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These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification. There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solut

These discussions remind me so much of the US discussions about federal ID documents as verification. There's a vocal portion of people which opposes any solution because "privacy, government overreach, surveillance ...". So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification, that tries to minimize intrusions on privacy, the result is the worst of all worlds, maximum surveillance (but I guess it's ok if it is not the federal government, but meta), with minimum utility. Just look at the freaking mess that is trying to proof your identity in the US.

sieep 7mo ago
> Just look at the freaking mess that is trying to proof your identity in the US. Care to elaborate? I'm not sure what's a mess about a driver's license, social security card. I've never once had any issue with my identity.
- abustamam 7mo ago
  I think they're talking about proving your identity to a non govt entity. A few things that come to mind are any platform with a KYC, they require you to upload your ID and assure you they're secure with a little lock icon.
  - masklinn 7mo ago
    Even proving your identity to a government entity is non-trivial, as can be seen by the administration trying to use that as a new poll tax.
    - abustamam 7mo ago
      When I needed to get my newborn daughter's social security card I went to the local SS office, only to be turned away because I did not have an appointment. So I went home, finally got an appointment after an hour on the phone, trying to explain why I didn't have her SS card (apparently "it never arrived" did not compute), went back the next day with my passport card to provide as proof of identity. Only for them to say "we don't accept passport cards as ID. We can use your license though!" Baffling.
- swiftcoder 7mo ago
  > I'm not sure what's a mess about a driver's license, social security card Neither of those are accepted by various states' voter id laws, nor can you reliably board an airplane with them since RealID. The only foolproof identity card in the US appears to be a passport (which, you know, global federal identity card... exactly what the folks against universal ids dislike)
  - otterley 7mo ago
    My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Are you aware of any that don’t?
    - 5upplied_demand 7mo ago
      > My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Not today. However, there is a bill in the Senate, that the President is demanding to be passed, that would eliminate this reality. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/03/17/save-america-act-what-to-know/89062933007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/03/17/save-amer...
      - jp191919 7mo ago
        >Records from a federal citizenship verification tool show that just 0.04% of voter verification cases were returned as noncitizens in August 2025. Seems like this is just one of those "feel-good" laws. A waste of time and money.
        gzread 7mo ago
        It's not about eliminating voter fraud - it appears to be about eliminating large swathes of legitimate voters, largely in correlation with how they are expected to vote.
  - hedora 7mo ago
- Congeec 7mo ago
  The identity issuer - the government - already has the your privacy. If you have a unique identifier from the government which websites can call the government with to verify your identity, you won't lose any privacy. All the websites get is just a unique string, no date of birth, no name, no address. This approach is the cornerstone of oauth/oidc.
- sigmoid10 7mo ago
  Not everyone has (or can have) a driver's license and a social security card literally says it is *not* for identification because it lacks even the most basic aspects. But since the US never managed to come up with an actual system, companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier, because it is the one thing everyone has across every state. But that also makes identity theft or credit fraud trivial in the US compared to other countries.
  - dylan604 7mo ago
    > a social security card literally says it is not for identification It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time. My parent's cards did, but mine does not. Also, I'm old (for this forum at least), so this isn't a recent change.
    - zimpenfish 7mo ago
      > It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time. Don't know about "a long long time" but the feds have been treating Social Security Cards as identification since 1943 (military, some agencies) or 1963 (IRS) (cf [0]) [0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social-security-card-say-it-can-t-be-used-as-id https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...
      - dylan604 7mo ago
        I think you're misunderstanding why they are requesting an SSN. You cannot use an SSN to do an in person ID like a photo ID. Same reason a birth certificate cannot be used as an ID. These documents can be used to look up information about you, and a lot of places might use your SSN as a database unique ID, but that kind of info is not identification when someone shouts "papers!" at you. conflating the two meanings of identification feels deliberate at this point
  - zimpenfish 7mo ago
    > companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier Probably because USGOV said it is[0] "In 1943 a presidential executive order directed the military and other government agencies to use the number for identification purposes, and in 1961 the Internal Revenue Service began using the number for taxpayer identification." [0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social-security-card-say-it-can-t-be-used-as-id https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...
- gclaramunt 7mo ago
  You must not live in the US or have very odd patterns, I'm positive a majority of the US population have free credit monitoring due to the multiple SSN data leaks. The situation is so bad that the SSA has to explicitly state: "Social Security card is not an identification document" https://www.ssa.gov/blog/en/posts/2023-03-23.html https://www.ssa.gov/blog/en/posts/2023-03-23.html
  - pessimizer 7mo ago
    Ah, yes, I'm sure the crap that they make up next week won't ever leak anything.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
burnt-resistor 7mo ago
Yup. And like the Clipper chip but with much less pushback. It's a weaponized manufacturing consent campaign to fool people into giving up their privacy and anonymity with d/misinformation. It's so disgusting that state and federal legislators are giving them everything they want, well beyond regulatory capture towards absolute corruption and absolute power.
hedora 7mo ago
For there to be a solution, there needs to be a problem. These bills are not addressing a problem. Assume the online platform has a video feed of my kid, or their SSN, or a zero-knowledge-proof of age, or whatever. Now, what will the platform do with it? Concretely? As in: Name one bad outcome a reasonable parent would care about that's prohibited under these bills. If the bad thing happens due to willful negligence, then there needs to be some actual material consequence to someone at the platform provider.
- gzread 7mo ago
  The Illinois bill prohibits financial transactions, and feeds engineered to be addictive.
  - cortesoft 7mo ago
    How do you define a “feed engineered to be addictive”? How do you distinguish between addictive and just good quality?
    - chao- 7mo ago
      This isn't from the bill, but this is what I would like to see: Any endless scroll "feed" can only be chronological content only from people/orgs/entities you opt-in to see ("follow", "subscribe", what-have-you). Will that be bad for "engagement"? Yes. That's the point.
      - cortesoft 7mo ago
        Why chronological? What is special about that ordering? You aren’t allowed any kind of filtering, or alternative ordering? Do you always view the ‘new’ feed on hackernews, or do you prefer looking at the front page? I much prefer the front page, for all sorts of reasons. The new feed has all sorts of spam and garbage posts. Reposts, troll bait, etc. The front page usually has much more interesting posts, and definitely posts that have more interesting comments on them. I don’t want to get rid of the front page, I like the idea of seeing posts ordered by popularity. Why should you get to decide I am no longer allowed to sort my own feed by popularity, or however I want? I can’t sort things, just because you think I shouldn’t enjoy my feed too much?
sippeangelo 7mo ago
Please explain how opposition to privacy invasive solutions result in even more privacy invasive solutions being implemented? Is it purely out of spite from the lawmakers? This logic doesn't follow.
- hananova 7mo ago
  Because we’re currently still in the phase where lawmakers are telling tech companies “please find a solution for this issue.” At some point, as has happened in the past with other issues, this will change to “solve this issue, here’s exactly how you have to do it.”
- derektank 7mo ago
  It’s obviously worse for your privacy to have third parties handle full images of your drivers license or video of your entire face, which can then be leaked, rather than using a zero knowledge proof that only sends e.g. a birth year. And no, it’s not spite, it’s incoherence. Lawmakers are single minded seekers of re-election to a first degree approximation and will do things to get votes, even if those things don’t logically make sense together, such as requiring age verification without providing the tools for companies to abide by the law themselves.
  - plagiarist 7mo ago
    US lawmakers are single-minded seekers of lobbying and insider trading money, they will sign and trade on whatever ALEC hands them so they receive more money.
- dylan604 7mo ago
  The logic not flowing is the point. People against a federal ID say it is government overreach into state's rights. They consider it the feds invading citizen's rights. They have no need, as it is the purview of the states. So in lieu of a federal ID, private companies are coming up with privacy invading techniques to attempt to verify age. How would one be okay with a private company's invasion of privacy yet not the government's? An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.
Palomides 7mo ago
this position assumes the surveillance state or megacorps would be satisfied with a zero knowledge proof based ID/age verification system, which is not at all obvious to me meta could spend their billions lobbying for that, if they wanted to edit: to be clear, I do think a government developed and maintained ZKP ID/age system is the best possible compromise, I just don't think we have any chance of getting it
- mothballed 7mo ago
  It's a bait and switch that can be seen by even Ray Charles from a mile away. ZKP assurances is just part of the high-IQ "useful idiots" spreading buy in for the bait.
bix6 7mo ago
This seems like a very easy problem. The government has birth records, passports, ssn, phone records, etc. so they could provide an age bracket to anybody that needs it. But instead a private corporation will get to do this and create an absolute mess à la Palantir.
- edoloughlin 7mo ago
  An absolute mess for you. A tidy profit for them.
- _heimdall 7mo ago
  That requires a high level of trust in your current government and whomever is in charge in the future. Its worth remembering how the Nazis so efficiently found Jews in the Netherlands. The Dutch government kept meticulous records, including things like your name, address, and religious affiliation. That wasn't a big deal until the Nazis rolled in, throw in some level of Nazi sympathizers in the Dutch government and it wasn't hard for them to track down anyone they wanted to find.
  - megous 7mo ago
    That's an argument against any mass collection/concentration of data in anyone's hands. Not against gov. collection of data in particular.
    - _heimdall 7mo ago
      Sure, there's a good reason to avoid centralizing data in general but in this case we're talking about governments. Governments are particularly dangerous for mass data collection because they also come with the authority, and military, of a state.
      - mafuy 7mo ago
        And with the money (or else: the authority) to get the data from private businesses. So they get the full data without any restrictions that they themselves would face.
sneak 7mo ago
Age verification is a non-problem. These solutions don’t solve anything.
pessimizer 7mo ago
This is just the moderation fallacy, pronounced with the same kind of unearned confidence in which the moderation fallacy is usually pronounced. To put it in Godwin's terms: you're the one saying that the people denying the Jewish Question are the people enabling the Nazis. If we would just agree to the moderate compromise (fill in the blank), then the Nazis wouldn't have an excuse. Most importantly, it's also an attack on a strawman. Nobody is arguing agains zero-proof age verification. It's probably possible, but in reality is absolute nonsense. There is no material proposal anywhere for a zero-proof age verification system that prevents individuals from being tracked. There is mathematical speculation, and proposals that vaguely and dishonestly simulate what people are pretending exists somewhere. All of them involve individuals giving up their privacy, and insidiously substitute protecting your identity from the providers of "adult" information where protecting your identity from the government and the providers of verification services are actually the important parts. I do not give half of a shit whether some porn site knows who I am; the only reason I care at all is because they may share this information with governments and private entities that will use it to track me, manipulate me, or blackmail me. The reason for this? Governments would lose all interest in age verification if it were possible to do it without invading my privacy. If it is possible in the abstract (which it may well be, mathematically), governments would prioritize sabotaging any company or proposal that could make it happen. The fake proposals of zero-proofs are offering me something I don't care about in order to trick me into giving up something I value, and calling me unreasonable for not falling for it. No, I'm just not a fool. The real solution: a legal requirement for "adult" information services to only reply to requests that declare they're from someone over the legal age to consume that information. People who give their children computers could root them to make sure that that header is stripped, you could install browser extensions to make sure that header is stripped, you could make sure that header was stripped at the router, you could make sure that everyone could make a phone call to their ISP to tell them never to allow a packet across that carried that header unless it also included a key or a password that the adults of the household could add onto their own requests. The above methods don't take any technical sophistication at all, and would solve the problem better than computers that attested age, the computers that 14-year olds would be operating for their often computer-illiterate parents anyway. Why aren't they used? Because this is a totalitarian game, not a serious proposal to solve a serious problem, and it is just meant to fool morons long enough to screw us all in a permanent way.
vouwfietsman 7mo ago
I can't speak for proof of identity in the US, but please understand that digital privacy is a slippery slope we're already sliding down, it is not unreasonable to be critical of any privacy violating initiative, because privacy is never given back, only taken away.
ibejoeb 7mo ago
When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens. I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.
- vrganj 7mo ago
  The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population. Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).
  - nostrademons 7mo ago
    They're still accountable to customers/users. If you don't like their products, don't use them. I don't. The unfortunate thing about this lobbying effort is that it's making the government accountable to Meta, which is the worst of all worlds.
    - jedberg 7mo ago
      You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system. At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.
      - nostrademons 7mo ago
        There aren’t really. The NSA keeps a shadier profile on you too, and the information Meta has is a subset of that. Snowden disclosures showed that.
  - ibejoeb 7mo ago
0xbadcafebee 7mo ago
https://www.aclu.org/documents/5-problems-national-id-cards https://www.aclu.org/documents/5-problems-national-id-cards
ori_b 7mo ago
'Nobody is allowed to do it' remains a valid option.
- gzread 7mo ago
  How would a porn site operate on the internet?
  - ibejoeb 7mo ago
    A simple question with a simple answer: as it has done since the inception. If a kid wants to sneak some porn, he's going to have to hide his digital nudeymag under his digital mattress, and when it's discovered, he'll have to accept his fate as decided by his parents.
    - gzread 7mo ago
      What about online alcohol sales?
      - ibejoeb 7mo ago
        Same. Proof of eligibility is furnished on delivery, just like it is now.
      - ori_b 7mo ago
        They can show their ID to the delivery person, or the kids will have to learn how to drink it over the internet.
Xelbair 7mo ago
Because this does not address the problem at all. Or rather - it does not address my problems as a citizen, and it just pushes responsibility of parents onto 3rd parties and punishes everyone collectively for it. Also fundamentally speaking - this does just take away your right to privacy. do you just let your rights be taken away? I don't want 'minimization' of intrusion of privacy, i want no intrusion of privacy.
- NegativeLatency 7mo ago
  It’s the classic American route of attempting a technical solution to a societal problem.
  - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
    Technology is what solutions are made of. The "nontechnical solutions to societal problems" are the things like "wishful thinking", "pretending the problem doesn't exist", "wishing it away", etc. (Which is fine when the problem is bullshit and there is nothing to solve, which actually may be the case here.)
    - Xelbair 7mo ago
      ever heard of things like laws? like culture? like changing procedures instead of means? unless you want to argue semantics and go 'actually they're all part of technology', but that makes your argument even less meaningful.
      - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
        Right, I would argue they are part of technology, because bureaucracy clearly is, laws move in scope of what's possible and economically feasible, and culture is entirely downstream of that. Or, put another way, you cannot "just change culture", not any more than you can make a river flow uphill by pushing water with your hands. You can splash some water around and make a little puddle, but it'll quickly flow back to rejoin the river and continue on its way. Culture is always seeking a dynamic equilibrium, in a landscape defined by economics and technology constraints. The only way to achieve lasting change is to change the landscape.
boyoboy 7mo ago
[dead]
marssaxman 7mo ago
> So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification A solution to what, though? I oppose any solution because I disagree with your premise: this is not a real problem. We do not need to do anything about it, and any cost would be too high.
deltoidmaximus 7mo ago
Why exactly are you extending them the benefit of the doubt when they've proven they don't deserve it over and over again? Even if zero-proof age verification emerged as a strong political alternative I'd fully expect the final bill to have a carve out of the zero proof exemption for the government in it, a backdoor in encryption scheme essentially. Here you tell me that isn't zero proof, which is true but wouldn't change the name on the bill one iota.
AtlasBarfed 7mo ago
If a corporation has your information, multiple governments do as well, either legally or otherwise

sieep 7mo ago

> Just look at the freaking mess that is trying to proof your identity in the US. Care to elaborate? I'm not sure what's a mess about a driver's license, social security card. I've never once had any issue with my identity.

abustamam 7mo ago
I think they're talking about proving your identity to a non govt entity. A few things that come to mind are any platform with a KYC, they require you to upload your ID and assure you they're secure with a little lock icon.
- masklinn 7mo ago
  Even proving your identity to a government entity is non-trivial, as can be seen by the administration trying to use that as a new poll tax.
  - abustamam 7mo ago
    When I needed to get my newborn daughter's social security card I went to the local SS office, only to be turned away because I did not have an appointment. So I went home, finally got an appointment after an hour on the phone, trying to explain why I didn't have her SS card (apparently "it never arrived" did not compute), went back the next day with my passport card to provide as proof of identity. Only for them to say "we don't accept passport cards as ID. We can use your license though!" Baffling.
swiftcoder 7mo ago
> I'm not sure what's a mess about a driver's license, social security card Neither of those are accepted by various states' voter id laws, nor can you reliably board an airplane with them since RealID. The only foolproof identity card in the US appears to be a passport (which, you know, global federal identity card... exactly what the folks against universal ids dislike)
- otterley 7mo ago
  My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Are you aware of any that don’t?
  - 5upplied_demand 7mo ago
    > My research suggests that all U.S. states that require identification at the polls accept a driving license as a form of valid photo ID. Not today. However, there is a bill in the Senate, that the President is demanding to be passed, that would eliminate this reality. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/03/17/save-america-act-what-to-know/89062933007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2026/03/17/save-amer...
    - jp191919 7mo ago
      >Records from a federal citizenship verification tool show that just 0.04% of voter verification cases were returned as noncitizens in August 2025. Seems like this is just one of those "feel-good" laws. A waste of time and money.
      - gzread 7mo ago
        It's not about eliminating voter fraud - it appears to be about eliminating large swathes of legitimate voters, largely in correlation with how they are expected to vote.
- hedora 7mo ago
Congeec 7mo ago
The identity issuer - the government - already has the your privacy. If you have a unique identifier from the government which websites can call the government with to verify your identity, you won't lose any privacy. All the websites get is just a unique string, no date of birth, no name, no address. This approach is the cornerstone of oauth/oidc.
sigmoid10 7mo ago
Not everyone has (or can have) a driver's license and a social security card literally says it is *not* for identification because it lacks even the most basic aspects. But since the US never managed to come up with an actual system, companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier, because it is the one thing everyone has across every state. But that also makes identity theft or credit fraud trivial in the US compared to other countries.
- dylan604 7mo ago
  > a social security card literally says it is not for identification It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time. My parent's cards did, but mine does not. Also, I'm old (for this forum at least), so this isn't a recent change.
  - zimpenfish 7mo ago
    > It no longer says this, and has not for a long long time. Don't know about "a long long time" but the feds have been treating Social Security Cards as identification since 1943 (military, some agencies) or 1963 (IRS) (cf [0]) [0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social-security-card-say-it-can-t-be-used-as-id https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...
    - dylan604 7mo ago
      I think you're misunderstanding why they are requesting an SSN. You cannot use an SSN to do an in person ID like a photo ID. Same reason a birth certificate cannot be used as an ID. These documents can be used to look up information about you, and a lot of places might use your SSN as a database unique ID, but that kind of info is not identification when someone shouts "papers!" at you. conflating the two meanings of identification feels deliberate at this point
- zimpenfish 7mo ago
  > companies started using SSNs like an identity verifier Probably because USGOV said it is[0] "In 1943 a presidential executive order directed the military and other government agencies to use the number for identification purposes, and in 1961 the Internal Revenue Service began using the number for taxpayer identification." [0] https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social-security-card-say-it-can-t-be-used-as-id https://www.straightdope.com/21341325/why-does-my-old-social...
gclaramunt 7mo ago
You must not live in the US or have very odd patterns, I'm positive a majority of the US population have free credit monitoring due to the multiple SSN data leaks. The situation is so bad that the SSA has to explicitly state: "Social Security card is not an identification document" https://www.ssa.gov/blog/en/posts/2023-03-23.html https://www.ssa.gov/blog/en/posts/2023-03-23.html
- pessimizer 7mo ago
  Ah, yes, I'm sure the crap that they make up next week won't ever leak anything.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

burnt-resistor 7mo ago

Yup. And like the Clipper chip but with much less pushback. It's a weaponized manufacturing consent campaign to fool people into giving up their privacy and anonymity with d/misinformation. It's so disgusting that state and federal legislators are giving them everything they want, well beyond regulatory capture towards absolute corruption and absolute power.

hedora 7mo ago

For there to be a solution, there needs to be a problem. These bills are not addressing a problem. Assume the online platform has a video feed of my kid, or their SSN, or a zero-knowledge-proof of age, or whatever. Now, what will the platform do with it? Concretely? As in: Name one bad outcome a reasonable parent would care about that's prohibited under these bills. If the bad thing happens due to willful negligence, then there needs to be some actual material consequence to someone at the platform provider.

gzread 7mo ago
The Illinois bill prohibits financial transactions, and feeds engineered to be addictive.
- cortesoft 7mo ago
  How do you define a “feed engineered to be addictive”? How do you distinguish between addictive and just good quality?
  - chao- 7mo ago
    This isn't from the bill, but this is what I would like to see: Any endless scroll "feed" can only be chronological content only from people/orgs/entities you opt-in to see ("follow", "subscribe", what-have-you). Will that be bad for "engagement"? Yes. That's the point.
    - cortesoft 7mo ago
      Why chronological? What is special about that ordering? You aren’t allowed any kind of filtering, or alternative ordering? Do you always view the ‘new’ feed on hackernews, or do you prefer looking at the front page? I much prefer the front page, for all sorts of reasons. The new feed has all sorts of spam and garbage posts. Reposts, troll bait, etc. The front page usually has much more interesting posts, and definitely posts that have more interesting comments on them. I don’t want to get rid of the front page, I like the idea of seeing posts ordered by popularity. Why should you get to decide I am no longer allowed to sort my own feed by popularity, or however I want? I can’t sort things, just because you think I shouldn’t enjoy my feed too much?

sippeangelo 7mo ago

Please explain how opposition to privacy invasive solutions result in even more privacy invasive solutions being implemented? Is it purely out of spite from the lawmakers? This logic doesn't follow.

hananova 7mo ago
Because we’re currently still in the phase where lawmakers are telling tech companies “please find a solution for this issue.” At some point, as has happened in the past with other issues, this will change to “solve this issue, here’s exactly how you have to do it.”
derektank 7mo ago
It’s obviously worse for your privacy to have third parties handle full images of your drivers license or video of your entire face, which can then be leaked, rather than using a zero knowledge proof that only sends e.g. a birth year. And no, it’s not spite, it’s incoherence. Lawmakers are single minded seekers of re-election to a first degree approximation and will do things to get votes, even if those things don’t logically make sense together, such as requiring age verification without providing the tools for companies to abide by the law themselves.
- plagiarist 7mo ago
  US lawmakers are single-minded seekers of lobbying and insider trading money, they will sign and trade on whatever ALEC hands them so they receive more money.
dylan604 7mo ago
The logic not flowing is the point. People against a federal ID say it is government overreach into state's rights. They consider it the feds invading citizen's rights. They have no need, as it is the purview of the states. So in lieu of a federal ID, private companies are coming up with privacy invading techniques to attempt to verify age. How would one be okay with a private company's invasion of privacy yet not the government's? An invasion of privacy is an invasion of privacy regardless of the one doing the invading.

Palomides 7mo ago

this position assumes the surveillance state or megacorps would be satisfied with a zero knowledge proof based ID/age verification system, which is not at all obvious to me meta could spend their billions lobbying for that, if they wanted to edit: to be clear, I do think a government developed and maintained ZKP ID/age system is the best possible compromise, I just don't think we have any chance of getting it

mothballed 7mo ago
It's a bait and switch that can be seen by even Ray Charles from a mile away. ZKP assurances is just part of the high-IQ "useful idiots" spreading buy in for the bait.

bix6 7mo ago

This seems like a very easy problem. The government has birth records, passports, ssn, phone records, etc. so they could provide an age bracket to anybody that needs it. But instead a private corporation will get to do this and create an absolute mess à la Palantir.

edoloughlin 7mo ago
An absolute mess for you. A tidy profit for them.
_heimdall 7mo ago
That requires a high level of trust in your current government and whomever is in charge in the future. Its worth remembering how the Nazis so efficiently found Jews in the Netherlands. The Dutch government kept meticulous records, including things like your name, address, and religious affiliation. That wasn't a big deal until the Nazis rolled in, throw in some level of Nazi sympathizers in the Dutch government and it wasn't hard for them to track down anyone they wanted to find.
- megous 7mo ago
  That's an argument against any mass collection/concentration of data in anyone's hands. Not against gov. collection of data in particular.
  - _heimdall 7mo ago
    Sure, there's a good reason to avoid centralizing data in general but in this case we're talking about governments. Governments are particularly dangerous for mass data collection because they also come with the authority, and military, of a state.
    - mafuy 7mo ago
      And with the money (or else: the authority) to get the data from private businesses. So they get the full data without any restrictions that they themselves would face.

sneak 7mo ago

Age verification is a non-problem. These solutions don’t solve anything.

pessimizer 7mo ago

This is just the moderation fallacy, pronounced with the same kind of unearned confidence in which the moderation fallacy is usually pronounced. To put it in Godwin's terms: you're the one saying that the people denying the Jewish Question are the people enabling the Nazis. If we would just agree to the moderate compromise (fill in the blank), then the Nazis wouldn't have an excuse. Most importantly, it's also an attack on a strawman. Nobody is arguing agains zero-proof age verification. It's probably possible, but in reality is absolute nonsense. There is no material proposal anywhere for a zero-proof age verification system that prevents individuals from being tracked. There is mathematical speculation, and proposals that vaguely and dishonestly simulate what people are pretending exists somewhere. All of them involve individuals giving up their privacy, and insidiously substitute protecting your identity from the providers of "adult" information where protecting your identity from the government and the providers of verification services are actually the important parts. I do not give half of a shit whether some porn site knows who I am; the only reason I care at all is because they may share this information with governments and private entities that will use it to track me, manipulate me, or blackmail me. The reason for this? Governments would lose all interest in age verification if it were possible to do it without invading my privacy. If it is possible in the abstract (which it may well be, mathematically), governments would prioritize sabotaging any company or proposal that could make it happen. The fake proposals of zero-proofs are offering me something I don't care about in order to trick me into giving up something I value, and calling me unreasonable for not falling for it. No, I'm just not a fool. The real solution: a legal requirement for "adult" information services to only reply to requests that declare they're from someone over the legal age to consume that information. People who give their children computers could root them to make sure that that header is stripped, you could install browser extensions to make sure that header is stripped, you could make sure that header was stripped at the router, you could make sure that everyone could make a phone call to their ISP to tell them never to allow a packet across that carried that header unless it also included a key or a password that the adults of the household could add onto their own requests. The above methods don't take any technical sophistication at all, and would solve the problem better than computers that attested age, the computers that 14-year olds would be operating for their often computer-illiterate parents anyway. Why aren't they used? Because this is a totalitarian game, not a serious proposal to solve a serious problem, and it is just meant to fool morons long enough to screw us all in a permanent way.

vouwfietsman 7mo ago

I can't speak for proof of identity in the US, but please understand that digital privacy is a slippery slope we're already sliding down, it is not unreasonable to be critical of any privacy violating initiative, because privacy is never given back, only taken away.

ibejoeb 7mo ago

When I hear this argument ("better the government do it than a private company") I recoil. The government is sovereign, only accepts lawsuits at its discretion, and can use violence to get its way. We also know for a fact that it abuses its powers and conducts surreptitious unlawful campaigns against its citizens. I'm not on board with any of it, but the last thing I want is the government to control it.

vrganj 7mo ago
The government is also, at least theoretically, democratic and accountable to the population. Meta on the other hand is a dictatorship run by Zuck that's only marginally accountable to stockholders (which are only a small subset of the population).
- nostrademons 7mo ago
  They're still accountable to customers/users. If you don't like their products, don't use them. I don't. The unfortunate thing about this lobbying effort is that it's making the government accountable to Meta, which is the worst of all worlds.
  - jedberg 7mo ago
    You know meta keeps a shadow profile on every person who is know to every one of their customers, right? So even if you don't use it, they almost certainly have you in their system. At least when the government is working, there are controls around what they can collect, what they can do with it, and who they share it with. And what they cannot do with it.
    - nostrademons 7mo ago
      There aren’t really. The NSA keeps a shadier profile on you too, and the information Meta has is a subset of that. Snowden disclosures showed that.
- ibejoeb 7mo ago

0xbadcafebee 7mo ago

https://www.aclu.org/documents/5-problems-national-id-cards https://www.aclu.org/documents/5-problems-national-id-cards

ori_b 7mo ago

'Nobody is allowed to do it' remains a valid option.

gzread 7mo ago
How would a porn site operate on the internet?
- ibejoeb 7mo ago
  A simple question with a simple answer: as it has done since the inception. If a kid wants to sneak some porn, he's going to have to hide his digital nudeymag under his digital mattress, and when it's discovered, he'll have to accept his fate as decided by his parents.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    What about online alcohol sales?
    - ibejoeb 7mo ago
      Same. Proof of eligibility is furnished on delivery, just like it is now.
    - ori_b 7mo ago
      They can show their ID to the delivery person, or the kids will have to learn how to drink it over the internet.

Xelbair 7mo ago

Because this does not address the problem at all. Or rather - it does not address my problems as a citizen, and it just pushes responsibility of parents onto 3rd parties and punishes everyone collectively for it. Also fundamentally speaking - this does just take away your right to privacy. do you just let your rights be taken away? I don't want 'minimization' of intrusion of privacy, i want no intrusion of privacy.

NegativeLatency 7mo ago
It’s the classic American route of attempting a technical solution to a societal problem.
- TeMPOraL 7mo ago
  Technology is what solutions are made of. The "nontechnical solutions to societal problems" are the things like "wishful thinking", "pretending the problem doesn't exist", "wishing it away", etc. (Which is fine when the problem is bullshit and there is nothing to solve, which actually may be the case here.)
  - Xelbair 7mo ago
    ever heard of things like laws? like culture? like changing procedures instead of means? unless you want to argue semantics and go 'actually they're all part of technology', but that makes your argument even less meaningful.
    - TeMPOraL 7mo ago
      Right, I would argue they are part of technology, because bureaucracy clearly is, laws move in scope of what's possible and economically feasible, and culture is entirely downstream of that. Or, put another way, you cannot "just change culture", not any more than you can make a river flow uphill by pushing water with your hands. You can splash some water around and make a little puddle, but it'll quickly flow back to rejoin the river and continue on its way. Culture is always seeking a dynamic equilibrium, in a landscape defined by economics and technology constraints. The only way to achieve lasting change is to change the landscape.

boyoboy 7mo ago

[dead]

marssaxman 7mo ago

> So instead of a solution like e.g. zero-proof age verification A solution to what, though? I oppose any solution because I disagree with your premise: this is not a real problem. We do not need to do anything about it, and any cost would be too high.

deltoidmaximus 7mo ago

Why exactly are you extending them the benefit of the doubt when they've proven they don't deserve it over and over again? Even if zero-proof age verification emerged as a strong political alternative I'd fully expect the final bill to have a carve out of the zero proof exemption for the government in it, a backdoor in encryption scheme essentially. Here you tell me that isn't zero proof, which is true but wouldn't change the name on the bill one iota.

AtlasBarfed 7mo ago

If a corporation has your information, multiple governments do as well, either legally or otherwise