Quote:
Originally Posted by Hugh
|
I suspect that the majority of people in this country will be broadly in support of a ban for under-16s. As always, easy to pass a law, but how will it be implemented, how will it be enforced?
Let’s ask for (sensible, please) suggestions from my fellow posters; ‘just how would you implement it?'
I’ve seen some ideas; ‘special child-friendly phones’ - but not really practical for technical and commercial reasons.
So we have the problem of a phone or other device (laptops, some people still use desktops - especially gamers, games consoles etc.) which in the hands of an under-16 behaves differently to an identical device being used by a 17 year old. How does the device know? Remember it’s not possible for the under-16 to have to fail to show that they are old enough, the onus is on
everyone else to have to prove that they are! Hopefully this could be done in a simple, non-invasive way - but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting. More likely it’ll be send scans of your passport along with a mugshot to some third-party who will absolutely promise to keep it all secure, and destroy the info once age has been confirmed, and somehow the device knows this.
Oh and what happens if it’s a shared device?
But anyway, let’s assume that the ban becomes law and some age-verification method is in use. What happens when a tabloid paper reveals that some thousands of under-16s are still using SM - parents just ‘allowing’ it because they didn’t understand the parental controls, a bug in the verification system, someone found and disseminated a ‘work-around’?
Will even more draconian restrictions be put in place, again,
for everyone, to try to close these loopholes - rinse and repeat?
I’m not against taking steps to protects children from the worse parts of the internet (or the world in general - the internet is just a means of communication), but let’s make sure that the ‘cure’ isn’t as bad as the ‘disease’!