5 ms·

The big issue isn’t even age verification. The end goal is verified user identification. They want every transaction on the internet to be associated with the e

by yalogin 7mo ago

The big issue isn’t even age verification. The end goal is verified user identification. They want every transaction on the internet to be associated with the exact identity of the user. No more anonymity. In the short term the way it will be implemented is this — age verification will not be a binary, it will also want to push your DoB, name, location etc and they say “the choice is with the user” but the default will be to send everything. Very soon there will be services that require DoB or name or something else to gate new or existing functionality. That is the slippery slope it will be built as and that is how they win the game

owisd 7mo ago
If the end goal was user identification then the digital ID + zero knowledge proof age verification methods would be disallowed, which they aren't. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/google-pay/google-wallet-age-identity-verifications/ https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/google-...
- mindslight 7mo ago
  You got suckered by the marketing. Google's "zero knowledge" approach requires devices locked down with remote attestation, which prohibits end users from running their own code (when interacting with websites that prevent it, which as time goes on under this plan will be everywhere). The only actual difference here is that this is Google's desired approach to destroying anonymity and personal computing.
  - remcob 7mo ago
    Why is that required? The whole point of zero knowledge proofs is that it can run on untrusted devices.
    - gbear605 7mo ago
      You’d have to ask Google
    - Aurornis 7mo ago
      Because true “zero knowledge” proofs are actually useless for age gating purposes. Conceptually, if a proof was truly zero knowledge and there were no restrictions on generating it, there would also be nothing stopping someone from launching a website where you clicked a button and were given a free token generated from their ID. If it was truly a zero knowledge proof it would be impossible to revoke the ID that generated it, so there is no disincentive to freely share IDs. So every real world “zero knowledge” proof eventually restricts something. Some require you to request your tokens from a government entity. Others try to do hardware attention chains so theoretically you can’t generate them outside of the approved means. But the hacker fantasy of truly zero knowledge proofs is impossible because 1 hour after launch there would be a dozen “Show HN” posts with vibe coded websites that dispense zero knowledge tokens.
      - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
        It's also unclear what they'd even be useful for to begin with. You need some kind of proof system if you need a central authority to certify something, but why is that required? The parents know the age of their kids. They don't need the government to certify that to them. And then the parents can get the kids a device that allows them to set age restrictions. Whether those restrictions are imposed by the device on content it displays (which is the correct way to do it) or by the device telling the service the approximate age of the user (which needlessly leaks information), you don't actually need a central authority to certify anything to begin with because either way it's just a configuration setting in the child's device.
      - moveaxebx 7mo ago
        > But the hacker fantasy of truly zero knowledge proofs is impossible because 1 hour after launch there would be a dozen “Show HN” posts with vibe coded websites that dispense zero knowledge tokens. If I recall correctly, there exist variant cryptographic protocols that let you impersonate a user who provides such a service: that is, the token confers, or can be used to construct something that confers greater privileges in other contexts.
        mindslight 7mo ago
simonask 7mo ago
I truly share your concerns, especially as someone belonging to a minority. At the same time, we have to be real: Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. I don't think it's reasonable to keep dreaming of the 90s or 00s when the internet was a comparatively innocent place. As society is more and more digitized, the stakes become much, much higher. An information leak 30 years ago was bad, but it had a fairly limited impact radius. Today it can lose you your house, your savings, your relationships, and even your life ("swatting" comes to mind). This extremely ill-advised legislation across various jurisdictions cannot just be brushed off as a global turn towards fascism. It is that, but there are also real, legitimate concerns that need to be addressed, and the tech world has not leveraged its expertise to come up with any solutions so far. Sticking our head in the sand crying "git gud" while millions get scammed out of their life savings... It's not great. (Children getting into trouble is honestly the least of my concerns here. Don't let your child go online unsupervised. The internet is not for them. You wouldn't let them roam free in a red light district or an underground illegal weapon's market either, even though they are unlikely to come to any harm.)
- scotty79 7mo ago
  > Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. Online anonymity has significant, real-world benefits which every doxxed person ever will list for you.
  - gzread 7mo ago
    And drawbacks, too. Imagine if you could only dox someone else by doxxing yourself at the same time.
    - drdeca 7mo ago
      I don’t think that is really a sufficient defense? The amount of focus pointed at the person matters for this.
- mindslight 7mo ago
  > Sticking our head in the sand crying "git gud" while millions get scammed out of their life savings... The solution is called a durable power of attorney and then moving significant assets to different financial institutions with e-statements. Or the heavyweight option is a living trust. Mandatory identity verification or locking down software really have no bearing on this problem. Scammers leverage generic apps in the app stores just fine. This problem most certainly is a part of the global turn towards fascism, which is ultimately based on frustrated people demanding easy answers and then empowering those who are able to give them easy answers by lying to them.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
totetsu 7mo ago
It’s not very soon, it’s already the case that if one wants to enable the latest models in the OpenAI api you have to submit your details to their “identity provider”.
- abracadaniel 7mo ago
  Which is why it’s important to be able to run models locally. Which also might explain the strategy behind buying all of the memory that is or will exist for at least a year out. Maybe we’ll eventually see AI safety be used to prevent people from running local models.
  - sandworm101 7mo ago
    +1 for local models. It also teaches users about how much energy they are using. One's perspective on 24/7 chatbots and agentic operating systems changes when you feel the heat coming from a rack of gpus. (Spring is nearly here and my excuse about my rig also heating my house is about to end. Soon I will be paying extra to run my a/c as my rig pumps out a steady 1000w under load.)
    - 1e1a 7mo ago
      You could use it to heat a tropical greenhouse.
  - PeterStuer 7mo ago
    You mean having to sign into your Microsoft account to get your bootloader co-signed before your legally mandated TPU 3.1 allows you to install a govenment blessed and sufficiently telemetrized signed OS to "your" computer if you are on the whitelist of not-yet-misinformation-spreaders?
    - fennecbutt 7mo ago
      Well I suppose in that case it depends on how freedom loving TSMC (Taiwan) or ASML (Netherlands) want to be. No chips for you, random government. No chips for you either, or you. And you.
Buttons840 7mo ago
Somehow they will eliminate anonymity for real people, but bots will still be pushing Russian or... some other country's interests with massive bot farms.
SarahC_ 7mo ago
IMAGINE A WAR. Now - wouldn't a government LOVE to know who's saying what? Rather than shutting down the entire $$$$$ international corporate internet. Money concerns as usual.
rdevilla 7mo ago
I hope someone takes those Meta glasses or an Oculus or Apple Vision or something and hooks it up to clearview or some other facial recognition service and agentically scrapes OSINT sources to doxx people on the street, in real time. One glance and I have your full name, home address, SSN, all online handles and aliases, employment history, email, and phone number, instantaneously on a HUD. It doesn't even need to be marketed as "doxxing as a service;" it can just be marketed as "professional networking" or "social media." That way people will voluntarily submit their information and all rights over it to the platform. Until people feel their privacy being viscerally raped on a minute to minute basis nothing will change.
- sandworm101 7mo ago
  My black-mirror prediction for how augmented reality and AI will interact: In order of horribleness. 1> Auto-nude. Today we can "nudify" photos and videos. Soon, augemented reality glasses will be able to nudify eveyone in real time. (This is totally possible today.) 2> Auto-tranlation. Cool. Everyone can talk to everyone, but users will have censorship options. I don't much like hearing australians so I will just have the glasses make them all sound like proper Texans. And the sound of people with alternative views to my own are replaced with calming country music. 3> Lie detection. Glasses will look for facial/voice body ticks suggestive of deception. Good luck talking your way out of a ticket, or explaining to you boss how you were "sick", when they have a lie detector online 24/7. 4> Censorship of "bad" objects. Signs with ads or news that I do not agree with will be blocked and replaced with more appropriate text. Mosques will appear as churches. Garbage and pollution will become happy birds and clear blue skies. Homeless people will be replaced with attractive young people (see #1 above). 5> Race replacement. I don't like certain races. So my glasses now make everyone Chinese. So long as I don't turn off the glasses, I can live my custom racist utopia.
  - rdevilla 7mo ago
    This is great. I finally feel for the first time in my life that science has in fact gone too far. At this point living in the so-called "third world" to avoid digital-rape-as-a-service and the ever increasing pace of technology sounds eminently reasonable.
BlackFly 7mo ago
An account level flag in a user account on an operating system is the opposite of verified identification. It is self assertion by the owner of the computer: the parent. If such a control works in the same way as enterprise supervision the child won't be able to install a vpn, or other software to bypass the control.
laughing_man 7mo ago
Yeah, none of this is about children. "Think of the children" is just a means to an end, and most likely what we'll find is even when we lose all pretense of anonymity somehow the kids will figure out a way to get access.
- hypeatei 7mo ago
  > somehow the kids will figure out a way to get access. This is what they want to happen with the initial round of "it's just a DOB field bro" legislation. It'll be completely useless, easy to bypass, and annoying to adults. But, everyone will be warming up to this government mandated prompt in their OS. Perfect, now legislators know they have a foundation to work with to introduce "reasonable" amendments to this prompt that require you to upload ID, for example. Frogs in a pot.
mondomondo 7mo ago
[dead]
tim333 7mo ago
It's easy to say that but I don't see evidence. Who is this 'they' who wants my ID for every transaction? Where is the proposal? I've used the internet for 30 years, built websites etc. I've never been asked ID for general transactions. On the other hand we've had restrictions on porn for kids since before I was born. I'm skeptical much is new.
- code_duck 7mo ago
  Same as ever, advertisers and the government. Plus, it would mean platforms could ban troublesome people or those they deem undesirable more effectively.
Ajedi32 7mo ago
Personally I think this is untrue, and that acting like it's true is a defeatist attitude that sabotages any efforts to build alternative systems that accomplish the goal of age verification without user verification. Right now my personal preference would be a standard for web services certifying content as "kid friendly" combined with a standard for "kid friendly" devices that block uncertified content by default. This would accomplish the alleged goal of blocking children from accessing adult content without infringing on the rights of adults.
- Gormo 7mo ago
  > Personally I think this is untrue, and that acting like it's true is a defeatist attitude that sabotages any efforts to build alternative systems that accomplish the goal of age verification without user verification. It may well be true, and worrying about the possibility that it is is what should motivate people to build alternatives/workarounds.
  - Ajedi32 7mo ago
    I guess my point is that if any substantial portion of the people in favor of age verification are actually acting in good faith, then responding to their efforts to protect children with "NEVER! I WILL OPPOSE YOU TO MY LAST BREATH!" isn't really helping your cause. Find a way to accomplish the stated goal in a way that doesn't erode our rights, and you'll win a lot more people over.
    - Gormo 7mo ago
      Well, you do have to draw the line somewhere when up against opponents pursuing a salami-slicing strategy. If you keep compromising on incremental measures, you ultimately do lose everything.
      - Ajedi32 7mo ago
        True, but I don't think you need to compromise to do age verification; there are plenty of ways to achieve the stated goal without any privacy impact, like the one I just suggested. Once people start arguing those measures aren't good enough and that you need to start sacrificing some of your rights in order to keep kids safe, then your position will look a lot more reasonable to moderates when you push back.

by yalogin 7mo ago

owisd 7mo ago

If the end goal was user identification then the digital ID + zero knowledge proof age verification methods would be disallowed, which they aren't. https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/google-pay/google-wallet-age-identity-verifications/ https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/google-...

mindslight 7mo ago
You got suckered by the marketing. Google's "zero knowledge" approach requires devices locked down with remote attestation, which prohibits end users from running their own code (when interacting with websites that prevent it, which as time goes on under this plan will be everywhere). The only actual difference here is that this is Google's desired approach to destroying anonymity and personal computing.
- remcob 7mo ago
  Why is that required? The whole point of zero knowledge proofs is that it can run on untrusted devices.
  - gbear605 7mo ago
    You’d have to ask Google
  - Aurornis 7mo ago
    Because true “zero knowledge” proofs are actually useless for age gating purposes. Conceptually, if a proof was truly zero knowledge and there were no restrictions on generating it, there would also be nothing stopping someone from launching a website where you clicked a button and were given a free token generated from their ID. If it was truly a zero knowledge proof it would be impossible to revoke the ID that generated it, so there is no disincentive to freely share IDs. So every real world “zero knowledge” proof eventually restricts something. Some require you to request your tokens from a government entity. Others try to do hardware attention chains so theoretically you can’t generate them outside of the approved means. But the hacker fantasy of truly zero knowledge proofs is impossible because 1 hour after launch there would be a dozen “Show HN” posts with vibe coded websites that dispense zero knowledge tokens.
    - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
      It's also unclear what they'd even be useful for to begin with. You need some kind of proof system if you need a central authority to certify something, but why is that required? The parents know the age of their kids. They don't need the government to certify that to them. And then the parents can get the kids a device that allows them to set age restrictions. Whether those restrictions are imposed by the device on content it displays (which is the correct way to do it) or by the device telling the service the approximate age of the user (which needlessly leaks information), you don't actually need a central authority to certify anything to begin with because either way it's just a configuration setting in the child's device.
    - moveaxebx 7mo ago
      > But the hacker fantasy of truly zero knowledge proofs is impossible because 1 hour after launch there would be a dozen “Show HN” posts with vibe coded websites that dispense zero knowledge tokens. If I recall correctly, there exist variant cryptographic protocols that let you impersonate a user who provides such a service: that is, the token confers, or can be used to construct something that confers greater privileges in other contexts.
      - mindslight 7mo ago

simonask 7mo ago

I truly share your concerns, especially as someone belonging to a minority. At the same time, we have to be real: Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. I don't think it's reasonable to keep dreaming of the 90s or 00s when the internet was a comparatively innocent place. As society is more and more digitized, the stakes become much, much higher. An information leak 30 years ago was bad, but it had a fairly limited impact radius. Today it can lose you your house, your savings, your relationships, and even your life ("swatting" comes to mind). This extremely ill-advised legislation across various jurisdictions cannot just be brushed off as a global turn towards fascism. It is that, but there are also real, legitimate concerns that need to be addressed, and the tech world has not leveraged its expertise to come up with any solutions so far. Sticking our head in the sand crying "git gud" while millions get scammed out of their life savings... It's not great. (Children getting into trouble is honestly the least of my concerns here. Don't let your child go online unsupervised. The internet is not for them. You wouldn't let them roam free in a red light district or an underground illegal weapon's market either, even though they are unlikely to come to any harm.)

scotty79 7mo ago
> Online anonymity has significant, real-world drawbacks. Online anonymity has significant, real-world benefits which every doxxed person ever will list for you.
- gzread 7mo ago
  And drawbacks, too. Imagine if you could only dox someone else by doxxing yourself at the same time.
  - drdeca 7mo ago
    I don’t think that is really a sufficient defense? The amount of focus pointed at the person matters for this.
mindslight 7mo ago
> Sticking our head in the sand crying "git gud" while millions get scammed out of their life savings... The solution is called a durable power of attorney and then moving significant assets to different financial institutions with e-statements. Or the heavyweight option is a living trust. Mandatory identity verification or locking down software really have no bearing on this problem. Scammers leverage generic apps in the app stores just fine. This problem most certainly is a part of the global turn towards fascism, which is ultimately based on frustrated people demanding easy answers and then empowering those who are able to give them easy answers by lying to them.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

totetsu 7mo ago

It’s not very soon, it’s already the case that if one wants to enable the latest models in the OpenAI api you have to submit your details to their “identity provider”.

abracadaniel 7mo ago
Which is why it’s important to be able to run models locally. Which also might explain the strategy behind buying all of the memory that is or will exist for at least a year out. Maybe we’ll eventually see AI safety be used to prevent people from running local models.
- sandworm101 7mo ago
  +1 for local models. It also teaches users about how much energy they are using. One's perspective on 24/7 chatbots and agentic operating systems changes when you feel the heat coming from a rack of gpus. (Spring is nearly here and my excuse about my rig also heating my house is about to end. Soon I will be paying extra to run my a/c as my rig pumps out a steady 1000w under load.)
  - 1e1a 7mo ago
    You could use it to heat a tropical greenhouse.
- PeterStuer 7mo ago
  You mean having to sign into your Microsoft account to get your bootloader co-signed before your legally mandated TPU 3.1 allows you to install a govenment blessed and sufficiently telemetrized signed OS to "your" computer if you are on the whitelist of not-yet-misinformation-spreaders?
  - fennecbutt 7mo ago
    Well I suppose in that case it depends on how freedom loving TSMC (Taiwan) or ASML (Netherlands) want to be. No chips for you, random government. No chips for you either, or you. And you.

Buttons840 7mo ago

Somehow they will eliminate anonymity for real people, but bots will still be pushing Russian or... some other country's interests with massive bot farms.

SarahC_ 7mo ago

IMAGINE A WAR. Now - wouldn't a government LOVE to know who's saying what? Rather than shutting down the entire $$$$$ international corporate internet. Money concerns as usual.

rdevilla 7mo ago

I hope someone takes those Meta glasses or an Oculus or Apple Vision or something and hooks it up to clearview or some other facial recognition service and agentically scrapes OSINT sources to doxx people on the street, in real time. One glance and I have your full name, home address, SSN, all online handles and aliases, employment history, email, and phone number, instantaneously on a HUD. It doesn't even need to be marketed as "doxxing as a service;" it can just be marketed as "professional networking" or "social media." That way people will voluntarily submit their information and all rights over it to the platform. Until people feel their privacy being viscerally raped on a minute to minute basis nothing will change.

sandworm101 7mo ago
My black-mirror prediction for how augmented reality and AI will interact: In order of horribleness. 1> Auto-nude. Today we can "nudify" photos and videos. Soon, augemented reality glasses will be able to nudify eveyone in real time. (This is totally possible today.) 2> Auto-tranlation. Cool. Everyone can talk to everyone, but users will have censorship options. I don't much like hearing australians so I will just have the glasses make them all sound like proper Texans. And the sound of people with alternative views to my own are replaced with calming country music. 3> Lie detection. Glasses will look for facial/voice body ticks suggestive of deception. Good luck talking your way out of a ticket, or explaining to you boss how you were "sick", when they have a lie detector online 24/7. 4> Censorship of "bad" objects. Signs with ads or news that I do not agree with will be blocked and replaced with more appropriate text. Mosques will appear as churches. Garbage and pollution will become happy birds and clear blue skies. Homeless people will be replaced with attractive young people (see #1 above). 5> Race replacement. I don't like certain races. So my glasses now make everyone Chinese. So long as I don't turn off the glasses, I can live my custom racist utopia.
- rdevilla 7mo ago
  This is great. I finally feel for the first time in my life that science has in fact gone too far. At this point living in the so-called "third world" to avoid digital-rape-as-a-service and the ever increasing pace of technology sounds eminently reasonable.

BlackFly 7mo ago

An account level flag in a user account on an operating system is the opposite of verified identification. It is self assertion by the owner of the computer: the parent. If such a control works in the same way as enterprise supervision the child won't be able to install a vpn, or other software to bypass the control.

laughing_man 7mo ago

Yeah, none of this is about children. "Think of the children" is just a means to an end, and most likely what we'll find is even when we lose all pretense of anonymity somehow the kids will figure out a way to get access.

hypeatei 7mo ago
> somehow the kids will figure out a way to get access. This is what they want to happen with the initial round of "it's just a DOB field bro" legislation. It'll be completely useless, easy to bypass, and annoying to adults. But, everyone will be warming up to this government mandated prompt in their OS. Perfect, now legislators know they have a foundation to work with to introduce "reasonable" amendments to this prompt that require you to upload ID, for example. Frogs in a pot.

mondomondo 7mo ago

[dead]

tim333 7mo ago

It's easy to say that but I don't see evidence. Who is this 'they' who wants my ID for every transaction? Where is the proposal? I've used the internet for 30 years, built websites etc. I've never been asked ID for general transactions. On the other hand we've had restrictions on porn for kids since before I was born. I'm skeptical much is new.

code_duck 7mo ago
Same as ever, advertisers and the government. Plus, it would mean platforms could ban troublesome people or those they deem undesirable more effectively.

Ajedi32 7mo ago

Personally I think this is untrue, and that acting like it's true is a defeatist attitude that sabotages any efforts to build alternative systems that accomplish the goal of age verification without user verification. Right now my personal preference would be a standard for web services certifying content as "kid friendly" combined with a standard for "kid friendly" devices that block uncertified content by default. This would accomplish the alleged goal of blocking children from accessing adult content without infringing on the rights of adults.

Gormo 7mo ago
> Personally I think this is untrue, and that acting like it's true is a defeatist attitude that sabotages any efforts to build alternative systems that accomplish the goal of age verification without user verification. It may well be true, and worrying about the possibility that it is is what should motivate people to build alternatives/workarounds.
- Ajedi32 7mo ago
  I guess my point is that if any substantial portion of the people in favor of age verification are actually acting in good faith, then responding to their efforts to protect children with "NEVER! I WILL OPPOSE YOU TO MY LAST BREATH!" isn't really helping your cause. Find a way to accomplish the stated goal in a way that doesn't erode our rights, and you'll win a lot more people over.
  - Gormo 7mo ago
    Well, you do have to draw the line somewhere when up against opponents pursuing a salami-slicing strategy. If you keep compromising on incremental measures, you ultimately do lose everything.
    - Ajedi32 7mo ago
      True, but I don't think you need to compromise to do age verification; there are plenty of ways to achieve the stated goal without any privacy impact, like the one I just suggested. Once people start arguing those measures aren't good enough and that you need to start sacrificing some of your rights in order to keep kids safe, then your position will look a lot more reasonable to moderates when you push back.