[purplehat_]

I'm surprised zero-knowledge proofs have not been mentioned. This is a technique where (for example) the government signs your digital license, then you can present a proof that you are over 18 to a site without revealing anything else about yourself. ZKPassport exists, Privacy Pass is an implementation being standardized by the IETF, and Google is working on a similar implementation. Granted, these are not yet widely used, but I'd be very interested in hearing HN's thoughts on this.

Let's try to figure out what a good policy solution looks like:

- entities with harmful or adult content must require proof of the user being over 18

- entities cannot ask for, store, or process more detailed information without explicit business needs (this should be phrased in a way that disallows Instagram from asking for your birth year, for example)

- entities cannot share this data with other sites, to avoid privacy leaks, unless there is an explicit business need (this is tricky to get right; someone might try to set up a centralized non-anonymous age-verification service, erasing many benefits)

- entities must in general not store or process information about the user that is not strictly relevant to their function

- there ought to be different treatment for anonymous users (which ideally these protocols will allow, just submit proof of work plus a ZKP that you are a human and authorized to access the resource) compared to pseudonymous and non-anonymous users, who are more at risk of being censored or tracked.

There's some loopholes here, but if the government can enact good policy on this I personally think it's feasible. Please share your thoughts, if you have a minute to do so.

There's also an interesting political split to note among the opposition here. I see a lot of people vehemently against this, and as far as I can see this is largely for concerns regarding one of 1) privacy abuses, 2) censorship, or 3) restriction of general computing. Still, there is a problem with harmful content and platforms on the web. (Not just for minors, I don't think we should pretend it doesn't harm adults too.) The privacy crowd seems to be distinctly different from the computing-freedom crowd; the most obvious example is in attitudes towards iOS. As I personally generally align more towards what I perceive as the privacy-focused side, I'm very interested in what people more focused on software freedom think about zero-knowledge proofs as a politically workable solution here.

[wao0uuno]

Sounds cool but do you believe it's really about protecting children? Since when do politicians care about this so much? I have not heard of any protests or public calls for better child protection online. It's really all about control and elimination of freedom of speech and information. They want to set up a legal framework and get people more comfortable with the idea of closed and controlled internet. Then they'll argue that age verification alone is ineffective because its too easy to circumvent so they'll start rolling out less "private" solutions that will benefit them and their sponsors greatly.

[purplehat_]

I'm not sure anyone is being this explicitly malicious. Parents' groups, child safety organizations, and researchers have been at this for years, and while I agree with you that the solutions are very misguided, I think it does our own priorities a disservice to stick our fingers in our ears with regards to their concerns.

Can you give an example of how less private solutions will benefit them and their sponsors? I could see big tech / adtech and government surveillance benefitting but I don't think they're the ones behind this push.

As another example, consider the "small web" community, say at Bear Blog, which is a group of technically sophisticated people who routinely complain about the harms of traditional social media. I doubt most of them would support this particular implementation, but they show that there is popular support for solving the ills of at least one of the targets of this legislation.

So to answer your question, yes, I do see this as an attempt to protect people. The restriction of free speech is in my opinion a side effect of this legislation opening the way to worse-designed laws in the future.