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
Thank you, that’s good clarification on what the actual motivations are here. Was having trouble following all the threads and sussing it out myself. Appreciate it.
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
Thank you, that’s good clarification on what the actual motivations are here. Was having trouble following all the threads and sussing it out myself. Appreciate it.