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Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

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Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#81

Post by alexghr »

onion2k wrote: post #70
ambicapter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be used to have zero-proof knowledge of "over 18" or "not over 18". So they don't really get your age, except that you are in two broad ranges.

If you get enough signals like that you can often narrow down a very large cohort of people to an individual. First it's 'over 18?', then it's 'over 25?', and then 'biological sex?', 'employed?', 'enjoys posting on HN?', 'active in the early morning?' and after half a dozen questions, all with binary answers that are safe individually, you can zero in on a 23 year old woman who has a job and posts on HN in the mornin…

Proper ZK proofs don’t work that way. N different proofs will not be linked to each other unless the circuits are written to emit a stable identifier.

Obviously if you see a bunch of proofs for known circuits coming from the same IP address then yeah, you can infer a bunch of info from that metadata.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#82

Post by vlian2088 »

Gigachad wrote: post #73
vlian2088 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. reddit isn't the vast majority of the population, fren. it's 1% of 4%. unless you've got polls you could show to back up your claim? polls, not opinion pieces. polls asking unambiguous questions like "are you in favor of banning social media?" or "are you in favor of age verification laws?", not vague ones like…

77% of the Australian population were in support of "Proposed ban on social media for children under 16" https://yougov.com/articles/51000-support-for-under-16-socia... This was in 2024, since then the attitude is still very much that kids should be taken off social media, but that the current restrictions aren't yet working as the face scanning verification is easily bypassed.

well, shit. Australians absolutely deserve having to scan their faces/fingers/eyeballs/assholes every time they touch their phones, then.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#83

Post by kentm »

doginasuit wrote: post #19
dadoum wrote: post #10

Still, I don't want to gate people based on age. Parents should at least be able to overwrite the age of their child, maybe selectively allow bypasses. My experience with a computer would have been completely different if I was blocked from half of the internet. Especially when I see which kind of content gets blocked.

As a millennial-aged person I saw a fair amount of content I would not want the young people in my life to see, but it's probably not nearly as harmful as the non-age gated content that they will still have access to. There is a lot creepy youtube and tiktok content that isn't off limits but still unhealthy and my younger relatives are fascinated by it.

Not that I want my kids looking at porn or violent content, but I’m far more concerned about man-o-sphere influencers than that other stuff.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#84

Post by semi-extrinsic »

stephen_g wrote: post #15
consumer451 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it's never been more important than now. Also, I did not have enough chars for an HN title.

Funny though how whenever these laws are pushed though, the legislators are more interested in strongly identifying people to gate services despite the fact that they should have plenty of advice that things like zero-knowledge proofs exist. I hate to be cynical but I worry that this isn't going to matter, because it really seems that a lot of the pressure behind age verification isn't actually very interested in the…

It seems to me that the technical people who get invited to public debates are simply not competent or knowledgable enough. We definitely need to step up!

But a part of me wonders if this may be by design from the debate moderators - if a technical expert opens up by saying "we have a cryptographically secured solution that is backed by experts and privacy advocates alike", what's the next 45 minutes of the TV show going to be about?

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#85

Post by intended »

protocolture wrote: post #65
Gigachad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the implementation details are blunt. But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own and yet they have only poured fuel on the problem and watched the ad dollars rain in. So I have little sympathy that the resulting laws are not optimal for them.

>But Facebook, Google, and Reddit have had decades to sort this out on their own It was solved. Dont collect information. The problem is making shitty psychotic apps, not determining who can use them. I would much rather they cut meta into pieces and sold them off as scraps, than just scarfing up the PID of the users to make arbitrary determinations about who can have what brainrot.

It was solved for you.

There are more people than just you (and other tech literate folk) online.

I would also rather meta be cut an sold of as scraps. This is sadly not the question being framed.

I’ve dedicated a portion of my life volunteering to moderate content in communities. It is an unmitigated shit show. The status quo is great for firms and corrosive for society.

If theres a takeaway from this sub thread, is why “meta being broken up and sold for scraps” not being raised as a question in the first place.

Is it another case of too big to fail?

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#86

Post by miki123211 »

wmf wrote: post #24
doginasuit wrote: post #14

Zero-knowledge seems to be a bit of an oversell here. It is more like you break the knowledge up and only share the relevant parts with each party. And the facilitator (Google) arguably has access to the most information out of any of the parties involved.

Ideally the government would be the issuer and the facilitator but the US lacks the state capacity to do this. Maybe it will work that way in Estonia.

The US is in the weird position of having a class of people (undocumented immigrants) who are often provisionally allowed to live there, known to their state in some capacity, and yet unable to receive some government documents that a permanent resident or citizen would be entitled to.

Europe doesn't really have that status. Either you're known to the government and can receive documents from it, or you're a criminal in hiding, avoiding any and all government offices.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#87

Post by pphysch »

kentm wrote: post #83
doginasuit wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a millennial-aged person I saw a fair amount of content I would not want the young people in my life to see, but it's probably not nearly as harmful as the non-age gated content that they will still have access to. There is a lot creepy youtube and tiktok content that isn't off limits but still unhealthy and my younger relatives are fascinated by it.

Not that I want my kids looking at porn or violent content, but I’m far more concerned about man-o-sphere influencers than that other stuff.

Manosphere content is toxic and harmful but the hyperviolence and desensitisation of the former should not be downplayed. That's where the mass shooters evidently come from.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#88

Post by miki123211 »

protocolture wrote: post #8
watersb wrote: post #2

We need "How to talk to your legislators about zero-knowledge proofs".

"Dont do age assurance, ever" Done.

It's much easier to convince somebody to achieve their goals your way than to not achieve their goals at all.

Politicians don't want to be seen as going soft on child predators and harms to children. That is a career-ending move. Whether the bills they introduce even protect children at all has no bearing on it. PR is PR.

If you're essentially telling somebody that children don't need to be protected, you might feel smug and superior, but you're achieving nothing. You'll be ignored as a conspiracy-theory-loving nutjob.

If, on the other hand, you tell politicians that there are multiple approaches to protecting children, all as effective, with one of them having fewer side-effects to the rest of society, now that's a much easier sell. You sound like somebody who knows their stuff and has a nuanced take.

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#89

Post by intended »

vlian2088 wrote: post #71
Gigachad wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. Of course the social media companies object to their product being banned. It's like cigarette companies objecting to plain packaging.

>The vast majority of the population supports banning social media for kids so revolution isn't happening. reddit isn't the vast majority of the population, fren. it's 1% of 4%. unless you've got polls you could show to back up your claim? polls, not opinion pieces. polls asking unambiguous questions like "are you in favor of banning social media?" or "are you in favor of age verification laws?", not vague ones like…

> 6 in 10 parents worldwide support social media ban for under 16s - but children are divided

> Support among parents for a social media ban for under-16s is highest in Malaysia (77%) and India (75%), Argentina (55%) and lowest in Japan (38%) and Nigeria (39%)

> Globally, the majority of Gen Z (51%) – the first true digital natives – support a social media ban for under-16s. Support for the ban is highest in India (73%) and UAE (67%), Argentina (54%) and lowest in Japan (28%), UK, and Canada (both 40%

https://www.varkeyfoundation.org/post/6-in-10-parents-worldw... Support among parents for a social media ban for under-16s is highest in Malaysia (77%) and India (75%), Argentina (55%) and lowest in Japan (38%) and Nigeria (39%)

Re: Opening up 'Zero-Knowledge Proof' technology to promote privacy in age assurance

#90

Post by imjonse »

Gigachad wrote: post #49
echelon wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to stop this helicopter civilization bullshit. We're building 1984 to protect from god knows what imaginary harms. Stop putting plastic wrap around people's freedoms, liberty, and right to privacy.

The harms of smartphones and social media are about as far from imaginary as it could get. The data is screaming at us. We will look back at handing kids phones with instagram like giving kids cigarettes and think wtf were we doing.

It's no coincidence cigarettes were named 'torches of freedom' to get women to start paying up for the privilege of using them a hundred years ago.
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