The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection • Hacker News Board

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#701

Post by cowboylowrez » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

palata wrote: post #652

throwawayk7h wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents can't easily prevent their kids from going to those kinds of stores once they're at the age where the parent doesn't need to keep an eye on them all the time and they can travel about on their own. The difference though is that parents are generally the ones to give their kids their phones and devices. These devices could send headers to websites saying "I'm a kid" -- but this system doesn't exist, and parent…

> These devices could send headers to websites saying "I'm a kid" -- but this system doesn't exist And there would be ways to work around it. If people find that privacy-preserving age verification is not good enough because "some kids will work around it", then nothing is good enough, period. Some will always work around anything.

if a parent gives a kid a full on smartphone, charge the parent with child abuse just like feeding the kid alcohol, cigarettes or having sex with them. people will catch on.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#702

Post by Computer0 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:29 PM UTC

techblueberry wrote: post #432

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

I know this is weird, but I'm in some ways not really sure who is on the side of freedom here. I get your position, but like. The whole idea of the promise of the internet has been destroyed by newsfeeds and mega-corps. There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted. This isn't a few bands with swear words, and in fact, I thi…

You sound like someone that would work for the CIA or FBI if they offered you a job. Those are the types of people that I cannot and will not ever trust. I do not respect your opinion.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#703

Post by sanitycheck » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:30 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #315

numbsafari wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except companies provide wholly inadequate safeguards and tools. They are buggy, inconsistent, easily circumvented, and even at time malicious. Consumers should be better able to hold providers accountable, before we start going after parents. The only real solution is to keep children off of the internet and any internet connected device until they are older. The problem there is that everything is done on-line now…

Step 0 is physical device access. Kids shouldn't have tablets or smartphones or personal laptops before age 16.

I bet not many of us would be here now if we hadn't had our own computers before age 16.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#704

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

If your goal is to "save the children", then sure, we can discuss this... if your goal, as a government, is to have everyone get some digital ID and tie their online identities to their real names, then you do just that.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#705

Post by stevage » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:34 PM UTC

mikestorrent wrote: post #677

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

> give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools The problem is that it's bloody hard to actually do this. I'm in a war with my 7yo about youtube; the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. Well, after many successful months of DNS block, he discovered proxies. After blocking enough of those to dissuade him, he discovered Firefox…

I remember when I was a kid that age there were rules and some were technically enforced. But if you found a way around the technical enforcement you were in huge trouble. The equivalent here would he been, if you used a proxy to watch what you weren't meant to, then you lose all screen time indefinitely. Sneaking around parents' rules was absolutely not on.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#706

Post by Gigachad » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:36 PM UTC

tsoukase wrote: post #699

Social media, at least, are reaching the state the smoking had in the 80's when it started to be banned. After an era of praising (00's) scepticism followed (10's) until an underage ban comes (20's). Maybe in the 30's they will be banned in public spaces! The problem of identifying a value for each person is very difficult. But government's role stops there. Until the teenager's screen more factors stay in the middle…

Ban in public spaces might not make sense since there isn't a proximity hazard like smoke. But I can imagine after kids are banned from social media and we see how this was an obviously positive effect on their mental health, we will begin to acknowledge that this stuff is toxic for adults as well.

We could start to ban many of the mechanisms social media companies have deployed over the last 10 years. Infinite scrolling, algorithmic feeds of "creator" content, AI generated ragebait from bot accounts, etc. I'd love to see social media reverted back to when it was just holiday photos from your friends.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#707

Post by summm » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

hiciu wrote: post #626

EmbarrassedHelp wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the EU Identity Wallet's documentation, the EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification to obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". You have to blindly trust that the tokens will not be tracked, which is a total no-go for pr…

> EU's planned system requires highly invasive age verification EUDI wallets are connected to your government issued ID. There is no "highly invasive age verification". We are literally sending a request to our government's server to sign, with their private key, message "this john smith born on 1970-01-01 is aged over 18" + jwt iat. There are 3 claims in there. They are hashed with different salts. This all is signe…

> jailbreaking / "prevent tampering"

Now your EU government requires you to have an unmodified Google or Apple device to use any age restricted services. Cementing the US mobile OS duopoly and locking out any free systems and desktop etc. forever.

Any governmental service taking part in this is a violation of civil rights and even if you don't care about those, maybe you care about digital sovereignty.

This is so lightly handwaved away, almost as if attention needs to be drawn away. By the looks of this I'd say the end of general computing might be the actual goal, and all the age verification is just yet another "think of the children" pretense?

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#708

Post by ajsnigrutin » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:40 PM UTC

SiempreViernes wrote: post #681

agentifysh wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is slightly better but not the hero we want or need. zeero knowledge proofs are improvement over uploading raw documents, trust is still an issue here. why should users have to authenticate with a government-backed identity wallet to access platforms to play games or access a website in the first place. we didnt have any of these guards in the 90s and early 2000s and everybody turned out just fine . in fact the…

> we didnt have any of these guards in the 90s and early 2000s and everybody turned out just fine One of the most highly valued tech companies of today makes a software that sometimes talks its user's into killing themselves. Some guy put "uwu notices bulge" on a bullet casing and shot Charlie Kirk: things turned out fine indeed.

People killed both themselves and others way before the internet even existed.

Requiring everyone to show their id on every website will not change that. It will limit free speech though.

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#709

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

mikestorrent wrote: post #677

JohnMakin wrote: post #261

We'll try everything, it seems, other than holding parents accountable for what their children consume. In the United States, you can get in trouble if you recklessly leave around or provide alcohol/guns/cigarettes for a minor to start using, yet somehow, the same social responsibility seems thrown out the window for parents and the web. Yes, children are clever - I was one once. If you want to actually protect child…

> give parents strong monitoring and restriction tools The problem is that it's bloody hard to actually do this. I'm in a war with my 7yo about youtube; the terms of engagement are, I can block it however I want from the network side, and if he can get around it, he can watch. Well, after many successful months of DNS block, he discovered proxies. After blocking enough of those to dissuade him, he discovered Firefox…

[deleted]

Re: The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection

#710

Post by robomartin » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:42 PM UTC

WorldPeas wrote: post #581

robomartin wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The thing is, what are the parents to do beyond restricting things? Well, I can't speak for parents (as in all parents). I can, however, tell you what we did. When two of my kids were young we gave them iPods. The idea was to load a few fun educational applications (I had written and published around 10 at the time). Very soon they asked for Clash of Clans to play for a couple of hours on Saturdays. We said that wa…

My parents took the same approach and it helped, but I will anecdotally point out that kids have played video games under covers for a while, even when I was young, I remember getting in trouble for playing this spyro game n' watch clone from mcdonalds at night, or gameboy with one of those lamps that plugged into the serial port. When I become a parent, I think I'd feel understanding of something like this, but woul…

> The issue I take with modern games like CoC is that they are psychologically engineered to be mentally harmful

Precisely. I am not saying I am perfect as a parent or that this was the best possible approach to the situation we had. Nobody is and perfect parenting is an absolute myth.

I knew full well just how addictive gaming could be because I experienced it in my 20's. Needless to say that the "shock and awe" consequence to their deceit was not the result of a single data point. We had been seeing changes in behavior over time (six months or so). The objective was three fold: Take away the device that delivered the addictive behavior. Take away something of value to them. Make them earn it back with positive behavior.

The decision was not planned and the consequences were not communicated in advance. Few things in life are like that. Sometimes people discover the consequences of their actions (or understand them) when they are sprung on them because of something they did. Drunk driving being one possible (though not perfect) example of this.

In this case, it worked. Perhaps we got lucky. Not sure. I also did highlight that I cannot speak for all parents. I did the best I thought made sense at the time. Based on the outcome, many years later, I can say it worked.

To the critics on this thread: Your mileage may vary. Some of the comments sound juvenile, perhaps you'll understand if you ever become a parent and face similar circumstances. Then see what you think of someone who thinks they know better from behind a keyboard than you did in the moment and without having to be responsible for the outcomes (which is a multi-year commitment).