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Even with a "privacy-preserving" mechanism, I'd remain worried about censorship risk. Are you a government, and you want to punish one of your citizens without

Even with a "privacy-preserving" mechanism, I'd remain worried about censorship risk. Are you a government, and you want to punish one of your citizens without lifting a finger? Then deny them the ability to verify their ID with anything! In principle, you could probably cook up some mechanism to prevent this. But then the information would also be irrevocable in case of error, which I doubt governments would accept. Not that ID verification is a foolproof proxy for the actual physical user in any case, short of invasive "please drink verification can"-style setups, which I worry might look tempting.

magicalhippo 1y ago
My reading of the EU proposal has licensed third parties doing the age verification step. The gov't could threaten to revoke the license, but doing so would inconvenience all their users, not just the target. So the third party has leverage to dismiss the gov't. Of course lots of factors in play, but should be at least a bit better than the gov't doing the age checks.
- deleted 1y ago
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- LegionMammal978 1y ago
  At least in the U.S., the experience is that businesses will do a lot of things if some level of government 'politely' asks them to. "This account is fraudulent, please delete it." (Or perhaps by waving the stick of "for reasons of national security".) The business doesn't really have any incentive to get in a fight over it, especially if the target wouldn't look sympathetic in the media. I haven't heard much suggesting that typical EU businesses are any different in this regard.
progval 1y ago
> Then deny them the ability to verify their ID with anything! Then it's up to legislators to make this illegal. Or at least restrict it to specific purposes, and with a judge's approval.
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- raxxorraxor 1y ago
  In a idealistic (unrealistic) system that might work. Might, because there are still many unknowns. But it is not too relevant because it simply doesn't work.

magicalhippo 1y ago

My reading of the EU proposal has licensed third parties doing the age verification step. The gov't could threaten to revoke the license, but doing so would inconvenience all their users, not just the target. So the third party has leverage to dismiss the gov't. Of course lots of factors in play, but should be at least a bit better than the gov't doing the age checks.

deleted 1y ago
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LegionMammal978 1y ago
At least in the U.S., the experience is that businesses will do a lot of things if some level of government 'politely' asks them to. "This account is fraudulent, please delete it." (Or perhaps by waving the stick of "for reasons of national security".) The business doesn't really have any incentive to get in a fight over it, especially if the target wouldn't look sympathetic in the media. I haven't heard much suggesting that typical EU businesses are any different in this regard.

progval 1y ago

> Then deny them the ability to verify their ID with anything! Then it's up to legislators to make this illegal. Or at least restrict it to specific purposes, and with a judge's approval.

deleted 1y ago
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raxxorraxor 1y ago
In a idealistic (unrealistic) system that might work. Might, because there are still many unknowns. But it is not too relevant because it simply doesn't work.