The Federal Trade Commission is seeking comment on an application from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) and others for a new mechanism for obtaining parental consent
Okay, so this isn’t a new law or regulation. This is the ESRB and a couple companies requesting approval for a new method of providing verifiable parental consent to be acceptable to use for the purpose of satisfying COPPA’s existing requirements. From what I can find, the current approved methods of verifying parental consent appear to be:
submitting a signed form or a credit card
talking to trained personnel via a toll-free number or video chat
answering a series of knowledge-based challenge questions
Instead this would be handing the device to a parent, they snap a selfie and it gets analyzed for age estimation to determine if the person providing parental consent is an adult.
Good or bad, too invasive, idk, not really making a judgement there myself. I’d imagine the companies want this so they don’t have to have as many trained personnel and it’s probably less likely to be a barrier to consent as compared to putting in a credit card, talking to someone, or answering whatever knowledge-based challenges they use.
Yes I’m sure it’ll be plagued by technical problems, and obviously the privacy implications.
As for opting in – that depends on whether this is approved as a method and then who adopts it and whatever they decide. Unless they’re brain dead there will need to be a process for failures, so that could conceivably apply to people who opt out as well
Okay, so this isn’t a new law or regulation. This is the ESRB and a couple companies requesting approval for a new method of providing verifiable parental consent to be acceptable to use for the purpose of satisfying COPPA’s existing requirements. From what I can find, the current approved methods of verifying parental consent appear to be:
submitting a signed form or a credit card
talking to trained personnel via a toll-free number or video chat
answering a series of knowledge-based challenge questions
Instead this would be handing the device to a parent, they snap a selfie and it gets analyzed for age estimation to determine if the person providing parental consent is an adult.
Good or bad, too invasive, idk, not really making a judgement there myself. I’d imagine the companies want this so they don’t have to have as many trained personnel and it’s probably less likely to be a barrier to consent as compared to putting in a credit card, talking to someone, or answering whatever knowledge-based challenges they use.
Last I heard, computers couldn’t reliably identify black people as human, so this is going to piss off a lot of people.
Anyway, please tell me my hypothetical child and I won’t be subjected to this insanity unless I opt in.
Yes I’m sure it’ll be plagued by technical problems, and obviously the privacy implications.
As for opting in – that depends on whether this is approved as a method and then who adopts it and whatever they decide. Unless they’re brain dead there will need to be a process for failures, so that could conceivably apply to people who opt out as well