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EFF launches Age Verification Hub

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Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#311

Post by exsomet »

dietdrpeppr wrote: post #287
edgineer wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure those people exist, I just never happen to see anything they write online nor meet any of them in real life.

> There are also, concerningly IMO, an extremely large amount of people willing to accept severe surveillance or privacy downsides so long as it helps achieve the goal about kids. I’m alive. Nice to meet you. I “accept severe surveillance”, not in the sense that I agree with it, but because I know that it already exists and has existed and that people that are against it are screaming into the wind. Many large and sm…

This is a fairly defeatist approach to the issue (read that as a statement of fact, not an accusation or argument). The problem with taking this stance, for many people, is that you’re giving a mouse a cookie, except the cookie is marginally more and more control over your life in the form of the ability to control what you see, what communities you’re allowed to engage with, and what you’re allowed to do online.

This battle for online privacy and control is just that, a battle, and you are correct that it is not a fair fight. But engaging and pushing back, through advocacy, speaking out, and acts of noncompliance does three things:

First, it slows the progress of these measures and thus limits the amount of control over our lives we give up, hopefully until some more politically friendly people come to power.

Second, it provides a barometer (via its effectiveness) for assessing the state of that fight, and how dire it is becoming.

Finally, people voicing their concerns about these laws gives information that helps inform more powerful and potentially altruistic advocates with more resources (such as the EFF) in how those resources should be allocated.

Maybe those aren’t good reasons for you, and that’s okay. Lots of people just want to browse twitter and see sports scores and they don’t really care if they have to show ID to do that. For anybody else reading this though, there are lots of reasons why your involvement and engagement in this issue should not stop with “that’s just how the world works”.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#312

Post by throw_me_uwu »

miki123211 wrote: post #280
pksebben wrote: post #88

This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […

How do you know this? I see this argument repeated over and over on HN, with 0 evidence for it. Any "evidence" people cite is usually of the "politicians are evil, so this should be obvious by definition" kind, sometimes of the "they tried x in the past, so surely some unrelated y they're trying to pass in the future is also about x" kind. I haven't seen a single leak, a single admission from somebody trying to pass…

You don't need conspiracy, you need the incentives.

The state always thinks of self-preservation. Any bureaucrat is aligned to this goal by getting the benefits from the state. So, the more power it has over its citizens, which is the first threat it, the more safe it is and the less opinions of citizens matter.

Understanding this, every citizen must think carefully about giving away more power to the state.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#313

Post by [deleted] »

anon291 wrote: post #251
jacobgkau wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parental control software has existed for decades. It hasn't worked. Over 70% of teenagers Yes, there were other ways of trying to solve the problem. Governments could've mandated explicit websites (which includes a lot of mainstream social media these days) include the RTA rating tag instead of it being a voluntary thing, which social media companies still would've fought; and governments could've also mandated all…

It's also already illegal to send porn to a minor. Porn companies that transmit porn to minors are already committing a sex crime.

[deleted]

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#314

Post by phatfish »

pksebben wrote: post #88

This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear […

Dude, parents don't want their kids wading through porn and whatever social media throws at them before they are even teenagers.

Childless digital nomad privacy freaks are a minority, age gates are coming. I don't care that they will never be 100%, if it provides cover for parents to stop their kids consuming trash internet "culture" until they are more mature they are already a great benefit to socitey.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#315

Post by phatfish »

downrightmike wrote: post #258
zamadatix wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as you (and I as well) don't want age verification to involve discussion about kids' access to content because we're more concerned about the surveillance push riding the popularity of that, repeating "it isn't about kids" loudly 3 times doesn't make the (extremely large) group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear. Telling that larger group their interest just isn't part of the conversation a…

"group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear." Parents need to parent then, but the amount that will are still larger than the people who want mass surveillance because they can't be arsed to raise their kids. If they are too lazy to raise their kids, they don't have the energy to push the nanny state forward.

This take is really detached from reality, I get down voted for this whenever I ask, but do you have kids? If not sorry, but your opinion means nothing.

We all exist in a society and (as the other comment says) it take society to raise kids. I don't want a society where as a parent I have to fight against shitty parents and the potential immaturity of my kids (they are too young right now thank god) to stop them watching porn as a 11yo or other inappropriate gifts from internet "culture".

Setting some reasonable standards for what content kids should consume provides parents with cover when trying to raise their children well. Its the reason movies have age gates, and strip clubs and many other things not on the internet.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#316

Post by spragl »

mfost wrote: post #292
spragl wrote: post #278

The push for age verification must be about something else. There are good solutions to this, but they are ignored. Its always about some complex setup leaking information all over the place. It must be either ignorance or indeed about surveillance, as many here think it is. Shameless plug: I wrote about hash chains some time ago. They are a nice and simple solution to age verification. https://spredehagl.com/2025-07…

The reality is that it's probably mostly about incompetence and lazyness. And tight purses of course. When some country parliament decides to mandate age verification, it's really easy and lazy for them to just say "verify ages and do it reliably!" and stop at that. As a result, the services affected don't really have a choice to go towards those horrible solutions of scaning our faces or IDs or both and all the issu…

Yes, wellknown solutions have a strong grip on you. In this case it is unfortunate.

I know that the preparations for eIDAS 2.0 (the European thing) did contain many good parts. Taking inspiration from SSI. So at that point their specifications were rather good. I havent kept up with it for almost one year now, so that might have changed.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#317

Post by MatteoFrigo »

donmcronald wrote: post #233
MatteoFrigo wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excellent question. More generally, what prevents me from copying the credential and giving it to somebody else? The currently favored approach works like this. The DOCUMENT contains a device public key DPK. The corresponding secret key is stored in some secure hardware on the phone, designed so that I (or malware or whatever) cannot extract the secret key from the secure hardware. Think of it as a yubikey or somethi…

> How does the issuer (e.g. the republic of France) know that DOCUMENT is bound to a given fingerprint? This is still under discussion, but as a first bid, a French citizen goes to city hall with his phone and obtains DOCUMENT after producing a fingerprint on the citizen's phone (as opposed to a device belonging to the republic of France). Are you saying that someone goes to city hall, shows ID, and gets a DOCUMENT t…

This post is restricted to the context of the European Union and is intended to be factual.

The EU age verification app is intended to be a pilot to the EU Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW), which EU law requires to be deployed everywhere in Europe by the end of 2026. (Thus your "worry" is in fact the explicit plan of record.)

The EUDIW will store more attributes than age. Think of it as a digital form of a passport (with name, address, etc.). The exact set of attributes is determined by local laws.

Thus, the DOCUMENT that you obtain is tied to you, and of course the state knows what is in the DOCUMENT since the state creates the document in the first place.

The state does not generate proofs. The phone generates proofs. Given a proof (and only the proof), nobody can associate the proof to the phone or to you.

Now I switch to less factual statements, which are still approximately correct.

Why would you trust the wallet software not to phone home to the state or us (Google)? The EUDIW regulations require that the wallet software be open source. However, states will only issue DOCUMENT to their own certified wallet software---you cannot just take the open source and recompile it, since the state won't issue DOCUMENT to your uncertified wallet. (Maybe your gym will issue a gym membership to your raspberry pi wallet, since it's not a big deal.)

The reason for this strictness is that the EUDIW is intended for official or semi-official uses. For example, you can open a bank account with it, or use it as ID to get a mortgage. The bank must by law accept DOCUMENT, the state guarantees that DOCUMENT is correct, and you get better privacy than handling over a piece of plastic that is then photocopied by who knows whom. This is the tradeoff of the current EU law. It would be inappropriate for this kind of official, passport-like documents to store attributes such as your profession (journalist or whatever), and nobody is talking about it.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#318

Post by MatteoFrigo »

fsflover wrote: post #291
MatteoFrigo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another excellent question. The current answer in the EU seems to be "you need a phone". My preferred answer (despite being one of the Google guys who designed the ZKP mechanism) would be that the government sends you some sort of plastic card with a chip that does not tie you to a phone. Still fighting that battle.

I guess owning some computer should be fine as a requirement? It just should not be tied to the US megacorps. A web app perhaps?

Yes. However, at some point there needs to be some unforgeable piece of hardware that prevents copying the document. I am a big fan of yubikeys and I wish everybody used them, but the reality is that people lose them way more often than they lose their phone.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#319

Post by zamadatix »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #284
zamadatix wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as you (and I as well) don't want age verification to involve discussion about kids' access to content because we're more concerned about the surveillance push riding the popularity of that, repeating "it isn't about kids" loudly 3 times doesn't make the (extremely large) group of people pushing age verification for kids disappear. Telling that larger group their interest just isn't part of the conversation a…

And now compare this comment with another comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46228900 ) I got in yet another "let's save children from the Internet" thread: > Your sci-fi distopia flash fiction is compelling, but not actually on topic in this discussion. > "Think of the children" is weaponized for censorious purposes, but also the harms of social media are well documented (unlike many of the other moral p…

The first comment is a real example of what I was saying about seeing the reverse situation - when it's someone you disagree with it becomes obvious how dangerous it is to say other views/ideas are not supposed to be part of the conversation. zthe other comments are ones I'f personally disagree with, but that's precisely the kind if discourse which needs to be engaged with instead of ignored if one has any concerns around fascism taking hold.

Also, I don't want to give the impression the only path here is to placate the other concerns/interest. That does work very well if you can, but the main point is just avoid this idea declaring anny other ideas out of the conversation because you disagree with them and only want people to talk about what you like. That doesn't help, you want to convince people to see the reasons you do not to ignore them.

If you ever feel there are threads with shills, take the time to send an email to hn@ycombinator.com with the parts in question. This isn't just some platitude people say here, they've really hopped right on it, triggered action, and got back to me every time I've emailed.

Re: EFF launches Age Verification Hub

#320

Post by chronogamous »

dietdrpeppr wrote: post #287
edgineer wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure those people exist, I just never happen to see anything they write online nor meet any of them in real life.

> There are also, concerningly IMO, an extremely large amount of people willing to accept severe surveillance or privacy downsides so long as it helps achieve the goal about kids. I’m alive. Nice to meet you. I “accept severe surveillance”, not in the sense that I agree with it, but because I know that it already exists and has existed and that people that are against it are screaming into the wind. Many large and sm…

Chances of being manipulated and attacking yourselves would diminish quite a bit if those tasked with surveillance wouldn't be blinded by the pursuit of as much data as they can get their hands on. Yes, knowing everything there is to know about a person can be helpful to a point, but if you had the means and time there is literally no business where it makes sense to pre-emptively collect every bit of data on such a single person. To do so in regard to multiple people or more will have a crippling effect on gaining insight and understanding of relevant information. Having a vast knowledge-base is a huge waste of resources when it impairs your capacity to convert what you know into what would be wise. There's really no need to infiltrate anything and everything to know what needs to be known, and it will save a whole lot of distraction and data fatigue.

People eager to have such a vast trove of data at their fingertips lack patience and focus to develop skills to use their access responsibly - having them around is counterproductive and dangerous in any business where intelligence is key.

So, no. I would actually prefer to try and keep my country safe, thus any desire to infiltrate anything, anywhere, anytime would be irrational, and most likely an early warning signalling an onset of dementia, delirium or any similarly debilitating condition. It should certainly exclude me from working with highly sensitive data, unless you are in the business of making my country less safe.

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