[palata]

If you think that there is a need for new technology to identify people, I suggest you wake up and start getting informed about surveillance capitalism.

There is absolutely no need for new technology to track people, it's there already.

Also I feel like a big reason for age verification is social media. Many countries are trying to prevent kids from accessing social media (because we know it's bad for them), and age verification is the way to do that.

Badly implemented, age verification is bad. But there are ways to implement it in a privacy-preserving manner, which wouldn't make the current state of surveillance capitalism worse.

[dmantis]

People who are actually interesting, are often aware of that fact and avoid surveillance at the moment. You can use tor/i2p, proper VPN setups, VMs, alternative mobile ROMs and other tech and cut most of the fingerprints, trackers and identification. Pretty sure the trash from state agencies doesn't like that.

But the current push from all sides to provide id for everything and remote attestation through Google and apple will make the alternatives very hard to use as it basically cuts such people from the economy altogether.

[cess11]

Need is a very strong word. I'd call it a desire. Currently you can often identify people, sure, but there's hassle involved. What they want to do is to plug in a private corporation separate from whatever service that is likely to be more loyal with the state apparatus than the service, or else it is easily switched out for another.

And corporations are having issues discerning bots from people without making access to their services a fuss or dependent on possibly idealistic and troublesome open source projects, like Anubis.

It's truly, absolutely, not about "age verification". If it were about protecting kids from harm they'd take money from corporations post factum that are offending. Instead they're preparing to spend a lot of money. You could also look at who is heavily lobbying for this, you'll find it is fascist tech oligarchs from the US. They couldn't care less about kids except for obscene or profitable purposes. It would be weird for them to be cosy with epsteinian networks of power and at the same time be mindful about the wellbeing of children.

[palata]

> Currently you can often identify people, sure, but there's hassle involved

You vastly underestimate the current state of surveillance capitalism.

> You could also look at who is heavily lobbying for this, you'll find it is fascist tech oligarchs from the US.

Go in the street, and ask a bunch of random people: "If there was a way to prevent kids from accessing stuff that is bad for them, and it had no downsides. Would you want it?". I'm absolutely certain that not only fascists will say they would want it.

[1dontknow]

Well why did you say to them it doesnt have downsides? It has downsides and a very essential one like privacy.

[palata]

> Well why did you say to them it doesnt have downsides? It has downsides and a very essential one like privacy.

It is possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving manner. So... you're wrong here.

[buzer]

No one is doing it that way though. Also to be truly privacy-preserving you cannot rely on anything that requires any specific OS (especially Android or iOS) as every single OS requires some compromises to privacy.

The only privacy-preserving (effective) age verification is asking user if they are over 18 and requiring that they answer truthfully under penalty of perjury. Then prosecute the kids who claim they are over 18. For reason or another no one seems to be pushing for that option.

[palata]

> No one is doing it that way though

Well it exists in Privacy Pass, which is deployed in production. And there are countries that are currently actively looking into privacy-preserving age verification. I don't think that "I keep saying that age verification fundamentally leaks your ID, which is wrong, but it's still valid because nobody will notice" is a good argument.

> The only privacy-preserving (effective) age verification is asking user if they are over 18 and requiring that they answer truthfully under penalty of perjury.

I disagree, I think that there could be a sane debate around ZK age verification, if we could elevate it to that.

[tdeck]

There are a lot of things that most people in the street want that aren't even on the road map to happening, so you have to ask yourself why this thing (which isn't hardly anyone's top motivating issue) is gaining traction.

[palata]

> this thing (which isn't hardly anyone's top motivating issue)

Do you have kids growing up with social media?

My experience is that parents with kids growing up with social media generally care about whether or not social media are bad for their kids. And generally, parents try to give kids a smartphone and access to social media as late as possible, generally when "everybody else has it" and it feels like it becomes counter-productive to make an outlier out of your kid.

I wouldn't say nobody cares. If anything, I think most parents would care a lot more about limiting access to social media than about privacy. It's pretty obvious that nobody gives a shit about privacy.

[cess11]

OK, so make an argument.

[palata]

My argument is: it is possible to do privacy-preserving age verification, and that technology is already deployed (look at Privacy Pass). We should acknowledge that and stop claiming that the age verification issue is the same as the E2EE one, because it is NOT.

And then we could maybe have a constructive debate about whether or not we as a society want that technology. That would be more interesting than "if I keep yelling that it's fundamentally stupid, maybe people on the other side will start believing it".

[cess11]

You're still just stating your opinions. What do you mean by "it is possible"? Are you sure there are states that are privacy respecting enough to actually be able to, or have all the relevant states broken down walls between government agencies that would shield citizens from secret surveillance and registers?

[palata]

> You're still just stating your opinions.

No, I'm talking about cryptography. That is, maths.

When I say that it is possible to encrypt a message in a way that only the receiver can read it, and the server relaying it cannot, it is not an opinion. I am stating a fact. Zero knowledge proofs are maths, too.

> What do you mean by "it is possible"?

I mean that there are maths that do exist that enable it. There is code that is already written that does it every day. It does exist.

But nobody can be arsed to spend a few minutes getting informed before complaining. It's not just cryptography: people who are very vocal against 5G usually believe that "it boils your blood" or some variant of it, people who are very vocal against vaccination usually have absolutely no idea how it works, that's just how it is. It is frustrating, I guess I just have to accept it.

Saying "it's not possible to do age verification in a privacy-preserving manner" is like saying "it's not possible to deploy 5G in a way that doesn't burn people": it is at best uninformed, possibly just manipulative. Sure, it's possible to burn someone with a strong enough radio signal. But the fact remains that it is possible to deploy 5G in a way that does not burn people, and 5G is nothing special in that regard (it's just "electromagnetic waves", which is a well-known physics concept).

There would be a sane debate to have around 5G (e.g. ultra-consumerism or whatever), but I have never, EVER heard it. The 5G debate is "uninformed people claiming it boils your blood" versus people who find it useful and rightly don't believe the bullshit claims of the first group.

The age verification debate is "uninformed people claiming that it is impossible" versus people who find it useful, and can rightly dismiss the claims of the first group, because really, it is possible.