15 ms·

Online age verification is the hill to die on

• eykanal 6mo ago
  Alternative take: The fact that twitter / facebook / whatever allow arbitrary, unverified posting enables large-scale misinformation that led to, among other things, Russia's manipulation the US electorate and ultimate impacting the presidential election. This one-sided view has some good points, but for goodness sake, don't pretend that the alternative has no downsides.
  • Larrikin 6mo ago
    Playing devil's advocate outside of debate club only serves to promote the devil's point of view. State your well reasoned opinion where you have considered the facts. Or just say you are in support of this openly.
    • bit-anarchist 6mo ago
      Disagreed. I'm against invasive age verification methods, but to allow innacurate expectations to proliferate often becomes a bubble that pops, causing many to rebound to the other side, even if it's objectively worse. I much prefer to keep the tradeoffs clear, as it prevent betrayed expectations while still showcasing the unnacceptible downsides.
      • Larrikin 6mo ago
        I'm firmly against the idea of Internet arguments presenting an opposing position under the guise of it not being their actual opinion so they can run away from debate. Devil's advocate is a technique that should be used in school to learn how to make stronger arguments. All it does is covertly promote the idea by presenting it as reasonable and on an equal level to the other idea. While at the same time being able to shut down debate, by pretending they don't actually think that. Anybody can say something like "but what about the good side of the African slave trade" but they will be debated and the argument shut down if they present it as their actual argument and engage in good faith with the comments. Using the devil's advocate technique is an extremely useful way to argue in bad faith, anonymously on the Internet. Critique of the author's style is fine. An opposing view should honestly be presented as such.
  • CamperBob2 6mo ago
    You'll need to explain how age verification fixes that.
  • nradov 6mo ago
    Really? How many Electoral College votes did Russia's clumsy attempt at manipulation actually change? Please quantify that for us based on hard evidence.
    • Forgeties79 6mo ago
      That's not what they said.
• wxw 6mo ago
  How are folks recommended to get involved? Contact your local Congress member? I feel this thread has a lot of passion but is missing concrete, actionable steps.
  • chainingsolid 6mo ago
    I've contacted my congressmen and I would also advocate for telling/explaining this to non technical people you know. They either won't have heard of this or won't know whats bad about it.
    • Barbing 6mo ago
      Any tips for writing the letter, maybe even a starting point?
  • Barbing 6mo ago
    Heroes @ EFF have our guide (USA residents): https://www.eff.org/pages/help-us-fight-back#main-content https://www.eff.org/pages/help-us-fight-back#main-content
    • trueno 6mo ago
      man the EFF owns
    • ethagnawl 6mo ago
      Of course Chuck Schumer won't let me contact him using this helpful tool. Perhaps we NYers should organize a rally outside his office in Manhattan like we did for PIPA/SOPA?
      • Barbing 6mo ago
        Dumb- BUT immediate links to sites of the right legislators! Adam B. Schiff Sorry, this legislator cannot be contacted with our tool. To message them, visit their website instead. Alex Padilla Sorry, this legislator cannot be contacted with our tool. To message them, visit their website instead.
• anonym29 6mo ago
  It's worth pointing out that full digital identity verification ("doxxing" yourself to an untrustworthy, unauditable, legally unconstrained private company) is NOT the only way to verify adulthood. We have had a system in place which enables adulthood validation without enabling digital surveillance infrastructure, with a degree of false negative risk that society has deemed acceptable for nearly 100 years now. This idea is not my own, but I'm happy to share a reasonable proposal for it. The Cashier Standard – Age Verification Without Surveillance https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809795 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7fe74381-a683-4f49-9c2b-171cba4b3e59 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7fe74381-a683-4f49-9c2b-1...
  • jaykru 6mo ago
    The "cashier standard" you advocate for has already crept toward centralized state tracking in places like Utah. When you go to a restaurant and order a drink, the staff are required to take it to the back and scan it for verification. The scanned data is also compared with a state database of DUI offenders. It's not clear whether the database is stored on site, or if that data goes out on the wire for the check; presumably the latter. Scanned data is also stored for up to 7 days by the restaurant, and it's easy to imagine further creep upping that storage bound.
    • anonym29 6mo ago
      This is not the case in most of the country. Utah is largely influenced by a Mormon / LDS culture that expresses heavy opposition to drinking. I am clearly not proposing that the cards be scanned Utah style, I am proposing that they be glanced at by a cashier, everywhere else style.
      • rationalist 6mo ago
        More and more places I go in other states besides Utah, try to scan IDs when purchasing alcohol.
        • 6mo ago
• dirtikiti 6mo ago
  And the piece nobody is even considering... Responsible parents don't have separate OS accounts for their children.
• cvoss 6mo ago
  > If you love your family, you must stop online age verification. > If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification. > Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives. Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual points, but because of how unreasonable he sounds when articulating them. A great lesson in how not to do rhetoric.
  • bondarchuk 6mo ago
    >They are counting on you caring more about sounding reasonable than protecting your kids from a system designed to control them forever.
  • emptybits 6mo ago
    When I read those seemingly outrageous claims, I didn't immediately dismiss the author. I allowed him to substantiate the claims and kept reading. I found myself agreeing with his argument and his train of thought of how, once digital IDs are accepted as a norm, they won't be unwound, and all online activity will likely require them and then, as he says, "Your children will never know what it was like to think freely online. They will never explore ideas anonymously. They will never question authority without it being logged in their permanent profile. They will never speak freely without fear that every word will be used against them. They will grow up in a digital cage. And you will have to tell them you saw it being built and did not stop it when you had the chance." So I'm with the author on this one. Under the cover of child safety, digital IDs will cage us (or at least children entering the verification age), and it will probably never be rolled back.
    • paisawalla 6mo ago
      That's the role of rhetoric as a skill: all the true and sufficient syllogisms in the world will be ignored by most readers, if the argument leads with priors-triggering hyperbole and bombast.
    • Ifkaluva 6mo ago
• Bender 6mo ago
  The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are already doing. RTA headers are not perfect, nothing is nor ever will be but there is absolutely no tracking or leaking data involved. Governments could easily hire contractors to scan sites for the lack of that header and fine sites not participating into oblivion. I a small server operator and a client of the internet will not participate in any other methods period, full-stop. Make simple logical and rational laws around RTA headers and I will participate. Many sites already voluntarily add this header. It is trivial to implement. Many questions and a lengthy discussion occurred here [1]. I doubt my little private and semi-private sites would be noticed but one day it may come to that at which point it's back into semi-private Tinc open source VPN meshes for my friends and I. [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074
  • big85 6mo ago
    Back in the late 90s or so, there was a proposal to have sites voluntarily set an age header, so parents/employers/etc could use to block the site if they wish. People said it would never work, because adult sites had a financial incentive not to opt in to reduce their own traffic.
    • Bender 6mo ago
      What I am suggesting could address most of that. If they do not participate they get fined. The government loves to fine companies. This assumes they put enough "teeth" into a law that prevents companies from accepting fines as the cost of doing business. This would also require legislation that could block sites that operate from countries that do not cooperate with US laws. Mandatory subscriptions to BGP AS path filters, CDN block-lists which already exist, etc... People could still bypass such restrictions with a VPN but that would not apply to most small children. Sanctions and embargoes are always an option.
• cft 6mo ago
  There is a sudden concerted international push for online age verification, and we do not know where this push originates from. That is the scariest thing about it.
  • jrajav 6mo ago
    It's not _completely_ shrouded in mystery - it started after Facebook got slapped by the EU for irresponsible handling of underage users, and since began a heavily funded lobbying push to drag competitors down with them. https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings/tree/main https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings... Of course, it's probably also been coopted by the neverending stream of nanny-state political power grabs in both the US and EU.
    • cft 6mo ago
      I asked META itself: The push for online age verification started gaining momentum globally, with several countries implementing regulations. Here's a brief timeline: - 2022: The European Union introduced the Digital Services Act (DSA), establishing a framework for digital services accountability and content moderation. - 2023: - *France*: Passed a law requiring age verification for social media and porn websites. - *UK*: Enacted the Online Safety Act, requiring "highly effective" age assurance for platforms accessible to children. - 2024: - *Australia*: Announced plans to ban social media for under-16s. - *Italy*: Implemented mandatory age verification for sensitive content websites. - 2025: - *Denmark*: Proposed banning social media for under-15s. - *Malaysia*: Required social media platforms to ban users under 16. - 2026: - *EU*: Rolling out digital age verification across member states. - *Norway*: Proposed banning social media for under-15s. - *Spain*: Announced plans to ban social media access for under-16s.
  • conradfr 6mo ago
    It's true for a lot of things in Western countries. Evident when the fight against "hate" was suddenly everywhere, and also during covid.
  • ilovecake1984 6mo ago
• selectively 6mo ago
  An attestation-like system to detect humanity at time of post is absolutely for useful online spaces in the era of AI slop. The writing style of the author is very annoying.
  • goda90 6mo ago
    It could be done with anonymous credentials though. No tracing to who the human is.
    • selectively 6mo ago
      Anonymous in terms of it not being possible to derive the real world identity of the human from the value, sure. Anonymous in terms of providing no durable way to ban that human from the platform? No.
  • MiddleEndian 6mo ago
    And people should be free to pick and choose whether they want to use sites that do that or not. Whatever hacker news does seems to be fine for me, and I did not need to verify my ID in any way (even though it's very easy to figure out who I am from this profile)
  • HWR_14 6mo ago
    Until people hit "attest" and then copy the text from ChatGPT.
    • selectively 6mo ago
      Those people would be subjected to permanent, identity-bound bans.
      • tardedmeme 6mo ago
        Being unpersoned for using copy/paste one time is certainly one of the political proposals of all time
• semiquaver 6mo ago
  Why is it always “think of the children” used to abrogate the rights of adults?
  • scythmic_waves 6mo ago
    I think it's because, without further context, it's so hard to argue against. Pretty much every person in every culture cares deeply about their children. So if you can successfully hitch your position to that idea, it too becomes hard to argue against. It's the same with tough on crime. "What, you want criminals to keep getting away with it?!"
    • rafaelero 6mo ago
      > Pretty much every person in every culture cares deeply about their children. I would substitute "deeply" for "superficially". Like, if my parents found some way to prohibit porn when I was an adolescent, I wouldn't say they cared deeply about me. I would say they were misguided and authoritary. The "care deeply" idea you are putting forward is just trying to distil whatever societal norm currently is into the youngs.
  • LaGrange 6mo ago
    Because adults remain children. As in, their parent’s kids and therefore property. [edit: I should mention also property of the state beyond that] It’s less explicit in US I guess but in some places that’s very blunt - if you don’t support your parents enough you can be sued for abuse. And there are situations where an adult in us has been declared too irresponsible and forced into conversion camps by parents in the US. It’s insane, yes, and if you’re lucky enough this might be entirely invisible to you. But if you’re gray or trans or autistic and get a but unlucky this can become a very harsh reality. Protect the children refers to a type of property, not a type of human.
  • subscribed 6mo ago
    Because it's very easy for the creeps already thinking of your children to paint these rejecting this type of the laws as those who want to see children hurt. Regardless how stupid this argument is, rags will always pounce on it. This is just a dirty trick of the creeps to make the resistance harder.
• kelseyfrog 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • bee_rider 6mo ago
    Basically every article on this site has a comment complaining that the article is AI. Who knows. Maybe “complaining about AI” is the new AI way of fitting in.
    • acheron 6mo ago
      I just flag all the AI complaints. Perfect example of the guideline about “don’t complain about tangential issues” or whatever the wording is.
      • mplanchard 6mo ago
        This feels different to me than complaining about the font or whatever. I don’t want to read or comment on anything not written by a human. I also agree with GP here that using AI instead of your own words has bearing on the content itself, insofar as it’s a signal that the author doesn’t care enough to write it themself. As a corollary, I also want to know if a project posted here is predominantly vibe-coded, since that to me is a signal that it may be of lower quality, have fewer edge cases worked out, and is more likely to be abandoned in the near future.
      • bakugo 6mo ago
        AI-generated content being passed off as human-written is not a tangential issue. HN staff agree, because posting AI generated comments is explicitly forbidden. I suspect the only reason this isn't extended to submissions is because pretty much all articles about AI are also written by AI, and effectively forbidding positive discussion of AI is obviously against the interests of a VC firm. HN's guidelines were written under the assumption that submitted articles about [thing] would be written by people who care about [thing] and made a good faith effort to write something interesting about [thing], so it's only fair that any comments would be expected to respect the author's effort and discuss the article in equally good faith. This assumption completely falls apart when you add AI generated submissions into the mix. If the "author" didn't care and thus couldn't be bothered to write about [thing] themselves, choosing to instead outsource that work to an LLM while they supposedly did something they deemed more valuable with the time they would've spent writing, then why should commenters be expected to dedicate more effort into their discussion of the article than the author dedicated to writing it? It's a bit unfair towards the commenters, don't you think?
• speak_plainly 6mo ago
  The argument being made seems plausible but it’s complete fear mongering. The surveillance mechanisms already exist and are in play and people can be identified in endless ways. States have broad power to do what is being feared in the thread and haven’t already and to think that they’re waiting for this final piece of the puzzle to enact some insane regime is laughable. They could do that right now without the internet at all. Social media is probably not healthy and kids should probably not be on social media. Age verification and age limits for social media will be a good thing for kids. Instead of fear mongering, finding a middle ground, like governments adding some rules and protections on how this information or system is used is probably a better response. I might be in the minority, but I think incorporating an identity layer into the internet itself should happen with the right protections for users and should have happened at the beginning of the net and is probably a result of lack of foresight by the creators of ARPANET.
  • selectively 6mo ago
    Social Media is not a thing at all. Social media is a website. Websites are not health or unhealthy. Food is healthy or unhealthy. Websites are light and potentially sound, not something with health effects.
    • crdrost 6mo ago
      This is simply false -- the literature is full of discussion about the health effects of social media. More generally you're committing I believe two separate fallacies of ambiguity? Like one in going from the institution of social media to its reification in the form of specific websites, and then a second fallacy when you go from the specific websites to all websites in general? Like if you said "Gun ownership is not a thing at all. Gun ownership is a piece of metal. Pieces of metal cannot be healthy or unhealthy." OK but, you owning a gun is known in the scientific literature to significantly correlated with a bunch of very adverse health effects for you, such as you dying by suicide or you dying from spousal violence or your protracted grief and wasting away because your child accidentally killed themselves. Like to say that it's impossible for the institution to have adverse health effects because we can situate the objects of that institution into a broader category which doesn't sound so harmful, is frankly messed up. [1]: Bernadette & Headley-Johnson, "The Impact of Social Media on Health Behaviors, a Systematic Review" (2025) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12608964/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12608964/ - the content you consume can promote healthy or unhealthy behaviors [2]: Lledo & Alvarez-Galvez, "Prevalence of Health Misinformation on Social Media: Systematic Review" (2021) https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/E17187/ https://www.jmir.org/2021/1/E17187/ is notable not just for its content but also like a thousand papers that cite it getting into all of the weeds of health influencers sharing misinformation to make a buck [3]: Sun & Chao, "Exploring the influence of excessive social media use on academic performance through media multitasking and attention problems" (2024) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-024-12811-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10639-024-12811-y was a study of a reasonably large cohort showing correlations between social media usage and particular forms of multitasking that inhibit academic performance -- more generally there's broad anecdata that the current "endless scrolling constant dopamine hits" model that social media gravitates to, produces kids that are "out of control" with aggressive and attentional difficulties -- see Kazmi et al. "Effects of Excessive Social Media Use on Neurotransmitter Levels and Mental Health" (2025) (PDF warning - https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sharique-Ahmad-2/publication/392758716_Effects_of_Excessive_Social_Media_Use_on_Neurotransmitter_Levels_and_Mental_Health_A_Neurobiological_Meta_Analysis/links/6851422111be4823fbdf017c/Effects-of-Excessive-Social-Media-Use-on-Neurotransmitter-Levels-and-Mental-Health-A-Neurobiological-Meta-Analysis.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sharique-Ahmad-2/public...) for more on the actual literature that has probed those questions [4]: The APA has a whole "Health advisory on social media use in adolesence" https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advi... which is pretty even-handed about "these parts of social media are acceptable, those parts can maybe even be downright good -- but here are the papers that say that for adolescents, it can mess with their sleep, it can expose them to cyberhate content that measurably promotes anxiety and depression, it has been measured to promote disordered eating if they use it for social comparison..."
• zzzeek 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • rationalist 6mo ago
    Please don't play identity politics, it's a fallacy and further perpetuates the problems that we are all facing.
    • zzzeek 6mo ago
      "prepper" is not an identity. I looked up this guy, he has crazy takes he's free to change at any time (so not an "identity" in any way) and id rather not read him.
      • rationalist 6mo ago
        "right wing" is considered politics that people identify others in. > free to change at any time (so not an "identity" in any way) I'm free to change my name at any time, is my name not considered a part of my identity?
        • zzzeek 6mo ago
          Right wing is not an identity either. Don't mess around with terms you don't understand. Do some research. > I'm free to change my name at any time, is my name not considered a part of my identity? You can change your name to conceal elements of your identity just like you could wear clothes that cover your skin color. So sure, you can hide elements of your identity but changing your name won't change your family history or ethnicity. Growing up in a Republican family might be an identity but producing lots of blogs, videos, and commercial products within the right wing prepper lifestyle is not an identity. Just do a little research thanks
          • rationalist 6mo ago
            > Do some research I have... (???) > Just do a little research thanks Just have an open mind thanks
• retired 6mo ago
  Age verification on Australian social media has loopholes. Underage influencers use an agency to manage their social media for them. So anyone with enough followers or money can continue using social media under the age of 16. If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well.
  • logicchains 6mo ago
    >If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well. That just makes it even worse, why deprive the younger generation of one of the few remaining methods they have to make a decent income? We should be encouraging youth entrepreneurship, not making them spend even longer in classrooms learning things that LLMs will do better than them.
    • retired 6mo ago
      People under the age of 16 shouldn't be worried about "making a decent income". They should focus on school. In the weekends they can stock shelves, deliver pizza, deliver newspapers, wash dishes, babysitting, feed animals or other typical jobs for children in the age range of 12 to 16.
      • hackinthebochs 6mo ago
        >They should focus on school. Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? The direction we give kids coming up always seems to lag behind reality by 10 or 20 years. Perhaps we shouldn't stand in the way of the new generation figuring things out for themselves in this brave new world. The old playbooks to a solid middle class life are increasingly outdated.
        • array_key_first 6mo ago
          > Why? Presumably so they can go to college and get a high paying job that may not exist in 10 years? Also so they don't end up stupid and useless like a potted plant. People with too little education are easy to manipulate and dim. They're perfect fodder for the propaganda machines. It would be nice if we could just let kids loose like wild animals and they'd, somehow, figure everything out. But no, we actually have to try. Otherwise they end up illiterate and eating so much candy they throw up. Because they're kids.
• goda90 6mo ago
  Age verification can be achieved without destroying anonymity and privacy online using anonymous credential systems, but it has to be designed that way from the ground up, and no one pushing age verification is interested in preserving privacy.
  • Forgeties79 6mo ago
    And they continue to act like opposition just wants a wild west/don't care about kids, which is the oldest trick in the book. We just don't want "protect the kids" leveraged to tear up our rights. It's addressing a real problem in a bad way.
    • jMyles 6mo ago
      I mean, it's more than that. I _want_ to protect kids' right to be part of the human connectome. The "protect the kids" (by disallowing them their freedom of thought on the internet) is just naked ageism.
      • Forgeties79 6mo ago
        Fair point
      • dpark 6mo ago
        So do you want 5 year olds driving on the highway and 8 year olds doing shots of tequila or are you ageist? Or perhaps protecting kids isn’t really ageism at all.
        • Forgeties79 6mo ago
          It depends on what you're depriving them of too. Those are very extreme examples with little to no upside.
          • dpark 6mo ago
            Disagree. We can discuss what restrictions are appropriate or reasonable without calling it ageism. Calling it ageism is an emotional appeal, not a principled stance.
• streetfighter64 6mo ago
  Seriously, who cares this much about the internet? I for one will be happy if my kids spend less time online than me. Similar to what a smoker would feel seeing cigarettes finally be banned, I suppose. It's also ironic that this guy is so adamant about protecting the children on xitter. It's like preaching against racism on 4chan.
  • rationalist 6mo ago
    > who cares this much about the internet? The Internet pretty much runs our lives now, so: I do. Lots of things require having Internet access, an email address, being able to visit a website, coordinate with others on a Facebook page for a local group, etc. No one requires me to buy a pack of cigarettes to register for classes, pay bills, submit something to the government, etc.
    • streetfighter64 6mo ago
      So you're worried that due to age checks you'll no longer be able to anonymously > register for classes, pay bills, submit something to the government is that right?
      • rationalist 6mo ago
        > is that right? No. You asked a specific question, and I answered a specific question (which I even quoted in my response).
        • vivekd 6mo ago
          but I think the parents counterpoint was that the important parts of the internet (paying bills, buying things, registering for classes) don't require or presuppose anonymity.
        • streetfighter64 6mo ago
          You took away the context of my question and thus gave an irrelevant answer. The subject at hand is age verification and anonymity on the internet. For effective communication, one usually tries to make their input to a conversation relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Maxims_in_practice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle#Maxims_i... Even then your answer isn't really an answer, because you're giving examples of things the internet is required for. Certain situations can require having a car, that doesn't mean you need to care about cars more than the minimum necessary to operate one.
• baxtr 6mo ago
  Ok, maybe that’s a silly thought, but… couldn’t this be provided by Apple/Google anonymously? When you set up kids devices in your family they ask you to provide the birthday anyway. I’m keen to see the arguments against this.
  • add-sub-mul-div 6mo ago
    Further empowering and depending on either of those companies as a middleman in our lives should make us nauseous.
• SirMaster 6mo ago
  "But age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs." Um, no? iOS is doing age verification just by your credit card. I never saw people all that upset about giving their credit card info to their phone wallet app or even to a bunch of websites.
  • Finnucane 6mo ago
    Are you going to give your cc number to every website in the world? Also, is that really an ID?
    • SirMaster 6mo ago
      It's not necessary to give it to every website. Verification to the website can be a true/false from the OS. In fact that's how it already works now. I would say it's not really an ID no, which is the point. The post is claiming that a digital ID is necessary for age verification, but clearly it isn't.
• inquirerGeneral 6mo ago
  [dead]
• KaiserPro 6mo ago
  If it was the hill to die on, then we should have done a better job of stopping pervasive fraud, abuse and harm to everyone so that we wouldn't have been a need to bring in age verification. The reason we are up shit creek is because large companies didn't want to spend 2-5% of profits on decent editorial controls to stop bad actors making money from bending societal red lines (ie pile ons, snuff videos, the spectrum of grift, culture of abusing the "other side") They also didn't want to stop the "viral" factor that allows their networks to grow so fucking fast. This isn't really about freedom of speech, its about large media companies not wanting to take responsibility for their own shit. meta desperately want kids to sign up. There are no penalties for them pushing shit on them. If an FCC registered corp had done half the shit facebook did, they'd have been kicked off air and restructured. So frankly its too fucking late. Meta, google and tiktok will still find ways to push low quality rage bate to all of us, and divide us all for advertising revenue.
• callamdelaney 6mo ago
  Agree
• Ritewut 6mo ago
  Just a reminder that the YC funds many of the companies pushing these laws and building the surveillance state.
• fithisux 6mo ago
  We now know all the arguments. No more need to persuade anyone. People will show what they are made of.
• ronsor 6mo ago
  There's an angle everyone misses. Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet. And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.
  • dylan604 6mo ago
    Not so sure about that. Handing an ID to a bouncer at a bar or similar is not logging anything. Mainly it's some big man that you can see gears turning to see if the date is correct and a cursory glance to see if the photo matches. Sophisticated places might have a scanner that does what ever validation it does, but again, it's just another cursory check of the photo. Most of these people really don't care. A tech company doing scans for validation could actually connect to a state database to verify the ID is legit and is not already being used for a different account. It would then be saved. I don't think real world vs tech world usage of fake IDs are the same at all.
    • chimeracoder 6mo ago
      > Not so sure about that. Handing an ID to a bouncer at a bar or similar is not logging anything. > Sophisticated places might have a scanner that does what ever validation it does, but again, it's just another cursory check of the photo. Many/most bars do scan IDs now. Ostensibly it's to verify that it's real, but they do use those systems to keep a log of everyone who enters.
      • basisword 6mo ago
        They also use them to flag people who've been previously banned and the systems work across venues. The idea that verification in the real world is cursory is not accurate.
        • dylan604 6mo ago
          The vast majority of places I frequent do not even have a person at the door checking IDs. If the bar tender/server thinks you look young, they ask for ID. I clearly do not look to be too young, so there's that. The last place I went to with an actual scanner was more of a nightclub that had a cover charge.
• stackedinserter 6mo ago
  Very unpopular opinion here on HN: one can't stop it without direct physical action against those who push it.
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • nonethewiser 6mo ago
    What do you mean by direct physical action? Do you have some examples?
    • stackedinserter 6mo ago
      I will be permabanned on HN for these examples.
      • tardedmeme 6mo ago
        Use a throwaway
        • stackedinserter 6mo ago
          To explain the obvious?
• giantg2 6mo ago
  So many pieces of law are flawed today, and the reason why should be concerning to all. I find it disgusting that most laws today are based on creating a perfect world instead of addressing harms in the least intrusive way. There is no balancing of interests, even when they state that there are. Every side complains about the others and potential future abuses, except when it is their plan. Nobody tries to design the law with a devil's advocate perspective to make as effective as reasonably possible (not perfect!) while limiting overreach. The real problem is the pursuit of perfection. A perfect world does not exist, nor will it ever (laws of nature, physics, etc). One person's view of perfect is not the same as another's. We've lost the capacity for legislative empathy through are impatience and self importance. It's no longer about restricting government and providing people with rights. It's about how we can use government to shove the desires of a majority or plurality onto the total population. There are ways to do age verification with reasonable anonymity, but they aren't perfect and can create underground markets (see gaming in China). At a certain point, we need to step back and put the responsibilities where they belong - with parents, instead of causing massive negative externalities on everyone else. Yeah, yeah, but the children...
• tim333 6mo ago
  >age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak... Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course). Really this is just the modern equivalent of putting the porn mags on the top shelf at the newsagent to stop the kids getting them. We don't need more.
  • cmiles74 6mo ago
    In the US, the plan is to require adults to take a picture of their state ID and upload it to a third party that provides age verification. It's not explicitly part of the proposed law but there are only a handful of companies who meet the qualifications to provide this service (id.me, Persona) and this is how they do it. I believe if you are a "minor" then you can go the post-a-selfy route.
    • motbus3 6mo ago
      Imagine so if that was a pltr right Or like someone who uses pltr What could possibly go wrong? People are being paranoid for no reason!
    • Buttons840 6mo ago
      If someone wanted to be a martyr and just uploaded all their personal documents so they could be accessed by everyone, I wonder if an interesting court case might follow. I could imagine it ending with a court ruling that people are responsible to protect their own personal documents which... yeah, that would muddy the waters in a world where every website expects to see your ID.
      • sneak 6mo ago
        The verification apps are starting to require live video selfies to verify that the person doing the verifying is the same face as the person on the scanned ID credential.
• yawniek 6mo ago
  ironically i think we need more social and stronger local social networks that have high identity validation and are "safe" spaces for the plebs. so that the perceived "threat level" from the free internet gets lower. basically hide the real internet a bit behind a small rock. its a slippery slope but it might be the better strategy unless some democratic societies achieve to put more modern "freedom guarantees" into their consitution.
• jrexilius 6mo ago
  I can't agree with this enough and yet I think the long term danger is masked by the current problems for the majority of voters. I'm not hopeful.
• stared 6mo ago
  Online age verification is an example of the Motte-and-bailey fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy, https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...). It is easy to defend on the motte hill (protection of children, protection against abuse and heinous crimes), and easy to expand and farm on the bailey (universal surveillance, mass data collection, and the erosion of privacy).
• Havoc 6mo ago
  I have a fair bit of fatalism on this one. Saw it with the UK laws. It just gets rammed through. Whether it’s ignorance, malice, hidden force, a desire for surveillance state, genuine concern for children - doesn’t matter, the forces in favour are substantially more and seemingly motivated to try over and over until it sticks. Much like brexit or for that matter trump reelection I just don’t have much faith in wisdom of the democratic collective consensus anymore and I don’t think it’ll get any better in an AI misinformation echo chamber world. Onwards into dystopia Exceeding gloomy take I know
  • baggachipz 6mo ago
    Contacting my representatives is about as effective as making a silent wish. Whenever I've done it, I'll either get no response, or a boilerplate reply which basically says "I'm doing this, go fuck yourself". Then I'll be added to their spam list. The truth is that my reps don't represent me and they're going to do what they want regardless. After all, I'm not the one backing the truck of money up to their front door.
    • Havoc 6mo ago
      Yeah I emailed a representative in the UK too. Took forever to get a response and likely achieved little, but to their credit the response wasn't entirely canned and did at least give the impression that they understood what I'm saying
• seydor 6mo ago
  Usually Fear is the realm of governments. Modern republics are basically legitimized around the fears of something terrible happening, it can be communism, narcotics, the ozone hole, corona virus, terrorists, immigration, globalization, unrecycled waste or greenhouse effect. Private entities being frontrunners in AI Fear either means that these companies have too much unchecked power or that they have are covert instruments of governments.
• ericmay 6mo ago
  Just requiring it for social media companies is probably enough of a win to not have to pursue any further. We require age verification for sports betting and things like that, I'm not sure why we wouldn't do the same or some variation of that for other massively addicting products that we know as a matter of scientific study have a very bad impact on some number of kids.
  • cmiles74 6mo ago
    Indeed, social media companies seem to big proponents of the US legislation. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances-effort-to-check-kids-ages-online-amid-safety-concerns-00563005 https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/13/california-advances...
    • walrus01 6mo ago
      Big social media companies are likely overjoyed to be able to get discrete, government issued info of a person's full legal name, date of birth, residential address (as is printed on US drivers licenses) for advertising and demographic profile targeting purposes. And then be able to correlate it with their existing social media history/clicks/profile, browser fingerprinting, IP address, daily usage patterns, geolocation. It's a massive gift to them.
      • ericmay 6mo ago
        I doubt they need that to identify you. There are also lots of other problems like algorithmic manipulation. But also just stop using these junky websites. Everyone always complains about Meta doing this, TikTok doing that, and it's like if all they do is make you mad, stop being their user/customers?
        • domador 6mo ago
          It's very hard to stop being their users/customers when they're the only platform where people are gathering for that particular purpose. The nature of walled gardens and network effects often mean that there isn't a viable alternative. It's bad when the choice one has is between 1) using a platform that's significantly problematic or 2) being disconnected from everyone you'd like to connect with because they're only using that platform.
• motbus3 6mo ago
  It is not like a digital control for id verification could be used anyway to control a narrative in war times right?
• kaboomshebang 6mo ago
  Kids will always find ways around regulation. Look at cigarettes, vapes, alcohol, weed; they will just get it from their dealers. Pornography? I expect something like: download a Torrent, get it from a classmate, share HardDrives in school, get it through an older brother.
  • IAmBroom 6mo ago
    And bootleggers will always bootleg, and smugglers will always smuggle. For that matter, murderers will find ways to murder. Shall we just abolish all laws? None of them have any effect whatsoever, if they are even slightly imperfect... by your rule.
    • cindyllm 6mo ago
      [dead]
    • nonethewiser 6mo ago
      Yeah his point suggests we should stop ID'ing at liquor stores, physical porn stores, etc.
      • kaboomshebang 6mo ago
        I'm not suggesting that actually. I look at my nephews and see them buy cigerettes, vapes, etc from small dealers instead of stores. Not saying we should just let them smoke, just expecting that they will be able to circumvent online age restrictions as well. My question is: are digital age verifications the best way to protect kids from harmfull effects of pornography? And my worry is: what unwanted side-effects will age verification have for our society as a whole.
  • ilovecake1984 6mo ago
    It’s just defence in depth and wholly appropriate for it to be imperfect
  • nonethewiser 6mo ago
• midtake 6mo ago
  I agree, doxxing yourself to some shady gray-market adjacent data broker is not acceptable as age verification, and age verification was safer using the honor system as before. But for some communities, especially social media communities, some kind of verification is better than none, otherwise what's to stop them from being overwhelmed with alt accounts that are used simply for harassment or other targeted objectives? People should not be able to misrepresent themselves on the internet, it may have been safe in low volumes but it is scary now and will be outright dangerous as a modality in the hands of AI agents. If you think teen mental health is bad now, wait until social media campaign capabilities previously only available to nation states fall into the hands of ordinary school bullies. Maybe age verification isn't the way to mitigate this obvious risk, but there has to be something that can be done to stop rampant sockpuppeting.
• ilovecake1984 6mo ago
  I’d wager most people want more censorship of the internet.
• aalaee 6mo ago
  For a forum that supposedly consists of hackers and tech-savvy people, this number of comments supporting age verification is concerning. The author has said a lot about what kind of future awaits with mass surveillance and AI, but I believe it’s not enough. Technofascism Is not that far away.
• shevy-java 6mo ago
  I agree. I don't call it "age verification" though - it is age sniffing. And it has nothing to do with children - that is the lie. What is fascinating is to see how governments ALL fall for it. There is zero resistance. This is fascinating to me. It shows how little real effort is necessary once you have the lobbyists in place. Kind of scary to witness too. It is an apartheid system. All apartheid slavery systems will eventually die, so age sniffing will die too. But it will most likely be a long fight as more and more money will be invested by crazy corporations such as Palantir and others. The whole "debate" is already not logical by the way. Let's for a moment assume the "but but but the kids!" is a real argument rather than a strawman argument, which it is. Ok so ... I am a "concerned parent", for the sake of discussion. I have three young kids. I am not a tech nerd. The kids see "unfitting content" on the antisocial media such as facebook and what not. So, what do I do? Well ... they have a smartphone? Aha, so ... I am not so concerned? Having no smartphone is no option? Ok so ... I say they can have a smartphone, but they may not use antisocial media. Ok. First - in any free society, is it acceptable that this kind of censorship is done on ALL kids? What if I, as a parent, do not agree with this? Well, tough luck - the laws force you into the age sniffing routine suddenly. But, even those parents who want the state to act as totalitarian: why would I want to hand over control to ANY politician for that matter? That makes no sense to me. I am aware that some parents may think differently, but do all parents think like that, even IF they buy into the "we protect the children" lie? I don't want ANY information from ANY of my computers to go into private hands here. So the whole argument already makes zero sense from the get go. Of course those who know how things work, they know that this is the build up towards identifying everyone on the world wide web at all times AND to make access to information conditional, e. g. if the state does not know you, you can not access information. Aka a passport system for the www. Built right into the operating system too. Windows already complied. MacOSX too. The battle for Linux will be interesting; it may be some hybrid situation, like systemd. And the systemd distributions will all succumb to age sniffing, courtesy of Poettering "this is really harmless if we store your age in the database, just trust me".
  • nonethewiser 6mo ago
    >And it has nothing to do with children - that is the lie. You're not qualified to say that because you aren't a proponent of age verification. That's just imputing motives. As a proponent of age verification and can tell you it's absolutely about protecting kid from damaging services like porn. It's a common sense control and that's why it has bi-partisan support in the US during a time where there is nearly 0 bi partisan support.
• cooper_ganglia 6mo ago
  THe government shouldn't be raising anyone's children, that's what parents are for. If you're a bad parent, your kids will get access to bad things and could become an adult failure. The future of your family and your legacy is up to you, not the government. We don't need age verification to restrict the social darwinism of raising children.
  • mghackerlady 6mo ago
    Also, different kids mature at different rates. I wouldn't give a shit about my kid watching, say, an R rated movie if I understand they'll be able to handle it and understand it's fiction. If I had a 14 or 15 year old and they had a healthy understanding of sex and the dangers of porn, I wouldn't give a shit if they managed to see some poorly drawn tits online. Why? Because if you didn't intentionally seek out lewd content as a teenager you're either very very religious or a liar
    • samplifier 6mo ago
      Duke Nukem 3D had bouncy pixels that made it "tickle down there". Also: monochrome women "eating bananas".
  • DontBreakAlex 6mo ago
    I wish I could upvote this comment harder. I started having unsupervised internet access (with the family computer in the living room) when I was 8. I'm a functional and successful adult because I trusted my parents. When my mother forbade me from registering on online forums I complied. When I read "fellation" in some minecraft chat (albeit somewhat later) I asked my mom what it was and understood that "sex" was something for the grown-ups and that I shouldn't worry about it. All because I would never even conceive that my parents wouldn't do what's best for me, and was unconditionally loved (even though I didn't know about this concept). I would rather have parenting licenses than online age verification
    • abustamam 6mo ago
      Yeah I'm not sure why the govt or any other 3rd party needs to get involved. If I don't want my kids to look at porno online I will educate them on porn. If I don't trust my kids to listen to me then I will install an open source monitoring software and educate them on trust. Letting the govt dictate what is age restricted is an easy way for the govt to control speech and narrative. For example, children's books that feature LGBT characters are being reclassified as adult [1], thus requiring additional verification. If I do/don't want my kids to read LGBT books, it's my decision. The govt should not dictate that. What else will the govt reclassify? Anything involving people of color? [1] https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data https://www.ala.org/bbooks/book-ban-data
• gslepak 6mo ago
  Good: some commenters here realize it's an attack on privacy Bad: some still entertain the idea that we should do age verification using some sort of crypto primitives There is no reason for age verification at all. I am from the goatse generation. Rotten.com. steakandcheese. Horrific stuff tbh, I mostly stayed away from it, and I didn't need a helicopter government to protect me from it. The moment you accept the narrative that kids need to be protected from the Internet you have already lost. You've already condemned those kids to a life of slavery. So much for protecting them. What we need is not online verification, but a competent government that does its existing job well. Who's been arrested over the Epstein files? Who is protecting those kids? No one. That same government wants to "protect" your kids by KYCing everyone. Give me a break.
  • mghackerlady 6mo ago
    Right? I especially don't understand where some of the "think of the children" attitude on porn sites, as they for the most part already ask for your age and if you didn't get some kind of amusement out of seeing tits as a teenager you're a liar
    • array_key_first 6mo ago
      It's a function of our society becoming more puritan and conservative in the past 10-15 years. This has been a slow burn. We are back to perceiving viewing boobies as an existential threat to people. Currently, sexuality is being demonized all around, and sexual morality is once again becoming a currency in society. I encourage people to talk to some Gen Z kids. They're much more puritan than millennials. They're focused on virginity and the moral superiority of monogamy. It's bizarre.
      • mghackerlady 6mo ago
        I spend most of my social media time on tumblr, and it's really funny to see the whiplash of attitudes between the older and younger gen z. The younger ones tend to be the puritans and the older ones are all polyamorous bisexual furries who want to have sex with robots (obviously exaggerating but not by much)
• mzmzmzm 6mo ago
  If you don't use X/Twitter anymore, XCancel makes it possible to read threads when not logged in: https://xcancel.com/GlennMeder/status/2049088498163216560 https://xcancel.com/GlennMeder/status/2049088498163216560
  • btbuildem 6mo ago
    If this does not work, use nitter instead
  • traderj0e 6mo ago
    Nothing against Twitter, but I just don't feel like logging in, so that site makes it way easier to read this. Also it doesn't take like 900TiB of RAM to render.
• barnacs 6mo ago
  Hopefully this will give yet another push towards decentralized, open source services. Platforms where noone and everyone is responsible and the state does not get to decide the rules.
  • nonethewiser 6mo ago
    I dont think most people actually want that in practice. That's why we dont have it right now.
    • barnacs 6mo ago
      I don't think most people have been inconvenienced enough yet. ID verification is invasive enough and should cause enough friction to push another bunch over the edge.
• worthless-trash 6mo ago
  This whole problem is basically parents admitting they cant parent.
• nonethewiser 6mo ago
  Im completely OK with verifying someone's age before distributing age-restricted services to them. That's what an age restricted service is, and obviously we shouldnt let porn companies distribute porn to minors (its already illegal most place). Just dont use porn, facebook, online gambling etc. if you dont want to share your identity. I can see why it's unfortunate but the idea posited that that it's somehow illegal in the US is ridiculous. You have no right to watch porn anonymously at the expense of holding porn companies liable for distributing porn to minors. Internet 1.0 was largely read only, ephemeral, or decentralized. Chat rooms, IRC, personal webpages, etc. There was anonymity and there were not age restricted services. Internet 2.0 introduced age restricted services and the enforcement lagged. The enforcement is now catching up. You can still do all the Internet 1.0 things anonymously but you can no longer gamble online as a 14 year old and hopefully soon you wont be able to watch porn either.
  • nirava 6mo ago
    Private companies now can link all your online activities to you. Not an advertisement ID, but directly to you and your loans and your health data and whatever they're selling in the black market. Every data breach is a 100 times. It was already almost possible to directly know about you by buying data, now it's easier. The point of this is not to verify age really. It is to verify identity. There's no way to prove someone is some age without presenting a legal ID. Also, it's not just porn, facebook, online gambling etc. It is the OS based on some bills. So ALL your activities.
    • Nursie 6mo ago
      > There's no way to prove someone is some age without presenting a legal ID. Sure there is. Verifiable Credentials and other similar standards allow this to be delegated in such a way that there is no need to present ID or even let the site know who you are. The site can issue a request to a third party that simply provides back "Yep, we attest that this request was approved by someone over 18". Depending on the exact scheme, the request may forward you to a broker, who will then forward the request (and your web session) on to the trusted third party of your choice which has already performed ID verficiation (usually a bank). The bank sends a signed response back to the broker, the broker sends a signed response back to the requesting site. Is it perfect? Maybe not 100%, the broker knows there was a request from a restricted site forwarded to a given bank. The bank knows you have approved a request. There is likely to be an identifier of some sort sent from the site all the way through to the back-end so you know you're not being MITM'd. But in theory nobody should have the full picture.
• josefritzishere 6mo ago
  Age Verification is very offensive. It assumes guilt and creates risk to no societal benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy
• 131hn 6mo ago
  There’s age verification when you buy a gun. Not on a gun handle. Kids should not be able/allowed to buy/use devices that are dangerous for them But the device itself should not care at the fallacious idea “it might be able to”
• crazygringo 6mo ago
  I'm not a fan of online age verification, but this is completely absurd: > Every website. Every platform. Every app. Every service. Your children will never know what it was like to think freely online. They will never explore ideas anonymously. They will never question authority without it being logged in their permanent profile. They will never speak freely without fear that every word will be used... No. Nobody's proposing you need to verify your identity to read articles on the New York Times or Wikipedia or political blogs. And nobody is proposing you need to verify your identity to leave comments on a news article or blog post. And any proposed law around that would run into massive first-amendment constitutional hurdles. It would be struck down easily. There's always going to be a spectrum of websites that range from open and anonymous (like news and political discussion) to strongly identity-verified (like online banking). I don't like online age verification for particular sites, but at the same time I think it's completely misleading to see it as this slippery slope to a world where anonymous speech no longer exists. We can have reasoned arguments around how people's usage of sites is tracked and how to prevent that, without making this about free speech and "the hill to die on".
  • ibejoeb 6mo ago
    We've spent the past three decades trying to invent ways to deduce identity and build profiles of what would otherwise be anonymous users. When the government steps in and compels people to formally identify themselves by their government names, what would you expect these companies to do? They're not gonna say "no thanks."
    • crazygringo 6mo ago
      Why the heck would the government compel people to formally identify themselves to read or comment on a newspaper or a blog? That's absurd and unconstitutional in the US. You're starting from an assumption that is invalid to begin with.
      • ibejoeb 6mo ago
        I don't know. Why would the government compel someone to formally identify himself to put cash in a box at the bank? Why would the government compel people to take off their shoes to get on a plane? Or submit biometric data drive a car? KYC for a phone line... It's not invalid. I have no reason to believe that this isn't going to creep.
• sailfast 6mo ago
  It’s not online age verification. It’s online identity verification. Would you vote for that? Prove who you are to visit this website? Would you do it to access Hacker News? Your newspaper? Didn’t think so.
  • k33n 6mo ago
    I want that. I'm tired of bots being half the internet traffic or more. It's driving the general public insane and anonymity on the internet has zero utility. If journalists need to send sensitive information, they'll always be able to use Tor.
    • DangitBobby 6mo ago
      I think there's plenty of utility. People can express opinions that they hold honestly but would fear social retribution for if it could be tied back to them publicly. For example, any political opinion that I hold that's modestly center or right of center I would not appreciate being attached to my name online since people are completely incapable of nuance or compartmentalization.
      • k33n 6mo ago
        If you wouldn’t make a political statement in a town hall setting where you’re going to show ID, then you probably shouldn’t say it on the internet. But keep in mind that these laws don’t result in your identity being public. They will ultimately result in the sites you’re posting on know that you’re an enumerated individual. The ultimate benefit as I see it is removing outsized leverage over public opinion by botting likes on your statement or otherwise operating tons of accounts. It should also eliminate threats of violence from the digital public square, since building a prosecution pipeline against those would be easy to do. Same with child grooming, but I’ll acknowledge there’s a way to make that argument in a glib way, as an excuse to realize some of the other goals. It is a real problem though.
        • DangitBobby 6mo ago
• znnajdla 6mo ago
  In the age of AI I think it’s only necessary and inevitable to implement some of kind of internet ID system to stop the massive onslaught of AI generated fraud, malicious hacking, and spam. If age verification is a Trojan horse to erase online anonymity, so be it, I see that as a worthy goal. Humans are inherently social, and social networks are based on trust. Trust is primarily a function of reputation, peer pressure, and legal consequences. Reputation requires tying behavior to a stable identity. Peer pressure only works when you’re not anonymous. For there to be legal consequences for bad behavior, we must identify bad actors. I don’t see why anyone would want to remove any of this. To protect some freelance journalists in Iran? Also I don’t think that the “pro privacy” activists really understand the scale and severity of harm being done to children through the internet. I as a programmer who makes my living on the internet, would gladly support the shutting down of the whole internet if it would save the life of a single precious child.
  • aduwah 6mo ago
    We will see how your opinion changes when someone steals your ID and voice and you end up being defrauded due to the government chosing the cheapest Indian shop to mishandle your data
    • znnajdla 6mo ago
      Not going to be any worse than the oncoming onslaught of AI-powered scam, fraud, and hacks that are enabled by a lack of legal consequences.
      • aduwah 6mo ago
        There is a vast difference between being scammed and being defrauded. The latter can happen without any interaction with you by criminals using your leaked personal data. An AI empowered scam is just that. A scam can be avoided. Leaked IDs, voice and identity not so much My point is that the data that you don't provide cannot be leaked
  • jumpman_miya 6mo ago
    [dead]
• bloppe 6mo ago
  There are lots of ways to implement identity verification while preserving privacy. It's actually a super interesting engineering problem. Estonia has an excellent model to build on. The government can maintain a "traditional" ID system based on documents and in-person verification, and provide you with a device similar to a yubi-key or Bitcoin hardware wallet that could be used to share specific, cryptographically verifiable claims with third parties, like your age, or even just a boolean "over 18", but also your name or other information if you choose, with a way to control the access and audit which parties have verified which claims with the govt.
  • scotty79 6mo ago
    In Poland online banks to that. You can verify your identity for government purposes with the use of your online bank. No need for government to set up a scheme to confirm millions of people in person.
    • bloppe 6mo ago
      govt, banks, whatever. I don't care who administers the system as much as I care about the fact that they're highly regulated, and you have the control needed to expose as little information as necessary to confirm things about yourself to third parties (like just "over 18" for many sites, or your full identity for other things if necessary).
• onetimeusename 6mo ago
  I've heard that we could use zero-knowledge ID proofs to show someone is of age without revealing any more but I don't think that's the plan and the demand for age restrictions doesn't feel like a grassroots effort of concerned parents. It feels like an NGO/bureaucrat driven law and I assume its purpose is to de-anonymize people on the internet.
  • domador 6mo ago
    In some cases, it also seems like a lobbyist-driven effort that would benefit certain companies likely to be hired by the government to provide identification services.
• didgetmaster 6mo ago
  I have long thought that all content (local and remote) should be properly labeled with metadata. Just like the cans of soup in the supermarket, you don't have to open it to find out if it has peanuts, lactose, or MSG in it; you should be able to filter data before accessing it. You could define a set of 5 or six categories (nudity, sex, drugs, violence, etc.) and have a scale from 1 to 10 for each. Each content producer would rate each category according to defined criteria. Then each user, or their parent, can set what their own acceptable level is. If you set your violence level at 4 then nothing level 5 or higher will load.
  • beej71 6mo ago
    There are some showstoppers here, though. You have to either: A) Change the laws in all countries (a non-starter), or B) Restrict access to only countries that obey those laws And Option B is a non-starter to the freedom crowd. Not to mention all the other issues with labeling, such as: A) How to label in an internationally-agreeable way B) How to prevent abusive mislabeling It's fraught, this path.
    • RajT88 6mo ago
      V-Chip all over again. Now with mandatory browser extensions which hook into the OS' parental controls. It's no better.
• dev_l1x_be 6mo ago
  We need a truly distributed point-to-point internet asap. Politicians going to do everything to limit free speech and free ideas in the name of protecting children while they already got all the powers to investigate and stop child abuse. https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/
  • wtallis 6mo ago
    Did you intend to link to Meshtastic as an example of how not to achieve your goals? Because it definitely isn't capable of scaling up to anything like the whole internet, and the project struggles to agree on any goals they want to reliably achieve.
    • dev_l1x_be 6mo ago
      It is something, at least you can chat with your friends freely.
      • wtallis 6mo ago
        There are so many caveats and limitations that bringing it up in this context is downright dishonest. The most you could fairly say is that some of the philosophy driving some of the meshtastic developers is what you want to see applied to the development of an internet-scale network (which in reality would have less technology in common with meshtastic than with the current internet).
  • HerbManic 6mo ago
    Alas it is the great contradiction. Federated technologies are brilliant for peer-to-peer but many struggle to scale because the designed redundancy tends to crush their efficiency. Really depends on the context. Email works because of its limits. Remove those limits and weaknesses start to appear.
  • protocolture 6mo ago
    >We need a truly distributed point-to-point internet asap. Yes. A mesh network isnt point to point. Its a mesh.
• cameronbrown 6mo ago
  I’m in the UK and we recently got the Online Safety Act. We failed, this legislation is very popular with voters and not getting rolled back. Those that dislike it use a VPN and aren’t interested in fighting. I’d say most of the public here is exhausted with cost of living and internet freedom just isn’t relevant to their voting habits. I grew up around a lot of the hacker ethos, open internet, Information Wants To Be Free etc… feels like a part of my identity is being striped away by my government.
  • Cider9986 6mo ago
    Do you just use a VPN? If not what website have you seen age/identity verification on that you find most ridiculous?
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • HerbManic 6mo ago
    Push back to legislation must be on going and any time it is defeated, the success is only temporary. The government can just line up and try again shortly afterwards and they only needs to successful once. You can win the battle but lose the war. By the time the average folk realize the extent of these issues it will be way too late. I think back to how the technology space was 25 years ago. When the biggest privacy fear was that a Pentium 3 had a processor ID and Windows XP would send your system specs to get a security update. Look at how far we have fallen since then and the pace is only speeding up.
  • tardedmeme 6mo ago
    The hacker ethos and open internet happened when the government was worse. It was illegal to send encryption outside of the US. Hackers used civil disobedience, some risked jail time, some actually went to jail, some are still in jail today or dead, and the world got a bit better as a result of their courage to break laws.
• 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
  Reminder: Age Verification are not being passed to protect anyone but social media companies. But in addition, they will be used for a massive surveillance state. This is the DMCA of the 2020s, but far worse.
• jlhawn 6mo ago
  This seems hyperbolic as it's actually a long path between age verification to full digital identity tracking. But I agree that pushing the burden of verification to websites is ridiculous. Like the GDPR requirements where every webpage has an annoying consent modal, the verification and preferences should be controlled on the device you use to access these digital services. My browser should know and enforce my cookie preferences in a way that has a uniform user experience. Likewise, if I am a minor, my parent should provide me with a device (or profile on a device) which knows my age and can use that to inform online services of the age of the user rather than needing to go through a separate process for each service.
• elric 6mo ago
  While we've been agonizing over Age Verification (real or planned), Greece has apparently introduced a ban on anonymity on social media. I'm not liking where the world is headed, but I have no idea how to push back against it.
• RRRA 6mo ago
  The irony of posting ethical social reflection on X though... https://xcancel.com/GlennMeder/status/2049088498163216560 https://xcancel.com/GlennMeder/status/2049088498163216560
  • Quarrelsome 6mo ago
    sadly not having a twitter account in order to read the fucking internet was my hill to die on.
• bigbuppo 6mo ago
  Since it is so harmful to let children use social media, why aren't parents being put in prison for abuse and neglect when they let their children use social media? Why should everyone else have to suffer when it's parents that should be punished? (it's because it's not about protecting children)
  • hirvi74 6mo ago
    Because this is a golden opportunity erode privacy riots under a complete guise of "protecting the children." Same goes for "preventing terrorism" and various other attempts to appeal to authority.
• unselect5917 6mo ago
  We simply don't need online age verification. It's not the state or private business' job to parent children. It's their parents job. This is not only unnecessary, but will with 100% certainty lead to negative downstream affects, either via leaks, or the state being able to find people for things that aren't crimes once they're adults. There's simply no good reason for it that outweighs the bad. But what it really boils down to is completely unnecessary.
• foresto 6mo ago
  The Electronic Frontier Foundation set up a resource page for this: https://eff.org/age https://eff.org/age Their guide: https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/09/condensed-age_verification_resource_guide.pdf https://www.eff.org/files/2026/04/09/condensed-age_verificat... Unfortunately, their most prominent call to action doesn't seem to address the various state-specific and non-US legislation (focusing on KOSA instead). Here it is: https://www.eff.org/pages/help-us-fight-back https://www.eff.org/pages/help-us-fight-back
  • nerdo 6mo ago
    The EFF has long been a skin suit my dude, they're just here to dissipate and confuse opposition.
    • Cider9986 6mo ago
      >they're just here to dissipate and confuse opposition What do you mean by this?
• k33n 6mo ago
  Enjoy dying on that hill then because without mandatory ID for potentially harmful services like social media, we will continue to descend further into the brainrot that many of you suffer from today.
  • DangitBobby 6mo ago
    I'm curious to hear your theory on how it saves us from the brain rot!
    • gblargg 6mo ago
      Presumably it makes people fearful to post things that differ from the norm, which is what I'm assuming parent means by brainrot (wrongthink).
      • k33n 6mo ago
        Brainrot isn’t wrongthink. Brainrot is brinksmanship and zero sum discourse. As a member of the public it’s virtually impossible to know where the real consensus is on any issue today due to wishful thinking backed up by gigantic botnets. Brainrot will make people certain that they’re part of some majority consensus to the point that they will fight legislation like this because being provably part of a fringe line of thinking would cause them psychological pain. Right now, everyone (including the “moon mission was fake” fringe) thinks they’re part of a majority consensus. Even sovereign citizens and flat earthers believe they’re in a much larger cohort than they really are. A lot of these ideas are harming people offline in addition to degrading their personal mental health.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
    • k33n 6mo ago
      I’m betting that bot activity plummets once accounts are tied to real identities. That’s a discourse benefit. I’m also betting that discussion will become a lot more rational once people have to put their names on what they are saying. Death threats also become more easily prosecutable.
• brandonmenc 6mo ago
  After reading these comments, I don't want to hear any of you suggest that kids shouldn't be allowed to have unrestricted access to smartphones or social media ever again. How did you think this was going to be enforced?
  • sillyfluke 6mo ago
    I don't understand. I would assume most people don't think small kids should smoke crack. That doesn't mean that they are automatically in favor of creating a 24/7 survelliance state just to prevent that from happening.
• Nevermark 6mo ago
  This is why we need verification technology that protects identity. Implemented as anonymous verification, without distinguishing between adult age, or permissioned by parent. That solution doesn't negate parental freedom of choice, it facilitates it. I am baffled at how often the "they don't want it, because of their ulterior surveillance motivations, therefore it isn't a solution" argument is made. "They" don't want it because it is a solution to the nominal problem, that they cannot abuse, and would negate their ability to use it as a cover with a large well-meaning voting constituency. Two problems, nominal and ulterior, resolved in the right way by one solution. When a nominally sensible problem is used as a cover for overreach, solving the nominal problem in a healthy way is the best offense. The alternative is an endless war of attrition, and the "hope" that politicians resist the efforts of well-paid lobbyists and tens of millions of well-meaning voting parents forever. That is a ridiculous strategy, doomed to fail, delivering irreversible damage. As is already evident by the abusable laws that are accumulating. I worry at the lack of political acumen and foot-gun reflexes in the ethically-motivated technical community. Stop endlessly fighting to lose less. Just play the winning move already. Stop the irreversible damage.
  • sysreq_ 6mo ago
    I think part of the issue people are missing is what the late Randy Pausch would call a “head fake”. My specific autism is not privacy, digital security, none of that. So I will be honest about my gaps. But from my little corner what this is about is geopolitics - specifically a potential war with China. If you zoom out to the macro level first understand the reason China setup the Great Firewall. Why countries like Iran cut the internet whenever there are protests. These are, first and foremost, defensive measures against foreign influence. America is subject to these same outside forces. The difference is that our free and open society makes things like "a Great Firewall" simply unpalatable to the American people. And rightly so. But it is also becoming increasingly evident that these malign actors are using our own values against us. Russia for example aims to sow discord. One classic example is the Black Lives Matter movement. This was not a Russian disinformation campaign - but they did propagate views that exist outside the bell curve of the moderate. They push scenes of cops being under siege for the right and racist policing for the left. They amplify the voices of the most angry, the most extreme and the most radical on both sides of the spectrum to create confusion, distrust and societal division. China by comparison takes a much more subtle view. They choose to erode what they call "civilizational confidence" by highlighting systemic failures, inconvenient truths, or otherwise undermine institutional credibility. When you read an article and find a moderating factor buried in the last paragraph that is the flavor of Chinese action. The general malaise about American exceptionalism failing and China's inevitable ascent stems from their work. Rather than pure division they aim to emotionally exhaust you into "acquiescence from inevitability". There is hardly a nation on the earth that is not involved in some way in the American discourse - each pushing and pulling to their own aims and individual agenda. Historically there was a sort of Nash equilibrium with Americans caught somewhere in the center. But as the loudest voices, or rather the most well funded, begin to dominate the discussion via social media and covert funding, we are seeing it become increasingly problematic for American democracy. That is why you are starting to see this consensus over 'verification' and 'identification' begin to coalesce. The government, both left and right of center, has begun to realize the long term ramifications of these actors. So how do you solve that inherent tension between our intrinsic right to free-speech and those who would abuse it to cause us actual harm? An independent, 3rd party verifier with limited scope makes sense - but would that solve the greater geopolitical implications? In truth I've long expected social media like Reddit, Facebook, et al. to formulate a body of their own like the MPAA. But likewise I don't think there is a clear answer here. Do you trust the Tech Oligarchs with this power over the Government itself? This is core to the problem. How do you 'censor' the internet without really 'censoring' Americans? I think this is part of what the last administration was trying to do with the failed "Disinformation Governance Board". And that failure is what has led us to where we are now. The original twitter thread is right to say this isn't a left-versus-right issue. This is undeniably a censorship mechanism designed to exclude a set of voices from the internet as we know it today. As with the patriot act, they choose to wrap the bitter pill in a bacon-flavored rhetoric of safety and protecting the youth from perverts and degenerates. But what has failed to be acknowledged is the intrinsic cost of having an open society in a world where that openness has become an attack surface. Make no mistake: the goal is censorship. But the solution space to what you call 'the nominal problem' is less trivial than I think you believe.
• throwaway85825 6mo ago
  In other news Greece is banning online anonymity. The final form of age verification is here. https://www.euractiv.com/news/greece-to-ban-anonymity-on-social-media/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/greece-to-ban-anonymity-on-soc...
• odyssey7 6mo ago
  The question used to be: should we have online censorship? Now, the question is: what should the implementation details of online censorship be?
  • tardedmeme 6mo ago
    Yes, we should have online censorship, and you agree with me. Proof: child porn
• raugustinus 6mo ago
  Age verification requires identity verification once — but it doesn't require revealing your identity ever to a third party. With FHE (fully homomorphic encryption), identity data is encrypted on your device and never leaves it in plaintext. Not to the merchant, not to us as the verification service — nobody. We only compute on encrypted data and return a yes/no. I'm building this at identified.app
• advael 6mo ago
  Really the hill to die on is that the first amendment should preclude any content-based restrictions for anyone. If you believe children shouldn't be exposed to certain materials that's between you and your kids, and should not involve the government whatsoever
• mixxit 6mo ago
  Id rather we focused on human Vs bot verification given the state of social media influence right now
• Quarrelsome 6mo ago
  it didn't have to be like this. If we had trusted NGOs with strong funding and a track record of independence and integrity they could shim between token generation and application. Allowing governments to produce identity tokens and applications to verify them with the shim blocking each side from knowing of the other. But we don't have that, so he's probably right.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo ago
  "Age verification is the Trojan horse. And once it is inside the gates, the surveillance state becomes operational." Braindead meme. "Age verification" is not a "Trojan Horse". No one, regardless of age, _wants_ to use age verification. They are being effectively _forced_ to ask for it or use it. Age verification (identity verification) is a tradeoff. A "Trojan Horse" is something that people actually want, not an obvious tradeoff, a sacrifice, a compromise. No one is being "fooled" into complying with identity verification in the form of age verification The surveillance state is already operational. If you use "platforms" then you are already inside the gates with the enemy. The surveillance apparatus is operated by so-called "tech" companies that perform data collection, surveillance and online ad services as a "business model". These companies provide access to and information about internet users to advertisers and law enforcement If "age verification" dissuades some people from accessing "platforms" (servers) run by so-called "tech" companies, then that is a loss for the companies and a privacy gain for those people. The "hill to die on" is not using "platforms" These companies are the reason that "age verification" is proceeding. They push the allegedly harmful content because it makes money for them. Further, the companies' "platforms" make "age verification" possible. This is because they intermediate transmissions between internet users through these so-called "platforms". Governments need not comply with laws that protect individuals from government surveillance when they can target "platforms" instead It is disturbing that anyone would want to "die on a hill" to save "platforms" from "age verification". These third parties are surveillance companies. They built the surveillance state. They already know who you are, they do not need government-issued ID If the people spreading this "Trojan Horse" meme cared about surveillance, including identity verification, then they would not be defending "platforms" from regulation, they would stop using the "platforms"
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• IAmGraydon 6mo ago
  I would say be careful what you choose to believe. Online identity verification is the only way to end the war that’s being waged on the American people by foreign states via social media. If I were a bad actor, I would very much want to convince the public that this is a bad idea.
  • tardedmeme 6mo ago
    It's easy for a corporate level bad actor to pay homeless people $20 to scan their ID, and easy for a state level bad actor to fabricate IDs at will
    • IAmGraydon 6mo ago
      No, I would say it's not that easy, at least not on the scale that they're currently creating accounts. There are ways to do further verification like credit agencies do or how Google does it for businesses (you have to be able to receive a physical mail item with a card containing an ID code).
• llbbdd 6mo ago
  Honestly, not even in favor of legislating any kind of increased device-side control or age gating. I understand the "this should be up to the parents" angle but I'd push it further: modern tech already allows parents too much control over their children. Freaky helicopter parents are already perfectly enabled to spy on their kids location, device usage, inspect and monitor their conversations, and it's already normalized to an insane degree. Absolutely no reason to make it an out of the box experience to tempt otherwise sane parents to go mad with that kind of abusive power.
• ChrisTrenkamp 6mo ago
  To anyone reading this, please take the extra step beyond striking down age-verification laws, and start taking measures to prove to Congress that it's not needed. Your nextdoor neighbor whose misbehaving child that's permanently on their phone? Help them out. Your friend that joked about sending death threats to someone? Scold and report him. That girl endlessly scrolling Instagram? Get her help. Please take a step back and examine how insane the internet is and how it's affecting our everyday lives. Political violence and mental illness is increasing, and the internet is solely to blame for this. "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary." Federalist 51 We're all too familiar with the latter part of that quote, but we're completely oblivious to the former. At this point, we've all but proven that the government needs to step in and regulate internet access. And unfortunately for us, they're going to do it in the most dystopian, authoritarian way possible. I want to be on the side of freedom and strike this bill down. But when it is struck down, everyone is going to cheer, go on their merry way, and continue to let demorilization, radicalization, and mental illness infect the psyche of the everyday human being, and do nothing about it. And then the cycle will repeat itself. At this point, I actually hope this bill passes. Not because I want it to, but because maybe then everyone will stop using the internet for everything, and some sanity will return.
  • inetknght 6mo ago
    [dead]
  • xantronix 6mo ago
    We can't just place sole blame on "the internet". Who made "the internet" the way it is today? By and large, it's the same people who are pushing age restriction and verification: Meta. They do not have your best interests in mind. They only seek to deliver new ways of controlling you. https://tboteproject.com/ https://tboteproject.com/
• ketamine 6mo ago
  An anecdote: I am 40 years old and I have an Onlyfans account. I enjoy some hippie chick that makes pottery and takes pics of herself without clothes on. I went on vacation to Tennessee and tried to log in and it said I needed to verify with their identity verification provider. Of course I refused. Now I am home in a different state and still cannot log in. I contacted support and because I was detected in TN once irrespective of my name and address and credit card info in their system they refuse to let me back in. Support said they canceled my subscriptions for me because you can't even access that part of your account. It's ridiculous this is where things have landed. And it's not even stopping porn in the slightest it's just making it harder for honest people to pay for what they like. And so the government can track us more easily. Wish I could do something other than vote with my wallet.
  • snek_case 6mo ago
    > it's just making it harder for honest people to pay for what they like. I have a female friend who creates that kind of content. Her take is that this is very much intentional. There is a general crackdown on porn in the US. They're not just trying to make it difficult for the clients, but also difficult for people to make this kind of content, distribute it and get paid for it. Of course none of this makes sense. There are VPNs and there is bittorrent. All of this is just making this kind of stuff more underground. In China porn is fully illegal, but people still share bootleg porn on thumb drives.
    • chirsz 6mo ago
      In China, people generally share porn through closed social network groups.
      • conradfr 6mo ago
        Given what we know about China's internet, is there any real privacy in those groups if authorities wanted to crack down on them?
        • 6mo ago
• wellthisisgreat 6mo ago
  what can we do?
• poolnoodle 6mo ago
  I don't know what the correct solution to this problem looks like but in my opinion it's not only the kids that need saving. Social Media is eroding our societies and adults are just as hooked if not more.
• MarceliusK 6mo ago
  [dead]
• ufocia 6mo ago
  “It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority… averts all dangers from my path… if this same authority is the absolute master of my liberty and my life.”
• derelicta 6mo ago
  It is truly last piece of the Bourgeois panopticon. Internet already feels broken. I have to constantly switch my VPN on to access this or that website. How long til they even prohibit that?
• cybercatgurrl 6mo ago
  i love that psychopath has become an insult to sling around like you actually understand what that means. gotta love the classic fear of the other