https://www.techdirt.com/2023/08/14/wisconsin-pushing-bill-that-requires-websites-to-treat-all-users-as-if-theyre-children/
Did you know that on a mobile network, many many people might share the same IP Address? Pretty mundane thing.
There are other ways in which IPs are unreliable and don't mean a specific person. Again, lawmakers making very shallow assumptions here...
This is the same mistake Elon made and it bit him too.
Now, this might sound radical, but usually parenting prevents minors just fooling around all night (although gotta sleep too). Nanny state much?
How do you measure "accuracy"? Is it exaggerated marketing materials? Is it artificial tests in the lab?
Also, at scale, that is still a nightmare, and can effectively lock a lot of people out (who might quite vulnerable and / or disproportionately affected).
I've seen these systems going wrong in practice. Often, that is it, you are out.
The thing with the IPs is basic community admin knowledge.
I've known people with dozens of users who have run into the "mobile network" problem. And you expect this to hold up at Facebook scale? Hah.
Another bill from people who fundamentally don't understand the Internet, although I suppose if they did, then I suspect they wouldn't have come up with this kind of "think of the children" bill in the first place.
🇳🇱
@olives blocking raw ip is stupid... a better approach (but still has false positives) is to do a reverse loop up on the ip and then block on a wildcard pattern of it.. that way when your ip changes you remain blocked.
Also, what if someone's IP changes? This happens very regularly and without their intervention.
Is this an attempt at "bypassing" a control? How would you know?
If this is just for a geoblock bypass, it still poses constitutional, jurisdictional, privacy, and other headaches. It's a mess and undermines human rights.
But, even in that case, why are lawmakers constraining how a network might be designed? Where is it the state's business to get involved?