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I absolutely cannot "live with" any system where I have to provide my identity to a government service in order to receive a token that lets me access websites,

I absolutely cannot "live with" any system where I have to provide my identity to a government service in order to receive a token that lets me access websites, or to live in a world where publishers need to integrate with such a government service. Your compromise sounds far worse to me than all the bots, extremists, vulgarity or whatever other problem it's supposed to solve.

tzs 2y ago
Done correctly, the government entity would be one that already knows your identity and age, and the website would not interact directly with that government entity. They would only interact with you, when you give them the thing you got from the government entity that certifies your age. Again, if done correctly, the thing you give them is not the actual thing you got from the government but rather the result of running that through a transformation. The transformed token can still be recognized as certifying your age, but if given to the government entity they would not be able to tell which token they issued it is based on.
- M95D 2y ago
  If you were a web admin, or governemnt official with decision power in your hands, would you really choose to implement it like that instead of a direct communication between site and government server?
nucleardog 2y ago
> Your compromise sounds far worse to me than all the bots, extremists, vulgarity or whatever other problem it's supposed to solve. Yeah, but in all likelihood _that isn't one of the options_. The moral panics and "think of the children" and general ignorance around these things is going to drive action at some point. The options are "implement the least bad thing we can" or "wait for legislators and regulators to dictate how it will work". I'd rather see Apple (who already has some semblance of ability to verify your age as you usually have payment methods and things tied to your account) come in and implement some protocol involving a bunch of cryptography I can't even begin to understand that preserves privacy and anonymity, have that gain a foothold, and have eventual regulations either seen as unnecessary or effectively having to support this sort of workflow. The alternative I see is at some point we're going to get a regulation that involves everyone having to send a photo of themselves holding up their driver's license all over the place in order to access half the internet.

tzs 2y ago

Done correctly, the government entity would be one that already knows your identity and age, and the website would not interact directly with that government entity. They would only interact with you, when you give them the thing you got from the government entity that certifies your age. Again, if done correctly, the thing you give them is not the actual thing you got from the government but rather the result of running that through a transformation. The transformed token can still be recognized as certifying your age, but if given to the government entity they would not be able to tell which token they issued it is based on.

M95D 2y ago
If you were a web admin, or governemnt official with decision power in your hands, would you really choose to implement it like that instead of a direct communication between site and government server?

nucleardog 2y ago

> Your compromise sounds far worse to me than all the bots, extremists, vulgarity or whatever other problem it's supposed to solve. Yeah, but in all likelihood _that isn't one of the options_. The moral panics and "think of the children" and general ignorance around these things is going to drive action at some point. The options are "implement the least bad thing we can" or "wait for legislators and regulators to dictate how it will work". I'd rather see Apple (who already has some semblance of ability to verify your age as you usually have payment methods and things tied to your account) come in and implement some protocol involving a bunch of cryptography I can't even begin to understand that preserves privacy and anonymity, have that gain a foothold, and have eventual regulations either seen as unnecessary or effectively having to support this sort of workflow. The alternative I see is at some point we're going to get a regulation that involves everyone having to send a photo of themselves holding up their driver's license all over the place in order to access half the internet.