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Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification. I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (in

• userbinator 5mo ago
  Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if you are open to age verification you are either a fascist or a moron" is not constructive. We know they'll take a mile if you give them an inch. Ditto with "trusted" computing and the rest of that wormcan. That's why the opposition has to be absolute.
  • benfortuna 5mo ago
    Who is this "they" you speak of? We have age verification for all kinds of things that can harm minors. Most of them have adequate penalties for breach such that operators of said harms ensure they comply (checks for ID when selling alcohol, entry to over-18s pubs/clubs, etc.) There's nothing sinister going on here, just attempts to prevent social/mental harm to minors.
    • esseph 5mo ago
      > There's nothing sinister going on here There absolutely is you're just not aware of it. This whole thing is meta financially backing right wing conservative groups that want age verification because meta wants to avoid liability for the harms their platforms cause. In addition, this is the beginning of the end of any sort of anonymity on the internet, which has disastrous consequences for politically minded individuals, minority populations, or targets of stalking. This is a privacy nightmare bring pushed through in the guise of "muh children".
      • palata 5mo ago
        > There absolutely is you're just not aware of it. Can you show here that you understand how privacy-preserving age verification works? I mean the rest of your message really, really sounds like you don't. Don't get me wrong: I do agree that identity verification is bad. But it is not okay to say "I know of a system that is bad, and I don't know the nuances of how it could be implemented in a better way, so I will just assume that there is no better way".
        • deleted 5mo ago
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        • esseph 5mo ago
          I trust client side verification to not leak data as much as I trust copilot to not leak data. Ripe for abuse.
      • chadgpt3 5mo ago
        Meta already requires your ID to sign up so hasn't anonymity already ended?
        • esseph 5mo ago
          How many people do you know signing up for meta accounts?
          • chadgpt3 5mo ago
            We are talking about social media here aren't we? And accessing it anonomously?
  • homeonthemtn 5mo ago
    Sure but that absolute opposition hasn't, as far I can tell at least, achieved an iota of success. So it's largely a self indulgent merit badge than an actual strategy.
  • palata 5mo ago
    I strongly disagree. Democracy is not "they" vs "us". Democracy is not "opposition has to be absolute". What you describe here is extremism. If you believe that anyone disagreeing with you is an extremist and that the only viable way to react is to be an extremist yourself, well... you are the extremist. Whether you are fighting extremists or not (this "they" you conveniently do not define) is unclear, though.
    • Hizonner 5mo ago
      Don't be an extremist. Let's compromise. We'll only eat one of your children. We'll even let you pick!
• Avicebron 5mo ago
  Do you believe people should be able to traverse the internet anonymously?
  • deleted 5mo ago
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  • ElProlactin 5mo ago
    You can't. Even if you haven't registered or logged in, companies like Facebook have identified you and track you everywhere you go.
    • nullsex 5mo ago
      [dead]
  • deleted 5mo ago
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  • Xorakios 5mo ago
    Yes. At least to read.
  • AuthAuth 5mo ago
    Why should you be able to traverse the internet anonymously? You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations. Majority of the people traversing anonymously are doing so because they are routine troublemakers and do not want to bare consequences for their malicious actions. The ones fighting for this complete anonymity but not doing crime are naively just sweeping for bad actors.
    • watwut 5mo ago
      > You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations. I actually can. For real. I can not get job or housing anonymously, but overwhelming majority of my real life interactions are anonymous.
• JohnMakin 5mo ago
  There is a solution, it is regulating social media companies to stop abusing their users, and by extension, children. strict laws around adtech and tracking tech. more consumer rights, in other words - that’s why this solution comes off as authoritarian, because there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one.
  • palata 5mo ago
    > there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one. If you think that privacy-preserving age verification is the most authoritarian way to tackle this problem, then you really, really don't understand authoritarianism. Now if you have tons of better and practical solutions to tackle this problem, I would suggest you start writing about them. I haven't read a lot about those solutions (other than "just ask someone who is not me to do it"), what I hear is mostly people yelling that only bad parents and fascists disagree with them.
    • Nasrudith 5mo ago
      If you are naive enough to think it really is 'just the tip' how are you not an involuntary parent already?
      • palata 5mo ago
        I would love to be insulted by that, but I genuinely can't tell what point you're fumbling toward. Try again when you've sobered up.
    • JohnMakin 5mo ago
      > I would suggest you start writing about them. I did. the burden isn’t on me to explain it to you, comrade. maybe you could start by actually addressing what I wrote. Or are you now expecting me to draft up a legislation draft before you’ll address my post? These types are always the same.
      • 5mo ago
• mhurron 5mo ago
  > Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children at the expense of everyone and everything else all to not have to be an actual parent. These arguments are not coming from places of concern, they are coming from laziness and people taking advantage of that laziness to further even worse agendas.
  • deleted 5mo ago
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  • palata 5mo ago
    > at the expense of That's the thing: it's not trivial to know what is possible and what is not. If you look at the messages in HN, many (most?) messages about privacy-preserving age verification are (at least partially) wrong. Tech-savvy people clearly do not understand the technology in details, and somehow they assume that normies do understand and are simply fascists or lazy. It is my opinion that telling a normal person that they are a bad parent (or a fascist) because you disagree with them is probably not the best way to convince them. I believe in democracy, which means that I don't call everyone disagreeing with me a fascist. In a democracy, if most of the population wants privacy-preserving age verification and I don't, then I am in the minority and must accept it. My role as a tech-savvy person is to help "normies" understand what it implies. Again, not to tell them that they must be fascists if they disagree with me.
  • djaro 5mo ago
    Not all children have active parents. I do not believe those children deserve to be taken advantage of or hurt simply because they happen to have bad parents. The "laziness" argument doesnt work if the people being lazy (parents) are not the people being hurt (children)
• QuadmasterXLII 5mo ago
  Parents need to either control the internet, or control their children’s devices and screentime. The latter sounds like the obvious option, except that Google wants every second grader to have a school-mismanaged chromebook and Google wants to mediate control of the internet, and by pushing parents to the former they win on both fronts.
  • benfortuna 5mo ago
    Requiring parents to police their child's every move is not going to end well.
    • cdrnsf 5mo ago
      And having the state do it is better?
      • palata 5mo ago
        The state mandates laws that say we cannot sell guns to kids. Is that a bad idea? Would you rather let the parents deal with that?
        • cdrnsf 5mo ago
          I'd like parents to parent and develop a relationship with their kids. Comparing the internet to guns is a stretch.
          • palata 5mo ago
            My point was that having the state regulate stuff is not always a bad idea. The problem for many parents is that all the other kids have it. It's not always easy to develop a relationship with your kid to convince them that they don't need to conform and have friends. So I can imagine that many parent would be relieved if access to social media was slightly more complicated, such that maybe it would be more normal to not have access to social media.
• idiotsecant 5mo ago
  Age verification literally already exists in a way that doesn't require orwellian centralized control. The <meta rating> tag has existed for decades. If you want to restrict access force websites to apply these tags, then use a browser that obeys them. Parents control what their kids access, mostly, like it's been since forever. Think carefully about why a politician might disregard this extremely simple mechanism and you'll have your answer about the real goals here
  • palata 5mo ago
    > Think carefully about why a politician might disregard this extremely simple mechanism and you'll have your answer about the real goals here You (and many others) frame it as "the government versus the people". I think this is extremely naive. Many, many, many parents are in favour of preventing social media access to kid, assuming it is done in a reasonable way. For instance, having a police officer follow every kid everywhere they go 24/7 is not a reasonable way, and everybody agrees on that. Now what if there was a reasonable way? Ask yourself this: do you believe that privacy-preserving age verification is not a reasonable way, or do you know it? In order to know it, you have to understand how the cryptography works at some reasonable level. Do you? Most comments I read online come from people who believe and then repeat arguments they have read that confirm their beliefs. I was noting that the Mullvad article actually addresses ZKP (which is good and a very rare thing), but that I found it was a bit evasive in a way that feels slightly manipulative to me (probably not on purpose).
• deleted 5mo ago
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• roenxi 5mo ago
  > I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". It is worth recalling that "authoritarian" is a relatively neutral label for a political philosophy (like "liberal", "democrat", "capitalist" or "socialist"). It isn't that people are name calling, it is that authoritarian policies - like this one - consistently cause more harm than good. The label is basically a slur at this point because the disasters that the authoritarians trigger often veer into being massive and appalling spectacles. People tend not to be very evidence-based, so the people who lean authoritarian tend to try and rebrand to avoid being tarred with their philosophy's consistent failures, but it is still authoritarianism. But the productive path forward isn't to try and be nice to the authoritarians and accommodate them with the rebranding. It is to adopt liberal policies. Like letting people read and comment anonymously on the internet.
  • palata 5mo ago
    I appreciate the comment, but I feel like you miss my point in a way that is (not purposely) manipulative, again. I don't think that we would call "authoritarian" someone who would ask for, say, guns control. Or at least we wouldn't call "authoritarian" someone who is in favour of having more than 0 law, would we? You are being manipulative by saying "If you want a law that I don't want, then you are an authoritarian. I mean no offence, it is just what you are". But reality is a lot more nuanced than that. The vast majority of people who are in favour of age verification are not authoritarians. They really just consider "should kids have access to social media? Not until they are old enough". Whether or not it is technically possible is outside their knowledge. And the fact is that for age verification, there are technical solutions that are privacy-preserving (unlike e.g. ChatControl which is fundamentally building surveillance infrastructure). And even for ChatControl: people who say "I would be in favour of a magic backdoor that would only work for the well-intentioned good guys" wouldn't count as "authoritarians", would they? It just so happens that there is no such thing as a magic backdoor, so they cannot have what they want.
    • roenxi 5mo ago