10 ms·

EFF launches Age Verification Hub

• mikece 11mo ago
  Any time law-makers claim that a law is meant to protect children you can guarantee that the safety of children had almost nothing to do with it. This is all a push to normalize digital ID (to protect the children!); once normalized it will become mandatory.
  • no_wizard 11mo ago
    I always ask myself who wins with these laws (well, any law really). so far, the only winner seems to be the government and data collectors. It seems these laws are intended to collect leverage in the long run.
    • guilamu 11mo ago
      Well, you just answered brilliantly to your own question. You nailed it.
      • no_wizard 11mo ago
        Leaving room for someone to give me convincing evidence to the contrary. I didn't expect any, though. It also lets someone who knows more than I to elaborate with more depth.
        • guilamu 11mo ago
          Agreed, I just wanted to say I agree with your sentiment.
    • AuthAuth 11mo ago
      Parents? Children? Schools? I'd argue that this is negligible for data collectors and governments. Governments already know who you are and what sites you vist for 99.99% of the population. Data collectors already know who you are and have a pretty good idea of the sites you vist. What unique information is this going to give the government and data collectors to abuse? Lets establish one case that both affects average people and is "bad" and not waste time discussing things that only affect a tiny minority of privacy minded people. Keep in mind the law states a platform must provide multiple ways to reasonably verify a user is older than 16. No mention of giving the specific user age or requiring govt id
    • kagrenac 11mo ago
      The internet, with verifiable identities, is the greatest system to collect kompromat that one could ask for.
  • owisd 11mo ago
    [flagged]
    • youarentrightjr 11mo ago
      You're conflating protecting children with "protect the children!". Required reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalyp...
    • raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
      That’s not the argument you think it is https://www.consumermedsafety.org/safety-articles/how-children-frequently-get-into-medicines-child-resistant-caps-that-are-not-childproof-accessible-medicines-and-climbing https://www.consumermedsafety.org/safety-articles/how-childr...
  • knallfrosch 11mo ago
    When they made smoke alarms mandatory in schools, it was only for selling smoke alarms! /s
• dvh 11mo ago
  This gives me Leisure Suit Larry flashbacks
  • blitzar 11mo ago
    Ken sent me
    • kingforaday 11mo ago
      LSL4 was my favorite.
• giancarlostoro 11mo ago
  Not to mention people lose accounts because someone reported them as underage, and now they don't want to fully dox themselves over this. Who can blame them considering discord's own support ticket system was hacked which included people who had to validate their age.
• bobajeff 11mo ago
  I wonder what the psychological effect of having little or no privacy would do to people. Are we all going to be paranoid schizophrenics? How would a world of paranoid schizophrenics work? How insane are world events going to be from that point on?
  • pyuser583 11mo ago
    You think you have privacy? At best, you go back and forth between no privacy, a heavily condition privacy. At best. Let’s take privacy back, but that’s a big process. If you haven’t internalized surveillance, start working on it!
  • brianbest101 11mo ago
    [dead]
  • technothrasher 11mo ago
    > Are we all going to be paranoid schizophrenics? Paranoid, maybe. Schizophrenics? No. Firstly, "paranoid schizophrenia" is an outdated diagnosis. Paranoia is a common symptom of schizophrenia, but schizophrenics exhibiting paranoia are not considered to have separate mental illness from those who are not. Secondly, schizophrenia is not caused simply by psychological stress, and is associated with a large cluster of positive and negative symptoms, with paranoia being only one of them.
  • fsflover 11mo ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363
  • burnt-resistor 11mo ago
    China is an example of this. Somewhere that, according to the UN's data, executed "undesirable" people with such gusto that it incidentally decreased the organ donor waitlist time so low that it couldn't be explained by any other factor. "Perfect" security is only attainable with zero dissent, zero individuality, zero privacy, and zero freedom.
• rlpb 11mo ago
  I'd be OK with an "I am a child" header mandated by law to be respected by service providers (eg. "adult sites" must not permit a client setting the header to proceed). On the client side, mandate that consumer devices that might reasonably be expected to be used by children (every smartphone, tablet, smart TV, etc) have parental controls that set the header. Leave it to parents to set the controls. Perhaps even hold parents culpable for not doing so, as a minimum supervision requirement, just as one may hold parents culpable for neglecting their children in other ways. Forcing providers to divine the age of the user, or requiring an adult's identity to verify that they are not a child, is backwards, for all the reasons pointed out. But that's not the only way to "protect the children". Relying on a very minimal level of parental supervision of device use should be fine; we already expect far more than that in non-technology areas.
  • ProjectArcturis 11mo ago
    I'm not sure that making parents legally culpable for their kids being smart enough to download a new browser is LESS government intrusion.
    • e40 11mo ago
      It could be added at the router? The child's computer could be identified and this header added, in a MITM situation... but, maybe that would be easy to defeat, by replacing the cert on the client? Not my area of expertise... really just asking...
    • rlpb 11mo ago
      There's no reason to hold the parents culpable. It would be up to the device manufacturer to ensure that this isn't possible on a system that has parental controls enabled. This is already a solved problem - see how MDM solutions do it, and see Apple's ban on alternative browsers. It's not even necessary to block parents from giving their children Linux desktops or whatever. It'll largely solve the problem if parents are merely expected to enable parental controls on devices that have the capability.
    • BobaFloutist 11mo ago
• alkindiffie 11mo ago
  Would be great if EFF also sets up a phone verification hub. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45989890
• orwin 11mo ago
  I think sadly, this is a lost battle in public opinion. And the gambling of digital assets on Roblox and other casino-like website is also starting to get public attention, and will turn public opinion further. The CNIL gave up 3 years ago, and gave guidelines, you can read about it here [0]. At the time it read like "How well, we tried, we said it is incompatible with privacy and the GDPR multiple times, we insist one more time that giving tools to parents is the only privacy-safe solution despite obvious problems, but since your fucking law will pass, so the best we can do is to draw guidelines, and present solutions and how to implement them correctly". I think the EFF should do the same. That's just how it is. Define solutions you'll agree with. Fight the fight on chat control and other stuff where the public opinion can be changed, this is too late, and honestly, if it's done well,it might be fine. If the first implementation is correct, we will have to fight to maintain the statu quo, which in a conservative society, is the easiest, especially when no other solution have been tested. If it's not, we will have to fight to make it correct, then fight to maintain it, and both are harder. the EFF should reluctantly agree and draft the technical solution themselves. [0] https://www.cnil.fr/en/online-age-verification-balancing-privacy-and-protection-minors https://www.cnil.fr/en/online-age-verification-balancing-pri...
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 11mo ago
  "SAN FRANCISCO-With ill-advised and dangerous age verification laws proliferating across the United States and around the world, creating surveillance and censorship regimes that will be used to harm both youth and adults, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a new resource hub that will sort through the mess and help" The surveillance and censorship system is built, administered and maintained by Silicon Valley companies who have adopted this as their "business model". "Monetising" surveillance of other peoples' noncommercial internet use These Silicon Valley companies have been surveilling internet subscribers for over a decade, relentlessly connecting online identity to offline identity, hell bent on knowing who is accessing what webpage on what website, where they live, what they are interested in, and so on, building detailed advertising profiles (including the age of the ad target) tied to IP addresses, then selling the subscribers out to advertisers and collecting obscene profits (and killing media organisations that hire journalists in the process) Now these companies are being forced to share some of the data they collect and store Gosh, who would have forseen such an outcome These laws are targeting the Silicon Valley companies, not internet subscribers But the companies want to spin it as an attack on subscribers The truth is the companies have been attacking subscriber privacy and attempting to gatekeep internet publication^1 for over a decade, in the name of advertising and obscene profits 1. Discourage subscribers from publishing websites and encourage them to create pages on the company's website instead. Centralise internet publication, collect data, perform surveillance and serve advertisements
  • rixed 11mo ago
    It was bad already, so who cares if that gets worse? Is that the message? Silicon valley uses that information to sell adds, and sometimes votes. Not great, but I can imagine much worse from a State.
• hackingonempty 11mo ago
  I am disappointed to find no mentions of zero knowledge proofs or any other indications that we wont have to trust anyone with this task. We have the technology to do age verification without revealing any more information to the site and without the verification authority finding out what sites we are browsing. However, most people are ignorant of it. If we don't push for the use of privacy preserving technology we wont get it and we will get more tracking. You cannot defeat age verification on the internet, age verification is already a feature of our culture. The only way out is to ensure that privacy preserving technologies are mandated.
  • wiredpancake 11mo ago
    Everyone, including politicians are intimately aware of Zero Knowledge Proofs. Google even open-sourced technology to enable it: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-zero-knowledge-proof-technology-to-promote-privacy-in-age-assurance/ https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze... The politicians don't want Zero Knowledge Proof because it prevents the mass-surveillance of internet users. This is all deliberate.
• devwastaken 11mo ago
  The net got too big, the 90% got in because of facebook and google, and automated bots took over from there. Either we create the fix, or the feds take it over. we need to sever the idea of a global internet. per-country and allied nations only. anonymous cert-chain verified ID stored on device. problem fixed.
• rolph 11mo ago
  back in the day the worst thing you could do in a blog or channel was to self identify as female, as you would get flooded i am a child header = i am verifying myself as valid target header has anyone realized that whatever at all the "good" guys do, the "bad" guys will abuse it. we need canaries [bots with child header], to get a metric on any increase of attempted crimes vs a child.
• DeathArrow 11mo ago
  Like any wrong government initiative, mass surveillance is being justified by "think of the children" and "fighting the bad guys".
• rich_sasha 11mo ago
  I understand this is a technology forum, frequented mostly by liberal adults, who built a lot of their internet nous on totally free internet of 90s and 00s. I am one of them. Equally, I think insisting that there must be no controls to internet access whatsoever is not right either. There is now plenty of evidence that eg. social media are very harmful to teenagers - and frankly, before I noticed, going on FB got me depressed each time I did it at one point. And as a parent, you realise how little control you have over your children's tech access. Case in point - my kids seem to have access to very poorly locked down iPads at school. I complained, but they frankly don't understand. We all accept kids can't buy alcohol and cigarettes, even if that encroaches on their freedom. But or course flashing an ID when you're over 18 is not very privacy-invading. Likewise, I think it is much better to discuss better means of effecting these access controls. As some comments here mention, there are e.g. zero knowledge proofs. I'm sure I'll be told it's all a sham to collect data and it's not about kids. And maybe. But I care about kids not having access to TikTok and Pornhub. So I'd rather make the laws better than moan about how terrible it is to limit access to porn and dopamine shots.
  • cwmoore 11mo ago
    That’s not the moan friend.
  • vegadw 11mo ago
    You had me thinking "This is a reasonable argument even if I disagree" until the last line. That's completely disingenuous of the argument.
• josefritzishere 11mo ago
  We must destroy all freedom and forsake all right to free speech and privacy... for the children!
• segmondy 11mo ago
  How are you going to verify the age of someone coming in from another country?
  • advisedwang 11mo ago
    Realistically all but the largest sites are going to contract out age verification to third parties. There will probably be verification companies that will have a wide range of verifications.
    • Hizonner 11mo ago
      There already are, and have been for a while. And, yes, of course, they've been involved in lobbying for the requirements.
• taeric 11mo ago
  I would be happy if we just moved to a way we could more realistically enable audits of information flow in our lives. I don't, necessarily, want to restrict my kids consumptions. It does worry me that I don't know how to teach them to audit all of the information that is being exposed to them. Or worse, collected about them.
  • squigz 11mo ago
    I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'audit', but teach them critical thinking, and show them the strategies the media uses to manipulates them. Teach them there's often more than 1 side to a story. Things like this will give them a huge advantage in not being manipulated and lied to.
    • taeric 11mo ago
      To explain it like budgeting. You can forward plan what you will spend money on. But you also need to be able to see where all of your money went. This is nigh impossible with data flow, nowadays. I'd be comfortable with it having large segments of "uncategorized." But right now, if I scan over to my ISP to see how much data I have used for the month, I have little to no help in saying how much of that was what.
      • squigz 11mo ago
        Ah okay. I think this would probably be pretty tricky, security-wise, no? One of my first thoughts that might help would be writing a simple tool that parses history from your browsers to categorize it. Other than that, there are things like https://activitywatch.net/ https://activitywatch.net/ (which seems to have a desktop and Android version)
        • taeric 11mo ago
          Yeah, just writing out the idea, I would imagine I should be able to see a lot of this with my router? Again, I get that that will be a lot I have to write off as "uncategorized." I'm not even trying to drive all telemetry down to zero. I'm comfortable knowing that my HVAC may send diagnostic stuff in, as an example. But it seems kind of crazy to me that this is not something that is often discussed? Do I just miss those discussions?
• fragmede 11mo ago
  * for the US Internet. Internet access, even on cafe shop wifi, in India is trace backable to the ID of the user already.
  • Kozmik1 11mo ago
    How would internet access in a coffee shop be traced to the specific user?
    • greenavocado 11mo ago
      In Switzerland you are forced to receive an SMS code to your phone on every portal in every public space everywhere to establish your identity on every network. No SMS = No public wifi anywhere in Switzerland.
      • Kozmik1 11mo ago
        That's a funny choice, I thought Europe was done with SMS. I can see this 1-to-1 mapping with other cellphone derived messaging like Whatsapp, etc being an issue for privacy but it's certainly possible to have multiple phones.
      • pnw 11mo ago
        How would an SMS code sent to a phone number be traced to the specific user? Anonymous VOIP numbers are plentiful.
        • afavour 11mo ago
          I imagine they would block anonymous VOIP numbers.
        • greenavocado 11mo ago
          You need to show identification to get a SIM card. You can't receive the text message without cellular service. I had to show my passport to get a SIM card.
• luckys 11mo ago
  The end goal of this line of thinking is tracking every molecule in the universe. Exagerated I know, but we're moving in that direction.
• socalgal2 11mo ago
  That is an extremely poor title. Reading it I'd expect the average person to be like "yea, it's about time" and skip the article.
  • kmoser 11mo ago
    I first interpreted it to mean the EFF had created their own site to perform age verification. So yes, a very poorly written title indeed.
• cvoss 11mo ago
  > we must fight back to protect the internet that we know and love. This is not compelling. The internet I know and love has been dying for a long time for unrelated reasons. The new internet that is replacing that one is an internet that I very much do not love and would be totally ok to see lots of it get harder to access.
  • futuraperdita 11mo ago
    What parts and content should be "harder to access" in your view?
    • Avicebron 11mo ago
      The parts where traffic generates money for the kind of people who would think putting an advertisement on a screen on someone's home refrigerator is an acceptable thing to do (morally, not legally or whatever). Extrapolate that how you will.
• throwaway198846 11mo ago
  Why they don't use zero knowledge proof? Also question for the USA constitution experts, is this considered a violation of free speech? The article is not clear on this.
  • neuroelectron 11mo ago
    Onlyfans is legal prostitution so we need to protect that. Better to regulate the entire internet with taking your rights than question why it's allowed.
    • dragonwriter 11mo ago
      > Onlyfans is legal prostitution No, its legal (in some jurisdictions) pornography. Prostitution on the platform, as well as whatever the legal status is in the set of jurisdictions involved, is also, from what I understand, explicitly against the platform ToS.
      • imiric 11mo ago
        Way to split hairs. Something being against the ToS can still be legal. Prostitution obviously cannot physically happen on an online platform, but it sure is a convenient way to advertise and attract customers, and serve as the payment processor.
        • dragonwriter 11mo ago
          > Way to split hairs. Something being against the ToS can still be legal. Well, no, violating a binding legal agreement is illegal. > Prostitution obviously cannot physically happen on an online platform, but it sure is a convenient way to advertise and attract customers, and serve as the payment processor. Which is explicilty prohibited by the law in many places OF operates, and judging from the number of people who are creators on the platform I've seen complaining about people jeopardizing their status with the platform by soliciting it on the platform, also by the actively-enforced terms of the platform. OF is simply not “legal prostitution”, and it is ridiculous to describe it that way
• ActorNightly 11mo ago
  Good. Let this version of internet be locked down and censored. If people care enough, they will build a new internet.
  • anthk 11mo ago
    Guifi.net and the rest of meshnets. Also, Yggdrasil. Not for anonymity, but availability.
• Pxtl 11mo ago
  Infuriating that we get all the bad sides of digital ID without the good sides. It's deanonymizing and intrusive and mandatory for sites to implement without protecting them from sockpuppets and foreign troll farms.
• pksebben 11mo ago
  This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't. For the folks in the back row: Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear [0 1 2]. If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are so we can make any techniques to obfuscate that illegal. By turning this from "keep an eye on your kids" to "prove you're not a kid" they've created the conditions to make privacy itself illegal. VPNs are next. Then PGP. Then anything else that makes it hard for them to know who you are, what you say, and who you say it to. Please, please don't fall into the trap and start discussing whether or not this is going to be effective to protect kids. It isn't, and that isn't the point. 0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawmakers-want-ban-vpns-and-they-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawmakers-want-ban-vpn... 1 https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpn-usage-at-risk-in-michigan-under-new-proposed-adult-content-law https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpn-usage... 2 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-09-15/debates/57714CE6-0CE4-49F6-B028-E271D5100F7F/OnlineSafetyAct2023VirtualPrivateNetworks https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-09-15/debates/57714...
  • knallfrosch 11mo ago
    > If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are That is untrue
    • phyzome 11mo ago
      Are you aware of any age verification systems that do not have this property? (This includes being robust against law enforcement action, legal or otherwise.)
      • orblivion 11mo ago
        How about: https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-zero-knowledge-proof-technology-to-promote-privacy-in-age-assurance/ https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...
• motohagiography 11mo ago
  online age verification is disingenuous and a pretext to give governments the hard coded technical option to regulate speech and association. there's a great game being played out by these users of force against the advocates of desire. everything about the bureaucracies pushing digital ID is unwanted. this isnt about age verification tech, its about illegitimate power for unwanted people who are actuated by forcing their will on others. we should treat these actions with the open disgust they deserve.
• retox 11mo ago
  [dead]
• forshaper 11mo ago
  Whose fault is it when a child burns their hand on the stove?
  • iamnothere 11mo ago
    We need common sense stove control. Verify your age before using the burner please.
    • forshaper 11mo ago
      Alas
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• paulvnickerson 11mo ago
  What they should do instead is invest in technology that can do age verification while protecting privacy. This is obviously a required piece of technology. It is not acceptable for children to grow up on the Internet and easily access pornography by simply going to a website. Imagine letting your children loose in a city where they can wander in and out of peep shows without friction.
  • GuB-42 11mo ago
    While the "required piece of technology" aspect is debatable, there is certainly enough demand for it that it is going to happen in one way or another. So I agree that instead of fighting some change that I think is inevitable, they should make it so that it works in the most privacy-conscious way possible. And I mean with real technical solutions, like an open-source app or browser extension you can download, a proof-of-concept server for age verification, etc... using the best crypto has to offer.
  • maerF0x0 11mo ago
    It's funny to me that porn does not have more age verification than just "Yes, I promise I'm 18+" (or whatever). If I go to the liquor store, I can't just promise "I'm 21+" If I go to vote, I can't just promise I'm 16+ If I go to buy a lottery ticket I cant just promise... I think I made my point.
    • Spivak 11mo ago
      And yet this has been the system for the last 35 years and somehow the sky didn't fall. Either you're old enough to understand what porn is and have desires to consume it in which case you won't be scarred by it and don't need protection from it, or your not in which case you won't seek it out. You need id checks for alcohol because people too young to consume it want it, and given how much teens drink and how not a problem lower drinking ages are in other countries even that claim is somewhat dubious.
      • kmoser 11mo ago
        Not true; kids too young to understand porn can stumble across it, or find it because they searched for it simply because they heard about it from their friends. I'm not saying they'll be harmed by it (most of them won't be), but there will always be a small percentage of people who find a certain thing and then go on to get harmed by that thing. That doesn't mean the rest of us should have to jump through hoops to responsibly use that thing.
• Aloisius 11mo ago
  I'm just waiting for governments to start requiring OS makers to verify identity on consumer phone/laptop/console devices before you can use them. After all, they can legitimately claim it solves much of the issues with other verification schemes - no need to trust third party sites or apps, lower risk of phishing, easier to implement internationally and with foreign nationals, etc. Of course, the downside (for individuals) is it would take just one legal tweak or pressure from the government to destroy anonymity for good.
• zmmmmm 11mo ago
  I feel like the EFF has stretched a bit far on this one. They need to be advocating for good solutions, not portraying age verification as fundamentally about surveillance and censorship. As many are pointing out zero knowledge proofs exist and resolve most of the issues they are referring to. And it doesn't have to be complex. A government (or bank, or anybody that has an actual reason to know your identity) provided service that mints a verifiable one time code the user can plug into a web site is very simple and probably sufficient. Pretty standard PKI can do it. The real battle to be lost here is that uploading actual identity to random web sites becomes normalised. Or worse, governments have to know what web sites you are going to. That's what needs to be fought against.
  • raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
    Age verification is about government overreach surveillance and censorship. That’s it.
  • atonse 11mo ago
    Yep this is the first time I've disagreed with the EFF on anything civil liberties related. My view is that there's no reason why we can't come together and come up with a rating system for websites (through HTTP headers, there are already a couple proposals, the RTA header and another W3C proposal). Once a website just sends a header saying this is adult only content, what YOU as a user do with it is up to you. You could restrict it at the OS level (which is another thing we ALREADY have). This would match the current system, which allows households to set their devices to block whatever they want, and the devices get metadata from the content producers. No ID checks needed.
    • kmoser 11mo ago
      > My view is that there's no reason why we can't come together and come up with a rating system for websites There's no way everybody will agree what constitutes "adult only content," therefore there's no way to come up with a rating for websites.
      • 11mo ago
• H1Supreme 11mo ago
  Generally speaking, I share the HN consensus on age verification laws. But, there is a real problem with kid's unfettered internet access. Just think about all the adults who are hopelessly addicted to social media. The negative affects are amplified when it comes to developing minds. My SO has been teaching for nearly 20 years now, and mental health in kids has fallen off a cliff in the last two decades. I could fill this page with online bullying stories. Some of which, are especially cruel. Half her students are on medication for anxiety. It's out of control, honestly. That said, I don't know how to solve it. It's easy to put this on the parents, but that's not the answer. Otherwise, it would be solved already. Some don't care. Some don't have the time to care because they're trying to keep the lights on, and dinner on the table. And, some simply think it doesn't apply to them or their children. Parents on HN are hyper-aware of this sort of thing, but that's definitely the minority. I know a family that would be most folks least likely candidate for something bad to happen online. Single income, relatively well off, the parent at home has an eye on the kids 24/7. And, if you met the kids, you would most likely qualify them as "good kids". Without going into detail, their life was turned upside down because one of the kids was "joking around" online. Again, I don't know what the answer to the problem is. Clearly, age verification laws are a veiled attempt to both collect and control data. And, EFF's emphasis on advertising restrictions as a solution, seems off the mark. There's more to it than that. Idk, this shit makes me want to log off permanently, and pretend it's 1992.
  • WCSTombs 11mo ago
    > It's easy to put this on the parents, but that's not the answer. Otherwise, it would be solved already. I would argue it must be part of the answer, if it isn't literally the answer. You even kind of hit the nail on the head later in that paragraph: > Parents on HN are hyper-aware of this sort of thing, but that's definitely the minority. I would start there. Spreading awareness and social pressure is a tractable problem.
• k310 11mo ago
  As I have stated before, AI is freeing us to: 1. create our own porn at home and (soon) 2. have home orgasmatrons. Parents have complete control of the Chat/Porn server and since the orgasmatron necessarily has all your desires stored in its LLM (Large Lust Model) it trivially knows your age and will lock you out. And internet porn can be banned regardless of age. (that's only half sarcastically said). Demand for home Large Lust Models and orgasmatrons will soar. You heard it here first. Opportunity for entrepreneurs. And these home-based products are the only way to keep porn away from kids (if parents don't care now, they never will) and to maintain privacy on the internet. Every place where I've worked in I.T., the rule was "No porn downloading at work. Porn belongs in the home." (especially in the days of slow home modems) And to be really enforceable, all offshore sites would have to agree to the scheme, including certain Russian ones who are glad to pollute our children's and adults' minds with porn, propaganda and conspiracy theories. Lastly: There always was and will be media. Micro-SD cards now? If not phones, thrift store picture frames and RPi's. "Porn finds a way."
• RGamma 11mo ago
  ITT: HN discussing whether and how to pull up the ladder on free youth.
  • deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
• micromacrofoot 11mo ago
  Asking for a year of birth is the best solution and always will be. Once kids are old enough to figure that out you're not going to stop them from much.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 11mo ago
  Is the EFF captured? This is a resource against misguided laws but what's a law they'd actually approve of? This entire resource is boring defense of the status quo.
• QuartzBanana 11mo ago
  [dead]
• maerF0x0 11mo ago
  Besides Porn, what sites are doing this? It's odd to me that the EFF page does not mention "porn" or "adult content" at all.
  • WCSTombs 11mo ago
    YouTube.
  • wkat4242 11mo ago
    Here in Europe they want to do the same for chat services like WhatsApp.
  • 71bw 11mo ago
    Discord. Twitter. YouTube and other google services.
• EGreg 11mo ago
  Why is this so difficult? Verified Credentials exist on the Web. Drivers’ licenses exist. Just show that you are over 18 in a zero knowledge way and be done with it. Why do they need to see your IDs?
  • wkat4242 11mo ago
    Because I don't want to prove myself in everything I do online?
    • EGreg 11mo ago
      I don’t want to follow many different laws. So inconvenient. I don’t want to stop at a red light if I see there are no cars around. It’s stupid. But…
      • wkat4242 11mo ago
        No but this is exactly why I don't want this to become law. However yes if it does become law I will avoid it. It is a big slippery slope aimed at destroying anonimity on the internet. Even if first attempts are privacy-preserving, it could still break the use of double accounts for example, something which I also use widely.
• Nevermark 11mo ago
  Why don't we have zero-knowledge age verification? One actor verifies ages - and they only need to do so once. Sites give users a key tied to their user account to run by their verifier, who returns another key that attests to their verified age encoded for that specific site, to give back to the site. The site doesn't know anything about the user, but their user login info. The verifier doesn't know anything about what sites are being visited. This would seem to address the issues, without creating the pervasive privacy and security problems of every age verifying site creating database of people's government id's, faces, and other personal information. It also seems like a way out of the legal/legislatorial battle. Which otherwise, is going to be an immortal hydra. I would trust the EFF to run something like this. Open source. With only one-way encrypted/hashed personal info stored at their end. (I am not a cryptographic expert. But I believe mechanisms like this are straightforward stuff at this point.)
  • vbs_redlof 11mo ago
    Because it's not about age verification, it's about setting up infrastructure to enable incremental enchroachment on privacy. Fun fact: many ZK identity solutions run centralized provers and can be subpoenaed. Need to use something that generates proofs client-side.
    • Nevermark 11mo ago
      > Because it's not about age verification, it's about setting up infrastructure to enable incremental enchroachment on privacy. Yes. You are emphasizing a reason it would be a good idea. Sideline the ulterior/hidden motive. Or at a minimum, force it into the open, where it has less of a chance. (Ulterior motives are kept quiet for a reason.) > Fun fact: many ZK identity solutions run centralized provers and can be subpoenaed. Need to use something that generates proofs client-side. Subpoenas are one of the many privacy problems solved by this. If there is no log of your real identity tied to visiting a site, there is nothing to hack or subpoena. A verifier can report you got keys validated. But they don't know what sites they were for. Sites can ensure users are vetted for age. Without knowing who they are. This is such a classic cryptography scenario, I don't know how it isn't being pushed to the center of this debate. Anything that reduces the practical tension between divisive goal posts is going to have practical benefit, and make worst case legislation much less likely.
• jedberg 11mo ago
  I have a friend attempting to solve this. He's basically creating oauth for age verification. You sign up with his service and verify your age. After that it works similarly to oauth, but instead of return your identity, it just returns your age. It's not a perfect solution, as he would still know who you are, but it's built in a way where you create a token locally to pass to the site that includes your age, and that site passes it to his site, which verifies the signature. So he knows who you are but not what sites you visit, and the sites know your age but not who you are.
  • mrtksn 11mo ago
    When I read the title I hoped that EFF was going to do exactly that. There’s also a way to improve it: Sell “age verification cards” in physical stores. Just like they are verifying that minors aren’t buying alcohol or cigarettes, they can verify that these cards are bought only by grown ups. Sure wouldn’t be perfect but it greatly improves anonymity and especially in paid-for adult services can be used as a payment method so repeat verification will happen for top ups.
    • Atlas667 11mo ago
      On a related note I HATE how when I go buy alcohol they have to scan my ID here. Potentially having to participate in marketing schemes for a beer?? Its not worth it. There should also be a read only ID method with more watermarking validation or something. I dont trust them POS with my info.
• IlikeKitties 11mo ago
  If you haven't figured out this is a push by the WEF for digital identity and an end of anonymity on the internet you can't be helped. They are LITERALLY saying it out loud https://nitter.net/JimFergusonUK/status/1988514762896855155 https://nitter.net/JimFergusonUK/status/1988514762896855155 Why do you think there's a global push all at once for this? Anyway I'll order a bunch of cheap USB Sticks, load them up with porn and gore and drop them at school yards at night then. If we do that enough we can make using USB Devices require ID Soon enough.
• spragl 11mo ago
  The push for age verification must be about something else. There are good solutions to this, but they are ignored. Its always about some complex setup leaking information all over the place. It must be either ignorance or indeed about surveillance, as many here think it is. Shameless plug: I wrote about hash chains some time ago. They are a nice and simple solution to age verification. https://spredehagl.com/2025-07-14/ https://spredehagl.com/2025-07-14/
  • mfost 11mo ago
    The reality is that it's probably mostly about incompetence and lazyness. And tight purses of course. When some country parliament decides to mandate age verification, it's really easy and lazy for them to just say "verify ages and do it reliably!" and stop at that. As a result, the services affected don't really have a choice to go towards those horrible solutions of scaning our faces or IDs or both and all the issues around that. What should happen rather is "we'll build a system for age verification that is privacy focused and all you sites that are adult only will have to use it or any other system we deem acceptable" But this requires effort on the part of the government doing the law. And money.
    • spragl 11mo ago
      Yes, wellknown solutions have a strong grip on you. In this case it is unfortunate. I know that the preparations for eIDAS 2.0 (the European thing) did contain many good parts. Taking inspiration from SSI. So at that point their specifications were rather good. I havent kept up with it for almost one year now, so that might have changed.
• amelius 11mo ago
  Here's how schools should deal with the social media problem: Make children write down what they got out of social media, every time they use it. Maybe then it will sink down that it basically offers close to zero actual benefit.
• throw_me_uwu 11mo ago
  If age check is truly anonymous/zero-knowledge, as in the requester can't identify me, the issuer can't link me to the attestation... why wouldn't someone start selling age verified accounts? Easy money for some 18yo.
• aaravchen 11mo ago
  Not a single link in any of thier chain of articles actually goes to this "Resource Hub" they keep referencing.