole formal identification to use internet sites is a disaster. Worst of all, it has no effect on violators. Kids know how to get porn. Crooks know how to get crypto/bank/phone service without KYC. These companies are fucked.
Re:These Companies Are Fucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. But this wasn't ever about protecting children. These laws are about shaming people, and asserting dominance over those who like things that they don't, and about compiling an easily subpoenaed list of people whom they consider deviants.
If the laws were really about protecting children, they would have passed a law requiring browser vendors to provide age check support in a privacy-protecting way.
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A browser nanny is no better than a webserver nanny. Not at all.
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If the laws were really about protecting children, they would have passed a law requiring browser vendors to provide age check support in a privacy-protecting way.
It’s one thing to argue intent, but could you clarify exactly how that is done in a privacy-protecting way? I’d like some kind of guarantee what they need to collect and verify will remain secure. Especially about children. That it will not be hacked. Or even sold under more obvious corporate abuse. How many are stepping up to do that? How many really could, even if they wanted to?
The technical problems, may prove just as challenging as the moral ones. Especially for companies that solely
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What's the difference between publish and leak? Then explain to us why it doesn't matter.
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NEARLY ALL SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS ARE FAKE AND EVERY PLATFORM IS KNOWINGLY CATERING TO SCAMMERS AND SPAMMERS OPERATING SWARMS OF ACCOUNTS IN ORDER TO MANUFACTURE FAKE USER METRICS.
Reddit is an ongoing criminal conspiracy and we all know it and we also know that KYC does actually stop that kind of criminal conspiracy. Every single crypto or sales platform that adds KYC, fails as a result. That absolutely means that the accoun
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Are you serious?
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Reddit's current CEO admitted to filling their platform with fake users and fake content from the very beginning(https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/magazines/panache/reddit-faked-its-first-users-resurfaced-video-shows-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-admitting-99-of-early-submissions-were-fabricated/articleshow/119263428.cms?from=mdr).
Anyone trying to def
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I guess you're serious.
So, I'll just respond that anyone should be able to pay anyone else, without knowing who they are, with the possible exception of a business owned by more than one person.
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So what criminal activity are you up to here on Slashdot with your clearly fake name account?
Reddit at it's core is no different than any other online community, forum, or social media platform. Sure, their size almost guarantees that there will be a criminal element amongst the crowd. Slashdot is similar but minutely small because of their niche focus. But the vast majority of users, Reddit or Slashdot, and activity are perfectly legal activities performed by non-criminals who simply like privacy and anony
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I'm just waiting for the first breach. People's photo ID, their name and if they used their driver's licence their home address, and a list of all the websites they verified their age for.
I switched my VPN endpoint to a country that doesn't do this. No way I'm handing over photo ID for any website.
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I'm just waiting for the first breach. People's photo ID, their name and if they used their driver's licence their home address, and a list of all the websites they verified their age for.
I switched my VPN endpoint to a country that doesn't do this. No way I'm handing over photo ID for any website.
I wonder if this is actually a net benefit for Reddit, to the degree they compete with other sites with plenty of XXX content.
If there were such a leak, having verified your identity with "reddit.com" would be much less embarrassing than with "obviouslyporn.com". As other commenters have noted there are non-porn Reddit communities that are flagged as NSFW for a variety of reasons, giving the user plausible deniability.
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Ah, the old Playboy defence. "I only read it for the articles!"
and... (Score:2)
reddit dies a little more. This is like a death of a thousand cuts.
Fake picture? (Score:1)
I wonder what's stopping someone from using someone else's picture or AI generated image and then taking a picture of that.
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This is how such processes work:
- You need to take a selfie
- You need to scan/photo your passport
- You go into a video chat and show your face and your passport, tilt it and bend it a bit so it is visible that it's real and the security features are visible
- You get marked as verified
If the verification company submits your full data, just or age or something in between depends on what the site requested and you should be informed about what they will get.
I can't remember the last time I was on Reddit (Score:3, Funny)
Must have been years. I'm feeling like a proper adult right now.
Backups at the ready (Score:2)
In preparation for the 25 July I've backed up about 1TB of my favourite porn onto my cloud-backed NAS.
I'm all set and ready for years to come.
Re:Backups at the ready (Score:4, Funny)
So what you're saying is you're ready to come for years.
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In preparation for the 25 July I've backed up about 1TB of my favourite porn onto my cloud-backed NAS.
There's porn on Reddit? Seems to me it's mostly just people spamming their OnlyFans teasers in NSFW subs that allow such self-promotion, and slyly asking to be DMed (so they can send you their OnlyFans link, obviously) in subs that don't.
Ever since the great PornHub purge, most of what's online these days is just someone trying to get you to unzip your... pocket book.
The internet was a regulatory arbitrage... (Score:4, Insightful)
If KYC breaks a platform, then it means that platform was crooked. Full stop. If your platform involves transferring money between accounts, then KYC is obviously needed. If any of these platforms actually stuck to their purported business model, communication between users, then this would be an insane invasion of privacy but these platforms decided to financialize themselves and pay users to post.
Reddit turned itself into a transnational payment systems by choice. Of course they need KYC.
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Reddit turned itself into a transnational payment systems by choice. Of course they need KYC.
What does this have to do with crypto and payment systems? It's about blocking kids' access to porn on Reddit.
This isn't even a KYC system of the sort you'd see used by banks and crypto exchanges. Reddit gets confirmation of the users' DOB from a third party - nothing to do with their tax status, residency, etc. that you'd need to prevent financial crime.
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Reddit has an award system where other users can pay to apply an award to a comment or post, making it more visible. This isn't knew. It's been around for probably a decade but in 2023 they changed that and started paying people for getting a certain number of awards on their post. Thus creating a financial incentive to say things that reddit wants to hea
Online age verification is impossible (Score:3)
Kids are smart and can easily find workarounds
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Nahhhh, then that would mean there's ulterior motives behind this.
Oh.
Nanny State At Its Best (Greatest Hits Edition) (Score:2)
Anyway, for the rest of us, what some think of as an annoyance will probably just be a unique opportunity for vendors of VPN services to easily gain market share.
The entire thing will just place undue burden and complexity for these sites to satisfy the Nanny State, and help contribute to some epic-sized data leaks.
#wha
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It's kind of scary that those who enact these rules don't realize how much more motivated teenagers will be, because they'll have the added thrill of accessing something that's forbidden.
It's scary that technologists don't realize there are other regulated businesses in the US, UK, an EU that all require age verification and somehow they all manage to comply.
Query ID (Score:2)
Is it not possible to allow a query to a government issued ID card - "is the holder over the age of 16?" Yes/no.
That is all they need to know, so that's all the info you should have to give them.
I am close to certain I must be missing something...
UK Redditors being age-verified...by a US company? (Score:3)
One big issue I have with the UK's Online Safety Act is that the UK government isn't providing a centralised age verification service (or commissioning a non-profit UK organisation to do it, which maybe the government then subsidises?). So what we're going to get is a disparate set of companies providing probably slightly different methods of age verification and a much bigger chance of the verification data being leaked. BTW, I'm a UK adult and have no form of UK photo ID, so I've no idea how they're going to verify my age (maybe my birth certificate?).
In Reddit's case, we've got the issue of a US company (Persona, who the BBC article mentioned but failed to state it's based in San Francisco in the US) verifying the ages of UK users. This brings up the issue of jurisdiction and possible GPDR violations to my mind.
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BTW, I'm a UK adult and have no form of UK photo ID, so I've no idea how they're going to verify my age (maybe my birth certificate?).
I'm in the same boat and there's an ever increasing number of things that I can't do now thanks to photo ID verification requirements. Want to apply for a bank account online? Point your smartphone at your passport or driving license. Digital signature for a bank transfer? We only support this one platform and guess what they require as verification. Want to gamble? Sorry, photo ID holders only. Hell, you want to apply for a provisional driving license they want your passport, want to apply for a passport t
Who does this (Score:2)
Aren't people who are in power now and make the laws grew up during the beginning of the Internet? Do they not remember seeking out nude images and downloading pirated software? That's what kids do, nothing wrong about it, completely normal. Maybe the UK was overrun by religious fundamentalists, christian or muslim, I don't know, maybe both.
A face for public domain (Score:2)
an outside firm called Persona will perform age verification for the social media platform either through an uploaded selfie or "a photo of your government ID," such as a passport
Genuine question: how do they know it's a selfie of you?
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Not at all. They know it is a selfie of the person who video identified, but there is no way to control after verification if the identified John Miller uses the account or just did the identification for Jessie Doe, who know browses NSFW sites even though she's too young. But at least they know, that John Miller is reponsible for what happens with the account.
State level identification (Score:2)
Technologies like OAUTH 2.0 have been around for a long, long time, and their purpose is to provide a verifiable audit-trail for users.
And it works! Although there have been (and will always be) security issues, the reality is that technologies like SAML and OAUTH do provide a very useful level of trust.
Except that, although these technologies do allow for a useful transfer of identity, the agents widely used to provide this identity (the IDP) is never an entity that provides a uniformly useful level of ide