I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#511

Post by anextio » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #265

marmarama wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is those self-same authoritarian strongmen are very successfully using sockpuppeting to change national discourses in ways that benefit them and are detrimental to the targeted countries. Hybrid war is real and has been ongoing for more than a decade. LLMs make it way more cost effective. Being able to limit the influence of external bad actors is the main goal of ID verification. Age verification is a us…

Correct. The choice is between democracy and our current ever worsening sociopolitical hellscape. If eliminating bots and sockpuppets is the price for restoring some semblance of democracy, then gosh darn. And if social media, targeted ads, and algorithmic hate machines are collateral damage, than gee double gosh darn. Those sacrifices are a price I'm willing to pay.

> "Democracy" is when "bad actors" (as defined by the establishment) are shut out of all online discourse.

The point of ID laws is not to stop "bots" or "sockpuppets", it's to enable governments to shut down the speech of their political adversaries by painting them as dangerous. That is not democracy, that is authoritarianism, even if you absolutely hate the people that are being shut up.

Western countries are not in the midst of polarized political crises because of "external bad actors" or "sockpuppets". They're in these crises because of fundamental contradictions in values and desired policies between different segments of the populace.

The Europeans are currently full steam ahead in attempting to "fix" the situation by criminalizing dissent, which will, in the end, only exacerbate the political crisis by making the democratic system illegitimate.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#512

Post by OkayPhysicist » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

d--b wrote: post #508

arewethereyeta wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

great argument, the "if you have nothing to hide what's the problem in sharing all your data" type

I think you got me wrong. I was saying in France everyone has a photo id for government stuff. You pay taxes to the government so yeah you need some form of ID just for the government to know who’s paying the taxes. in the US you use social security number. it’s the same, but on a card and with a photo.

In the US you do not need an SSN to pay taxes. It makes it easier, and you can't claim a child without an SSN for the purposes of deductions, but you do not need an SSN.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#513

Post by Terr_ » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 9:48 PM UTC

fc417fc802 wrote: post #437

shiandow wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That very much isn't the only right way, and it is far to close to government tracking activities online. For one it effectively allows governments to disallow someone from accessing the internet. All this to let you do stuff you were allowed to do anyway. The problem is handing kids admin level access on a device with full unfiltered access to several communication networks. You do not fix that by demoting everyone'…

I wholeheartedly agree. Worse, these verification "solutions" distract from fixing the actual underlying issue. We need better supervision which demands better parental controls which demands better content filtering which demands better content classification. So fix the root. Legally mandate a standardized protocol for self reporting the content rating of resources.

Yep, recycling a post about reasons to do it that way:

> 1. Most of the dollar costs of making it all happen will be paid by the people who actually need/use the feature.

> 2. No toxic Orwellian panopticon.

> 3. Key enforcement falls into a realm non-technical parents can actually observe and act upon: What device is little Timmy holding?

> 4. Every site in the world will not need a monthly update to handle Elbonia's rite of manhood on the 17th lunar year to make it permitted to see bare ankles. Instead, parents of that region/religion can download their own damn plugin.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#514

Post by twodave » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #365

keerthiko wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the exact same logic as opting to not go through the hassle of registering to and casting your vote in your national elections (unless that physically isn't an option where you live) -- yes, your government isn't going to make a decision one way or another based on your vote alone. But will you affect the sociopolitical trends by whatever fraction of societal opinion you represent? It may be you don't believe…

Yes, the Paradox of Voting is the exact same situation [1]. My decision to vote is not rational, but I know if all the rational people don't vote that is bad, and so I focus on the other parts of voting, like civic pride and the little sticker that says "I voted" > It may be you don't believe in democracy at all, and that's fair, but consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions, by joining the de…

> My decision to vote is not rational

And I think this is great. Often our convictions aren't, and those are what make us interesting! I also think it's interesting how/why we rationalize our irrational behaviors! For example, I generally feel the same way as you about voting, but I don't like living as (in my mind, at least) a defeatist. Also, I feel that if I didn't vote then I have no right to complain or have an opinion about the things I didn't vote on. So I go vote for those reasons.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#515

Post by justsomehnguy » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #6

I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entire…

I have no problems accepting the cookies - my browser cleans them every start.

Surely I don't use the web based services which require a login everyday in my main main browser.

But e-mail address is a hard pass, mostly on the amount of work than the anything else.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#516

Post by nedt » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

EnderWT wrote: post #387

mcv wrote: post #228

I completely agree. The only services for which I will verify my age (and the entire rest of my ID) are bank accounts and other services involving a real legal requirement for real ID. The notion that you should upload a passport to random sites for age verification is unbelievably dangerous. That's a recipe for identity theft. And face scanning is also an invasion of privacy, not to mention very unreliable (my 16 ye…

There's already a spec for this (ISO/IEC 18013-5) and it's been implemented in a variety of jurisdictions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_driver%27s_license The person gets to see what information the service is asking for and can approve or deny. This'll likely end up being the future of how citizens access government services online.

That's more for age verification and prove of identity, especially in the real world. It's weird that the wikipedia page is talking about drivers license, because I have the Austrian app and I use it with my normal ID card.

To access government service we have something different. Here in Austria it's called ID Austria and you sign with an app when you try to access government services, but also others like health insurance etc.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#517

Post by robocat » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

ribosometronome wrote: post #475

ang_cire wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> consumer action is the only way you can affect business decisions I mean, insomuch as any action I take is a consumer action, because I am a consumer, this is true. That's why Luigi'ing is a consumer action. But 'vote with your wallet' is an illusion; you have no way of informing an entity why you are rejecting their service if you simply don't patronize them. On a ballot you're actively choosing another over them.…

Not spending money at Target is not voting with your wallet. Voting with your wallet is the spending you do at a business that isn't Target instead.

However voting is different. We don't vote for a policy (although that is a common misconception.) The collective power of voting is often voting against a person/party : voting them out.

We spent money on goods/services we choose, and receiving money is a very strong signal to a business. Not spending money is an extremely weak signal.

Opposites.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#518

Post by majorchord » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #481

fsflover wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just about cookies but also about fingerprinting, which is extremely hard to prevent.

No extensions that randomly change your fingerprint? I suppose that might trigger a lot of captchas.

There are but I'm not aware of anything that can reliably fool creepjs.

https://abrahamjuliot.github.io/creepjs/

And yes it often results in endless captcha loops.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#519

Post by majorchord » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:18 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #496

tempestn wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the list of potential harms. I'm curious about your last point though. Isn't it trivially easy to wipe cookies from your browser?

You should always configure your browser to automatically wipe all data on exit. The Arkenfox user.js user profile does this and more to mitigate fingerprinting.

I am logged into way too many sites to do that unfortunately. I do use a password manager with a browser plugin to make it easier, but it's still a lot of manual work to re-login to all the sites I use on a normal basis, for both work and home, every time I restart my browser.

Would be nice if there was some other solution, like maybe encrypting the browser profile and then requiring a pin/password/biometric/something to unlock it on each start.

Re: I'm reluctant to verify my identity or age for any online services

#520

Post by jim33442 » Tue, Mar 03, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

bArray wrote: post #6

I was sitting in a room the other day with a young adult, we were searching for additional algorithm learning materials. They searched in Google, and accept the cookies. They clicked on a website, and accepted those cookies too. They then started entering their email address to access another service. I was completely taken aback. I'm the sort of person that either rejects the cookies, or will use another site entire…

The allow/reject button seems useless anyway. It's my browser allowing this, not the website. If I were worried about cookies, I'd disable them or clear at end of session.