Jonah Aragon :MN: on Nostr: None of these things change anything. I really don’t see facial scans as an ...

None of these things change anything. I really don’t see facial scans as an acceptable alternative.

Among other privacy issues, they are inaccurate (thus likely requiring an even more privacy invasive fallback option), and normalize facial recognition in other areas of society as merely another way to identify yourself.

Any form of facial recognition that would even possibly approach acceptability would have to be so unrestrictive that they might as well not exist at all. Anything less, i.e. requiring some black box AI model and/or “verifiable” (by some third party) code execution essentially becomes a DRM scheme, another technology the FOSS community also cannot find acceptable.

If society demands OS-level age gating, it can only come in the form of a user self-attesting their age at setup and the OS storing that information.

There is a massive practical benefit to parents even in this case. Yes, kids could lie here, but parents only have to ensure they don’t lie a single time (during setup) rather than that they don’t lie every time they enter their DOB on a random website or app.

It’s understandable for parents to want more robust parental controls, but they should come at a cost of even a tiny modicum of parental responsibility. Eschewing ALL responsibility for parenting your children to a third-party (even a face scanning system with all the protections Proton's post describes) makes 0 sense, and is unacceptable for adults also swept up in this.