[cosmos0072]

Parents already have a lot of control on children' education.

Examples: most children believe in the same religion as their parents, and can visit friends and places only if/when allowed by their parents.

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

Government-mandated restrictions are completely another level.

[edgyquant]

I have personally worked with parents trying to prevent their children from using social media and it’s nearly impossible. Kids are almost always more tech savvy than their parents and unlike smoking it’s nearly impossible to tell a child is doing so without watching them 100% of the time.

[croes]

Who controls your age if you try to buy alcohol.

Who controls your age if you want to see an R-rated movie?

This is simply extending the same level of control to the internet.

More control for parents is a completely different level.

[heavyset_go]

There are no laws preventing children from seeing R-rated movies with or without their parents, theaters implement that policy by choice.

[jfengel]

Sort of by choice. Often, the municipality won't let you build a movie theater unless you pinky-promise to abide by the rating system.

They rarely enforce it, but if it gets out of hand, the city will start getting on your case about it.

[croes]

Welcome to the world where many countries aren’t the US

[heavyset_go]

The OP is about legislation and companies in the US

[croes]

And parent is from the EU and talks about age control in general.

Does the US have a zero-knowledge proof system that is mentioned in the discussion?

[applfanboysbgon]

Disingenuous, but I'm sure you know that and were being intentionally so. The government is not using alcohol age laws as a justification to place a camera in your bedroom to make sure you aren't sneaking booze, but it is using internet age laws as a justification to surveil your entire life in a world which is becoming increasingly digital-mandatory to participate in government services or the economy. Nobody had a problem with internet age laws when "are you over 13? yes/no" was legally sufficient.

[gzread]

Is California doing this?

[applfanboysbgon]

To my understanding no, but California is breaching the rubicon in compelling open-source / non-commercial software developers to include something in their offline software, which is something that I believe has never been done before by any jurisdiction, and opening that floodgate is a clear slippery slope in this environment because the week after that is implemented Texas will be mandating that all operating systems come installed with JesusTracker. Apparently New York is already working on sliding down that slope, in fact, and for good measure wants to mandate anti-circumvention measures too.

[croes]

You‘re missing the point

> Having said that, open-source zero-knowledge proofs are infinitely less evil (I refuse to say "better") than commercial cloud-based age monitoring baked into every OS

Parent prefers more control by parents over zero-knowledge proof

[applfanboysbgon]

If that was your point, I don't think your previous comment did a very good job of making it at all.

I do think parental controls can be and are abused for evil, but they're still better than the alternative. Zero-knowledge proof is not an alternative, and to suggest that it is is misunderstanding the situation. These laws are proposed and funded by people who want complete surveillance of the population. Zero-knowledge proof is, therefore, explicitly contrary to the goal and will never be implemented under any circumstances. Suggesting that it can be muddies the issue and tricks people into supporting legislation that exists only to be used against them.

In a benevolent dictatorship, sure, go for a zero-knowledge proof verification as your solution. In the reality of democracy, where politicians are corporate puppets who cloak surveillance laws in "think of the children" to rally support from the masses, we need to convince people to see through the lie and reject the proposals outright while reassuring them that they can protect the children themselves via parental controls. You will never be able to sufficiently inform 50.1% of the population of any country of what zero-knowledge proof even means, let alone convince them to support age verification laws but strictly conditional on ZKP requirements. That level of nuance is far too much to ask of millions of people who are not technically-informed, and idealism needs to give way to pragmatism if we wish to avoid the worst-case scenario.