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Even after reading the article, I think there are reasonable ways to set up a low cost system that uses zero-knowledge proofs to "prove" your age without disclo

Even after reading the article, I think there are reasonable ways to set up a low cost system that uses zero-knowledge proofs to "prove" your age without disclosing your identity. I do think that you will need trusted entities and the system will only stop most, maybe 80 or 90 percent of children under 18 from seeing porn. But, if you do this, then maybe 99% of kids under the age of 14 will have a lot of difficulty viewing porn which is a good thing. There may be valid a slippery slope argument for not setting up the age validation system even if everything I said above is true.

Seattle3503 1y ago
Yeah, I think even if we only manage to delay the "age of first porn viewing" to something like 14-15, thats probably a win.
- jofla_net 1y ago
  Maybe, but as a parent, I believe its an embarrassment to expect to radically retrofit a society in such ways as to make up for my own negligent lack of responsibility for my own children, which I do take quite seriously. Not to mention the myriad of resultant unintended consequences which invariably arise when such systems(of which i'm quite familiar) are brought to bear. Though I do speak from such a position of professional neutrality, as I would gain no benefit at all from implementing such a ubiquitously mandated system. Perhaps if things were different, I'd think otherwise.
  - doright 1y ago
    In my opinion "we need mandatory age verification" is an admission that we can't really address the overarching issue of parents that can't/won't parent at a good enough level. Narcissistic parenting without any added access to questionable content on a smartphone is still... narcissistic parenting. The definition of "parent better" differs between people and is often non-negotiable, even way before anything involving CPS occurs. Not to mention, the content being withheld will become available at adulthood anyway, and can still be harmful if the person has not been given the tools to navigate it well. Admittedly the bar is far higher with ubiquitous social media and smartphones. I'm not sure a parenting license system would ever work out in practice. Yet a lot of issues stemming from upbringing can cause irreversible harm and I don't feel like those root causes are brought up that much in the broader discussion about mental health symptoms. It pains me to think that some amount of debilitating childhood trauma is unavoidable, but content restriction at least sounds like an actionable problem that doesn't require uprooting the fabric of society to correct.
crote 1y ago
On the other hand: Are you willing to pay hundreds of millions for developing the biggest data leak in human history, killing websites like Wikipedia in the process, while stopping only 10% of underage children from seeing porn? The current systems being put in place in the UK are privacy-invading and ineffective. In my opinion they are worse than not having anything at all. I might be willing to change my viewpoint if something better comes along, but if a proper solution was so easy, why haven't we seen a peer-reviewed reference design yet? What's stopping the nerds from nerding harder?
- tzs 1y ago
  > On the other hand: Are you willing to pay hundreds of millions for developing the biggest data leak in human history The comment you are replying to was talking about ZKP based systems. In those systems you don't show any identity information to the websites that you are trying to prove your age to. Those systems can be made leak proof by making the party that you have to show identification to be some party that already has your identity information. For example it can be the government agency that issues your driver's license.
  - hellojesus 1y ago
    But these systems then are trivial to bypass by a person that publishes their private key for others to use as impersonation. If the site can't determine if the same id is used for multiple requests, they can't prevent it. And if the gov isn't able to see which site is requesting the data, neither can it.
    - tzs 1y ago
      Systems like the EU's digital identity wallet use hardware-based security. The private keys are generated by the secure element in your smartphone or something equivalent on a smart card, and any operations that need the keys during a verification are done in that secure element.
      - raxxorraxor 1y ago

Seattle3503 1y ago

Yeah, I think even if we only manage to delay the "age of first porn viewing" to something like 14-15, thats probably a win.

jofla_net 1y ago
Maybe, but as a parent, I believe its an embarrassment to expect to radically retrofit a society in such ways as to make up for my own negligent lack of responsibility for my own children, which I do take quite seriously. Not to mention the myriad of resultant unintended consequences which invariably arise when such systems(of which i'm quite familiar) are brought to bear. Though I do speak from such a position of professional neutrality, as I would gain no benefit at all from implementing such a ubiquitously mandated system. Perhaps if things were different, I'd think otherwise.
- doright 1y ago
  In my opinion "we need mandatory age verification" is an admission that we can't really address the overarching issue of parents that can't/won't parent at a good enough level. Narcissistic parenting without any added access to questionable content on a smartphone is still... narcissistic parenting. The definition of "parent better" differs between people and is often non-negotiable, even way before anything involving CPS occurs. Not to mention, the content being withheld will become available at adulthood anyway, and can still be harmful if the person has not been given the tools to navigate it well. Admittedly the bar is far higher with ubiquitous social media and smartphones. I'm not sure a parenting license system would ever work out in practice. Yet a lot of issues stemming from upbringing can cause irreversible harm and I don't feel like those root causes are brought up that much in the broader discussion about mental health symptoms. It pains me to think that some amount of debilitating childhood trauma is unavoidable, but content restriction at least sounds like an actionable problem that doesn't require uprooting the fabric of society to correct.

crote 1y ago

On the other hand: Are you willing to pay hundreds of millions for developing the biggest data leak in human history, killing websites like Wikipedia in the process, while stopping only 10% of underage children from seeing porn? The current systems being put in place in the UK are privacy-invading and ineffective. In my opinion they are worse than not having anything at all. I might be willing to change my viewpoint if something better comes along, but if a proper solution was so easy, why haven't we seen a peer-reviewed reference design yet? What's stopping the nerds from nerding harder?

tzs 1y ago
> On the other hand: Are you willing to pay hundreds of millions for developing the biggest data leak in human history The comment you are replying to was talking about ZKP based systems. In those systems you don't show any identity information to the websites that you are trying to prove your age to. Those systems can be made leak proof by making the party that you have to show identification to be some party that already has your identity information. For example it can be the government agency that issues your driver's license.
- hellojesus 1y ago
  But these systems then are trivial to bypass by a person that publishes their private key for others to use as impersonation. If the site can't determine if the same id is used for multiple requests, they can't prevent it. And if the gov isn't able to see which site is requesting the data, neither can it.
  - tzs 1y ago
    Systems like the EU's digital identity wallet use hardware-based security. The private keys are generated by the secure element in your smartphone or something equivalent on a smart card, and any operations that need the keys during a verification are done in that secure element.
    - raxxorraxor 1y ago