Online age verification is the hill to die on • Hacker News Board

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#571

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #484

marcus_holmes wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These are facts, whether you like them or not. [Citation Needed] As I understand it, the debate on whether social media is responsible for actual harms in kids is still open and ongoing. Social media has been found to do both harm and good for kids, and for some kids the good outweighs the harms [0]. Scientists are hoping to get some verification from the actual social experiments that we're conducting in the UK an…

> Mandating OS-level age verification effectively means not allowing kids access to OSS platforms, a step way too far in my opinion. For instance, we would have to outlaw Steam Decks for kids. This is entirely false scare tactic nonsense, and you really need to look at where you sourced that idea and no longer use them as a reference point. There isn't even a concept of a method of doing this that would make that tru…

The California bill, which is not called the Parents Decide Act, lets parents decide. The federal Parents Decide Act doesn't say whether parents can decide or not - it says a commission shall decide whether parents shall be able to decide, and we can predict what that commission will decide.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#572

Post by protocolture » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

gnabgib wrote: post #564

protocolture wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We need a truly distributed point-to-point internet asap. Yes. A mesh network isnt point to point. Its a mesh.

So a mesh isn't made up of point to point connections? I'm pretty sure if you have several they start to look like a mesh (and every security site's banner)

Sure but I cant communicate with you in a point to point fashion, in a mesh network I am hoping that I have possibly hundreds of disinterested nodes between us. But like, are those nodes coordinating on censorship? Are some of the nodes recording your metadata? Are the nodes incentivized to carry the quantity of traffic you require?

Really the "fix" the ultimate goal has to be direct point to point.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#573

Post by Nursie » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:54 AM UTC

tardedmeme wrote: post #570

Nursie wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any "verification" means unacceptable privacy violations. So I'm not necessarily arguing for age controls here, but purely on a technical level what do you think of schemes like Verifiable Credentials, which delegate verification to third parties that have already established your identity? In theory you can set up a system that works like this: 1. User goes to restricted site and sets up an account 2. Site forward…

User installs a browser extension which forwards the request to everyoneisover18.com, owner of that site has a script set up to log into their bank and pass the verification challenge

Restricted-site.com gets the signed response from the broker, not the bank. In your situation there's not any need for "everyoneisover18.com" to defer to a real bank for a faked response as it signs things itself.

But restricted-site.com doesn't trust everyoneisover18.com's key, it only trusts realbroker.com's key, so the response isn't accepted. If it is found to trust fake brokers like that it gets in trouble with the law.

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#574

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:56 AM UTC

SpaceNoodled wrote: post #267

Bender wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would also amount to compelled speech. I disagree. The legal requirement to apply a warning label is a well known, understood and accepted process that is applied to a myriad of hazards to children and adults . As just one example businesses in some states, most notably California are compelled to add warning labels to foods and other products that could cause cancer.

That's not the best example, since the levels set for Prop 65 warnings are so low that the warnings are effectively useless; every single commercial building in CA now somehow causes cancer.

Nobody was talking about their utility. Are they constitutional?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#575

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

snvzz wrote: post #418

Bender wrote: post #8

The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are alr…

>I a small server operator and a client of the internet will not participate in any other methods period, full-stop. You will however follow the law if it mandates you to do else. Which is we "age verification" should be stopped before it's too late.

Many people don't follow many laws, how do you know that person will follow that law?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#576

Post by domador » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:59 AM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #286

afh1 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not about children but requiring identification to speak online.

That's the cynical view, yes, but we can see educational standards and performance going down in the United States, we have seen plenty of scientific and medical studies showing problems with children and more specifically teenagers using social media. I'm not one to want to want to limit someone's rights, but it seems like the trade-off here is in favor of requiring age verification at least for social media compani…

Maybe requiring identification to speak online is not the intent but it would likely be the practical effect of the laws that were originally intended just to help children. It's not enough to think about laws' intent, but also their practical effects.

We haven't even mentioned the censoriousness that already takes place in various online forums not because a user said something racist or was stirring up trouble, but because moderators were vindictive, petty, or lazy, or because the automated moderation tools in place were heavy-handed and unintelligent. I don't look forward to that kind of moderation spreading everywhere and made more efficient by reducing everyone to a single identity. (Maybe Joe Contrarian has some opinions worth listening to, but it's just easier for the moderator of a forum to see that he was already publicly blacklisted by another unrelated forum, and just blacklist him on this one, too.)

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#577

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:00 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #320

ronsor wrote: post #121

There's an angle everyone misses. Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet. And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.

ID system should be based on commercial bank. If you need to prove your identity or whatever about yourself just tell them to ask your bank and bank will ask you which information about yourself you are willing to share with whoever requested to confirm something about you. When ID is tied to your bank account you guard it like you guard your bank account. Because it is the same thing. This will drastically lower the…

And what about debanked people? Are they now also deporned - and deyoutubed? Many of those people are debanked because they were politically risky, for example whistleblowers - are we now saying whistleblowers can't upload whistleblowing?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#578

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:01 AM UTC

TFNA wrote: post #556

numpad0 wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed system moves sources of identity from the nation to private banks under it. So banks own people. Propose a financial regulation to the national congress/parliament and you stop existing, digitally or potentially physically as well. That's feudalism. Or Chinese struggles-of-nations warlord era situation which is often grouped up into that concept as close enough things.

Banks can be state-owned as well as private. Moreover, some countries have a particular bank that serves all citizens, even if they would not be able to bank elsewhere.

are they state-owned? Which American bank is required to serve everyone, regardless of nationality or other factors?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#579

Post by tardedmeme » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:01 AM UTC

angry_octet wrote: post #539

miloignis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matthew Green talks about this in his blog on the subject: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou... The two methods that seem feasible are making it hard to copy (putting it in the secure element in your phone, for example, which I don't love) or doing tokens that can only be used a limited number of times per day, like in : https://eprint.iacr.org/2006/454

If it's a rolling cert with rate limits I think that solves the problem, particularly if access to the client cert allows the client to make a financial transaction, e.g. of $100. So you wouldn't share the client cert with randoms because they would just take your $100 and you'd be blocked. Finally, a way to use blockchain for good.

So your bank says sorry, only 3 porns a day for you?

Re: Online age verification is the hill to die on

#580

Post by domador » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 5:03 AM UTC

onetimeusename wrote: post #295

I've heard that we could use zero-knowledge ID proofs to show someone is of age without revealing any more but I don't think that's the plan and the demand for age restrictions doesn't feel like a grassroots effort of concerned parents. It feels like an NGO/bureaucrat driven law and I assume its purpose is to de-anonymize people on the internet.

In some cases, it also seems like a lobbyist-driven effort that would benefit certain companies likely to be hired by the government to provide identification services.