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Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

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Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#151

Post by graemep »

pear01 wrote: post #110
999900000999 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects. We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines. 19 century illnesses are making a resurgence. Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.

China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's a lot easier to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities…

> China is also an ancient civilization.

So is Europe, and we are talking about the west in general, not just the US.

> Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars.

Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.

> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example

They also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#152

Post by mullingitover »

lapcat wrote: post #136
mullingitover wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with various anti-democratic (small "d") Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into. Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability. > The game is rigged in fa…

> Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read Well-read in the 18th century. And they borrowed heavily from 17th century philosopher John Locke. Imagine relying on 17th or 18th century medicine now. The founders weren't nearly as wise as they're alleged to be. For example, they thought their system would suppress political parties, and then political parties arose almost immediately. > Rule by the many is…

> Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.

We're certainly in agreement here, but I would say that most modern wealth is fictional: based on equity, which is based on credit, which is based on confidence, which at the end of the day is just vibes. So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates. However, they're definitely wildly overpaid in the US. That, imho, is because culturally this country still wants to cosplay at having an aristocracy.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#153

Post by petcat »

close04 wrote: post #146
petcat wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wild exaggeration. Here's an example just recently: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... It's a constant and ongoing public concern.

Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.

It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything?

Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws.

But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#154

Post by chocmake »

ByteBlaster wrote: post #44

The EU is rolling out the EUDI system this year where citizens can verify their age (>16, >18, >21) without revealing any personal information. This is a solved problem over there.

EUDI has had various criticism with its approach for not supporting unlinkability (with the same attestation used across verifiers they can be traced to the same user).

There are some long Github threads in the official repo along with a PDF[1] of cryptographer's feedback about the privacy issues. Also covered in this[2] article.

This is unlike BBS+ which supports unlinkability and which was even recommended by GSMA Europe to such address downsides. In the Github discussions there seems to be pushback by those officially involved that claim BBS+ isn't compatible with EUDI[3] and there seems to be some plateauing of any progress advancing it.

[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...

[2] https://news.dyne.org/the-problems-of-european-digital-ident...

[3] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#155

Post by commandlinefan »

dylkil wrote: post #99

ZK proofs are the solution to this problem. Its a pity this tech is not taken more seriously. I recently used a product that required proof of country (or rather proof of not from certain countries). It was a very painless experience with https://zkpassport.id/

You're assuming that anonymous age verification is or ever was actually the end goal here.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#156

Post by dizzy9 »

gowld wrote: post #71
dizzy9 wrote: post #55

Age verification inherently requires identity verification. The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.

How do you prevent selling those ID codes to kids?

> presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol

Selling alcohol to minors is illegal in the UK. Some do circumvent this by various means (e.g. fake ID or having an adult purchase on their behalf, both of which are also illegal), but the same is already true for the current age verification system.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#158

Post by vladms »

adrian_b wrote: post #145
vladms wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda. Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for…

Having also lived in a communist country, I agree that 35 years ago the difference was huge. Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago. The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economie…

> Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities.

Hiding or not 20 years ago the west was trying to surveil it's population as much as they could as well, see the Snowden/NSA scandal.

> even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe

Spot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).

For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#159

Post by mobiuscog »

Scapeghost wrote: post #62

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…

Convenient and Cheap. That's all most people care about.

Privacy was already lost when everyone adopted mobile phones and gave them everything with constant location tracking, and used the free email accounts.

It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.

Re: Online age-verification tools for child safety are surveilling adults

#160

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

Scapeghost wrote: post #62

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and acc…

US domestic surveillance predates 9/11. It just became more open once an easy excuse was available.
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