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Comment by cameronh90 | Hacker News Reader

This sounds awful but I'm not sure comparing webcam age verification to Nazi phrenology is helpful. Indeed, such a reaching Reductio ad Hitlerum makes me doubt the credibility of the piece.

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I don’t see any references to nazis in there. The article says “Victorian phrenology”, not “nazi phrenology”. Calling it a Victorian practice isn’t unreasonable. Technically phrenology was most popular immediately before the beginning of the Victorian era, but it’s pretty close.

The article embeds a tweet that states,"It took Nazi-era atrocities, forced sterilizations... for phrenology, eugenics, and other pseudosciences to be relegated from science’s mainstream to its fringe. It should not take mass injustice for Cheap AI to be recognised as similarly harmful."

The article doesn't directly equate phrenology with Nazis, but does make an implied connection between phrenology and Nazi craniometry, and goes on to quote a tweet which explicitly talks about Nazi atrocities being the driving force in the end of phrenology.

The entire reference feels like an overreach, however, not just because of the Reductio ad Hitlerum, but also because it begs the question on the inherent evil of any use of craniometry.

There was an inline quote about nazi phrenology as well

> But for the slow VCs at the back who do need to be told:

>> Concluding, Dr. @Abebab notes, "It took Nazi-era atrocities, forced sterilizations… for phrenology,

ctrl-f Nazi?

I thought it was a very well written and engaging piece.

Given that this ludicrous legislation was, undoubtedly, pushed for by the Home Office and shadowy security apparatus, it seems plain to me that those same groups will have access to all the data the age verification companies hold - they will know the identity of every user accessing these websites, and there is absolutely zero chance it won't be abused. There is also zero chance it won't be used as a springboard to escalate the scope.

This is yet more mass-surveillance via the handy back door of "think of the children". One of the main reasons I voted against Brexit was exactly because of shit like this - put simply, I trust the EU more than my own government. Honestly, I found the phrenology comparisons rather apt.

> I trust the EU more than my own government.

You're not the only one. This was also my own number one (but not sole) reason for voting against Brexit, and that's a really sad thing to have to say.

First, what the article describes is awful. It's a full onslaught on privacy, once more under the "won't anyone think of the children" banner. Of course, they don't care about the children, it's just an appeal to the purity of their blessed, little souls, as if encountering an inappropriate website will immediately condemn them to hell.

Anyway, measuring age with e.g. just a webcam is quite feasible. It's not perfect. I mean: I was well in my 30s when people were still asking for my student id, so there's an error margin. I do suppose these methods cannot circumvented by holding a picture in front of the camera or judicious application of some make-up. Adolescent boys looking for porn are not going to give up just because an age filter declines them access.

It's not phrenology, not in a technical sense, nor in the sense which the article appeals to. And that appeal is a bit pathetic, indeed, but more born from despair than the will to kill of a few million people.

I think the author was not the one performing the reductio ad hitlerum, but was referencing a tweet[1] citing a doctoral thesis on AI ambiguity (which made the "fallacy") and (i'm guessing here as I haven't read it) concerns biases present in modern vision systems.

[1] - https://twitter.com/clancynewyork/status/1535686305438478339

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