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

#711

Post by fc417fc802 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:46 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #557

techblueberry wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I just like, can't help but start with fuck these companies. All other arguments are downstream of that. The solution would then be to break them up or do things like require adversarial interoperability, rather than ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone. The perverse incentive comes from a single company sitting on a network effect. You have to use Facebook because other people use Facebook,…

> ineffective non-sequiturs like requiring them to ID everyone.

Is that really a non-sequitur though? Cigarettes are harmful and addictive so their sale is age gated. So too for alcohol. Gambling? Also yes. So wouldn't age gating social media be entirely consistent in that case?

Not that I'm necessarily in favor of it. I agree that various other regulations, particularly interoperability, would likely address at least some of the underlying concerns. But then I think it might not be such a bad idea to have all of the above rather than one or the other.

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

#712

Post by MintPaw » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #678

mikestorrent wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

As a parent of young children, this is your entire problem: > 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. You're treating this as a technical problem, not a parental rules problem. Your own rules say he's allowed to watch! You have to set the expectations and enforce it as a parent.

I think the point is that it's not enforceable.

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

#713

Post by tsimionescu » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #565

rectang wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. why-not-both.jpg Maximizing corporate freedom leads inevitably to corporate capture of government. Opposing either government concentration of power alone or corporate concentration of power alone is doomed to failure. Only by opposing both is there any hope of achieving either. Applying that principle to age-verification, which I think is inevitable: Prefer privacy-preservin…

> Prefer privacy-preserving decoupled age-verification services, where the service validates minimum age and presents a cryptographic token to the entity requiring age validation. This is the wrong implementation. You require sites hosting adult content to send a header indicating what kind of content it is. Then the device can do what it wants with that information. A parent can then configure their child's device n…

This solves some probelms, such as children accessing porn sites (oh the horror). But it doesn't solve other problems, such as predators accessing children's spaces. YouTube Kids is purportedly a safe, limited place for kids - and yet, there are numerous disturbing videos that get past the automated censors. Pedophiles stalk places like Roblox.

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

#714

Post by scotty79 » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

9dev wrote: post #312

scotty79 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove of adulthood should be provided by the bank after logging into a bank account. I'm sure parents just would let their bank details be stolen and such. Of course no personal details should be provided to the site that requests age confirmation. Just "barer of this token" is an adult.

So we trust a bank more than the government that they won’t extend this to earn more money by disclosing more information? Bad idea. You need a neutral broker.

Verifying identity works best when the stakes are high. And there are highest in online banking.

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

#715

Post by EmbarrassedHelp » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

awakeasleep wrote: post #311

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…

Individual Parents vs Meta Inc (1.66T mkt cap) May the best legal person win!

Its more like age verification corporations, identity verification corporations, the child "safety" organizations that were lobbying for Chat Control versus individuals who want to protect their privacy.

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

#716

Post by summm » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

Seattle3503 wrote: post #429

iamnothere wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not that we aren’t doing age verification, it’s that a group of authoritarians are trying to force mandatory implementation of age verification (and concomitant removal of anonymity). That’s the problem.

It seems like the solution is to provide an age verification mechanism with robust privacy protections. That way when we offer a solution that works for all of their states concerns, if they disagree with the privacy preserving approach we force them to say outright "I want to keep a record of every website you visit."

Unfortunately not. They will use even the most privacy preserving protocol to push remote attestation of end devices. Which in itself is a stepping stone making their next steps much easier.

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

#717

Post by cowboylowrez » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

Terretta wrote: post #444

techblueberry wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> ... start with fuck these companies. Better the nanny state than Nanny Zuck. I'm not sure how those two positions connect. Execs bad, so laws requiring giving those execs everyone's IDs, instead of laws against twirled mustaches?

these are just bad arguments all around, including gov't with this upload id crap. Why aren't we making internet 18+? The only unrefutable answers I get are just downvotes which is ok I guess, sort of validates my point because there's no reason for kids to get unrestricted internet access and downvotes are easy.

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

#718

Post by aczerepinski » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:57 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…

As a parent, I think you’re understating how difficult it is to provide a specific amount of internet access (and no more) to a motivated kid. Kids research and trade parental control exploits, and schools issue devices with weak controls whether parents like it or not. I’m way at the extreme end of trying to control access (other than parents who don’t allow any device usage at all) and it has been one loophole after another.

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

#719

Post by protocolture » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 10:59 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…

>There is almost literally documented examples of Facebook executives twirling their mustaches wondering how they can get kids more addicted.

Then close their business. Age verification just makes their crimes even more annoying.

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

#720

Post by donmcronald » Mon, Feb 23, 2026, 11:01 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…

> 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 signed by the government.

If the "18+ claim" can't be linked to your identity and doesn't have any rate limits, someone can set up a token-as-a-service to sell tokens on the black market.

> Government can track all salts for your tokens, site can collect all salts, they can compare notes. There are so called policy mitigations currently: audits and requirements for governments to remove salts from memory the moment stuff is issued.

> Can the site owner and the government collude to track you if you are using bbs+? No. Math says no.

How does the math say no? Big tech companies already log absolutely everything. What's going to stop the government from keeping all the salts they're issuing and then mandating that site operators add the salts to their existing logs?

> Can they lie? Sure.

Well, they've lied to us over and over when it comes to surveillance, so I think at this point it's reasonable to assume they're lying unless it's technically impossible. Where's the in-person key verification that used to be in Whatsapp? How do the authorities get notified when someone makes a poorly thought out joke using Snapchat private messages before getting on a plane? Why is there a war on end-to-end encryption?

We're going to pay a fortune for these supposed zero knowledge systems and that's what it's about. Select companies are going to get paid to issue tokens and the scale is going to create a few new billionaires.

The people in charge are going to gain a ton of power when they betray everyone and disenfranchise us.