Never Give Them Your Face • Hacker News Board

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#381

Post by harel » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:23 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #192

harel wrote: post #44

It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them". And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway. And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verif…

and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. Need or want? We need very few of the services looking for our government ID. Also, this should not be the only way of pushing back. We can support the EFF and politicians who are actively fighting against this or candidates who vow to. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-ag...

Yes we can support the people who fight it, and also at the same time admit that I, personally, cannot fight it. Some people are driven by the fight. I am not. And want or need, what is the difference? I'm there, I need or want X, I am also busy.

Also, as a company director, I'm required by law now to verify my identity plus my face.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#382

Post by pkulak » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:26 PM UTC

cbdevidal wrote: post #274

pkulak wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought my last car on Craigslist. It was quite pleasant and I like the car. Not that there isn't garbage/scams there, but there's garbage on marketplace too (more, to my eye). I make a point to always go to Craigslist first. It still exists, and it's kicking!

OfferUp also has a ton, as does AutoTempest and even good old fashioned AutoTrader. I'm currently shopping for my son. Facebook seems to have the lowest cost cars, but it also seems to be the least successful way of contacting people. When I bought a car for my sister in April, I contacted (no exaggeration) 70+ sellers and heard back from about ten of them. And yes, I changed the default "Is it still available?" mess…

> I'm currently shopping for my son.

Same! I recommend an old (2017-) Nissan Leaf. I got one for very cheap when gas was at a local peak, and now that's it's going down, I'm seeing even better deals. The low range can be a plus when it's a 16-year-old driver whom you have no interest in seeing drive out of the city. haha

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#383

Post by amalcon » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

vodou wrote: post #141

9dev wrote: post #27

Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane ?

I think it is great that people point out LLM generated articles here on HN. Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content... So, please, list the indicators and telltale signs from the specific article or blog post (like others have done here already). At least I would appreciate it a lot.

I know, right? It used to be easy: just look for writing in a very long-winded style, almost as if the author is being paid per word, in a place where that sort of writing didn't belong. I think it was because that type of writing represented a disproportionate fraction of the tokens in the training data due to the long-winded-ness. Somewhere around a year ago, they figured out some way to deal with that problem.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#384

Post by danillonunes » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:39 PM UTC

panny wrote: post #143

codedokode wrote: post #94

There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device. So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluet…

The problem with that is, parents be like: >Here kid, take my key, go get me some beer. Everyone everywhere gets forced to deal with bullshit, then the people it is supposed to be protecting circumvent it directly.

Also, let's be honest, outside of some loud privacy concerned voices, most people don't care and they will prefer to scan their faces with the phone they have at home which is an action they are already used to do than to spend money to buy some nerdy device.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#385

Post by urbnspacecowboy » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:40 PM UTC

supriyo-biswas wrote: post #62

fl4regun wrote: post #31

This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch p…

It's all caused by a Meta lobbying initiative across multiple countries as documented in https://tboteproject.com/ (sadly, the website is down right now), but you can find references e.g. https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/03/the-tbote-project/

> It's all caused by a Meta lobbying initiative...

Is it really, though? As commenters on JWZ's blog pointed out (once you get around his HN link blocker, hah), the project contains very questionable LLM work.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#386

Post by nvme0n1p1 » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:49 PM UTC

ShinyLeftPad wrote: post #379

joenot443 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is not age verification. It is identity verification. > You can change a password. You cannot change your face. > This is not a popularity contest, and refusal is not a vote you are trying to win These were a couple sentences that were immediate flags to me. There've been countless articles written on this (I can dig them up if you want), but IMO there are pretty clear semantic rhythms you start to notice. It is…

Tons of people write that way.

Did people used to do it 5 times every 10 sentences?

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#387

Post by nedt » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 8:54 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #94

There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device. So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluet…

I can already generate a QR code that proofs my age anonymously. It's signed by the goverment. There are libraries to check the QR code. No extra device needed.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#388

Post by codedokode » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

nedt wrote: post #387

codedokode wrote: post #94

There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device. So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluet…

I can already generate a QR code that proofs my age anonymously. It's signed by the goverment. There are libraries to check the QR code. No extra device needed.

How can you be sure that it is anonymous? And why it is not used instead of selfies?

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#389

Post by codedokode » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #376

codedokode wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An adult could also sell alcohol or drugs to minors so what? Should we add a code to every bottle and require passport to buy them?

Adults can be prosecuted for selling alcohol to minors (I mean, they can be prosecuted for selling drugs to other adults even). Because there is a physical handoff, there is risk in doing so, and thus there is high friction, which we deem to be sufficient to curtail the risk. No such friction or accountability can possibly exist when we're talking about a bunch of yubikeys, unless we attach identity to them (THIS IS…

It it not difficult to make selling age verification tokens to minors illegal.

Re: Never Give Them Your Face

#390

Post by andrewla » Mon, Jun 22, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #155

andrewla wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm maybe a bit of an outlier here in that I do think that this is a genuine grassroots good faith effort to "protect the children" that does not have sinister ulterior motives. I know plenty of parents who have expressed enthusiasm for the idea of age-restricting websites. "Why now" I think is pretty obvious -- the age limitations that exist currently are easily circumvented, but have given enough of a plausible den…

I agree only in the sense that Meta wants the OS to tell them the user’s age - BOTH for the ulterior motive of better ad targeting / fingerprinting, but also because shifting the liability gets the numerous current and future child safety lawsuits off the back. This would be fine if it was actually done perfectly - ie. Devices get a signed ticket from the government identity provider, device can provides a cryptograp…

There is no "done correctly". Intrinsically you simply cannot do this, and you have to accept this as almost axiomatic.

If the online age token is not attached to a human identity in a strong way, then it can be transferred to others without friction. The only way we can make it sticky is a mix of technological solutions (how we tie to identity) and real-world systems -- having the ability to prosecute misuse and to link to a physical identity.