Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

mullvad.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 561 posts

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#441

Post by palata »

roenxi wrote: post #356
palata wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs? The EU initiative explicitly mentions ZKP: https://ageverification.dev/ . > The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do. It's technical, just like getting E2EE right. Doesn't mean it's hard to use, as proven by the fact that billions of people use E2EE in WhatsApp and Signal without even realising it. > I'm not an authoritarian. I'm not out to create a w…

You have misunderstood the article. It says, and I quote, > Right now, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. So you have failed the test of pointing at somewhere that h…

> the EU implementation doesn't use ZKP

The EU implementation is work in progress. I am not aware of any country using it for age verification.

I am not sure I get the argument of "it's not finished, but I will pretend that it is because it's convenient for me".

> You can try again if you like.

Switzerland is another one that seems to be going towards a privacy-preserving solution. Is Switzerland known for being an authoritarian country?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#442

Post by zoobab »

movedx wrote: post #396
noosphr wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you link to a github is ironic in the worst way possible.

Where should the code be hosted, then?

On a distributed network where the content is always available, maintaining X amount of copies in an autonomous manner.

We need to evolve the protocols beyond simple HTTP servers.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#443

Post by globular-toast »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #79

Back to the internet's peer-to-peer roots. Many protocols besides the www The www became infested with so-called "tech" companies acting as intermediaries (middlemen) Lots of folks making money from surveillance ad system on the www. Oversized, unmanageable websites calling themselves "platforms" The www is an ad network. Not a great place for non-commercial activity Fortunately, the internet is more than the www. Th…

That's no good if broad laws are passed that require age verification. It could be interpreted as even SSHing into a server that doesn't verify your age is illegal. Some decades ago it would have seemed too stupid to actually happen. Now I'm not so sure.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#444

Post by palata »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #290
palata wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree with that, and all those points scare me a lot more than privacy-preserving age verification.

They all started with something as innocuous as privacy preserving age verification

They all started with chocolate. I don't see your point. Remove all laws?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#445

Post by jijijijij »

fsflover wrote: post #338
platevoltage wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to admit, I'm kind of looking forward to what comes after the inevitable death of the www.

I2P already exists and is usable.

But is it resistant to enshittification?

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#446

Post by jijijijij »

zrn900 wrote: post #328
thefz wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once again American capitalism ruins everything for everyone.

Not only that. The Eu is also implementing 'age verification', at the same time with - surprise - digital id. It's just an attempt to reverse the free internet and implement total surveillance.

The age verification with the EU ID card can be implemented without leaking any identifying information. If it's gonna be like that is questionable, but it's technically possible.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#447

Post by tumult »

pocksuppet wrote: post #418
tumult wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true at all. Even small, insular, just-a-few-hundred users PHPBB-style forums have to run Cloudflare or Anubis to try to stem DDoS-style scraping, and have a constant patrol of moderators to stop AI spam posts.

Not true. You can also make your code fast enough so your server doesn't get overloaded by three requests per second. Then you can just handle the requests.

I agree with you that the PHP forum software is not fast at all. But, try hundreds of requests per second, including requests that require text searches.

Also, uh, how does speeding it up that help with the AI spam? (Sorry, I should have emphasized that part of my most more, since that's mostly the topic of this sub-thread I was replying to.)

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#448

Post by graemep »

thefz wrote: post #433
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The global Internets progenitor was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) financed and encouraged by the U.S. Department of Defense. In order to understand the wonder that the Internet and various other components of the Net represent, we need to understand why the ARPANET Completion Report ends with the suggestion that the ARPANET is fundamentally connected to and born of computer science rather t…

And the WWW is a Swiss invention.

British or European. Inventor was British, working for a European organisation.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#449

Post by amanaplanacanal »

reaperducer wrote: post #288
armchairhacker wrote: post #146

Age verification is fine , at least in theory. It’s the implementations that are bad. More and more people agree that kids shouldn’t be on modern social media, including me. But most people also agree that mass surveillance is dangerous. The solution is to propose ways to block kids from modern social media (that actually works) without mass surveillance. Better parental controls, more parental education, and site-sp…

Age verification is fine, at least in theory. It’s the implementations that are bad. I sometimes wonder what HN would be like with age verification.

I doubt we have that many underage kids here.

Re: Age verification for social media, the beginning of the end for a free internet?

#450

Post by roenxi »

palata wrote: post #441
roenxi wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have misunderstood the article. It says, and I quote, > Right now, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model. So you have failed the test of pointing at somewhere that h…

> the EU implementation doesn't use ZKP The EU implementation is work in progress. I am not aware of any country using it for age verification. I am not sure I get the argument of "it's not finished, but I will pretend that it is because it's convenient for me". > You can try again if you like. Switzerland is another one that seems to be going towards a privacy-preserving solution. Is Switzerland known for being an a…

> I am not sure I get the argument of "it's not finished, but I will pretend that it is because it's convenient for me".

> The European Commission has announced that a new age verification app designed to protect children online is ready for deployment. In a recent statement, President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed that the technology is ready and will soon be available for citizens to use.

https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/european-ag...

Am I to pretend and believe the EU Commission or am I to shun their lies and believe you on the subject of whether this age verification app is ready? But maybe Mullvad are wrong here, I dunno. Maybe they have implemented a ZKP scheme. Have they? I'm interested in the details, love me a good ZKP. How does this armed and fully operational app, here and now, today, in this moment, implement a ZKP?

> Switzerland is another one that seems to be going towards a privacy-preserving solution. Is Switzerland known for being an authoritarian country?

I've heard literally 0 complaints about whatever Switzerland might be doing. You'll notice the Mullvad statement doesn't mention them either.

Post reply on HN