[roenxi]

> 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]

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]

What political philosophies do you think lay claim to these age verification laws?

There are a couple that aren't against it, but to actually implement age controls in the way they are being bought in you basically need to be an authoritarian. Otherwise, you'd be persuaded by arguments like Mullvad's that the social media companies already know how old their users are and don't need a centralised authority to tell them. There are alternatives here that are less authoritarian. Policy makers and the people supporting them don't want to use those approaches, because they support taking a more authoritarian approach.

These policies, in practice, are literally authoritarian policy. It isn't the most extreme form of it, but it isn't authoritarianism because I don't like it. I don't like it because, objectively, this is authoritarianism and authoritarianism tends not to work. Otherwise all the research I've seen suggests that kids shouldn't be using social media. If this wasn't likely to take out huge chunks of the healthy political dialog on the way it'd probably be tolerable.

If it is manipulation to point out that this is part of a class of strategies that have a history of horrible failures, then you have a very confused understanding of what manipulation is. This is an absolutely classic authoritarian "we can't just let people talk to each other however they like without the authorities being involved" play.

[palata]

> but to actually implement age controls in the way they are being bought in you basically need to be an authoritarian

I don't see how this sentence can make any sense at all in the context of ZKPs. Can you elaborate?

> you'd be persuaded by arguments like Mullvad's that the social media companies already know how old their users are and don't need a centralised authority to tell them

How do the social media companies already know? Because they track everything? But if they ban kids, they don't track them anymore, do they? Or are you saying that social media companies should be able to track everybody everywhere, such that they can profile them and ban them from accessing social media?

> I don't like it because, objectively, this is authoritarianism

You would have to explain that. The government provides a service that allows you to prove that you are old enough without the government learning anything from you and without the service learning anything other than the fact that you are old enough, and you call that "objectively authoritarianism"?

[roenxi]

> I don't see how this sentence can make any sense at all in the context of ZKPs. Can you elaborate?

The reason people are getting called authoritarian is because ZKP proofs are a massive and obvious improvement on what is actually being implemented. Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs? The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do.

I wouldn't be using an American IP right know if my local age verification laws required ZKPs.

> How do the social media companies already know?

They ask you your age when people sign up. That's good enough for me - I'm not an authoritarian. I'm not out to create a watertight way to stop people communicating if they want to.

> You would have to explain that. The government provides a service that allows you to prove that you are old enough without the government learning anything from you and without the service learning anything other than the fact that you are old enough, and you call that "objectively authoritarianism"?

I haven't seen anyone complaining about that. Sounds like a non-issue. Why would anyone over the age of around 18 care? You should consider reading the linked article if you don't understand what the complaints people are making are. The reason you don't see any authoritarianism is you haven't actually looked at how the schemes are being implemented.

Mullvad isn't writing this blog post because of the huge numbers of 12-16 year olds shelling out cash to them. It is because the authoritarians are making a play to destroy a sizeable chunk of the open web with a likely follow up of cracking down on free speech.

[palata]

> Can you point to anywhere that has implemented ZKPs?

The EU initiative explicitly mentions ZKP: https://ageverification.dev/.

> The linked article suggests that is quite hard to do.

It's technical, just like getting E2EE right. Doesn't mean it's hard to use, as proven by the fact that billions of people use E2EE in WhatsApp and Signal without even realising it.

> I'm not an authoritarian. I'm not out to create a watertight way to stop people communicating if they want to.

You seem to have a Manichaean view of the world. There is room for nuance between "let kids lie by clicking 'yes'" and identity verification.

> You should consider reading the linked article

Did you read it? There is a whole section that is titled "The Zero-Knowledge Proof alternative and the EU".

> The reason you don't see any authoritarianism is you haven't actually looked at how the schemes are being implemented.

I actually have. Have you? Seems like you haven't read the article. Mullvad is complaining about the fact that the app seems to support both ZKP and identity verification, and they criticise the infrastructure enabling identity verification. And then some more "slippery slope" arguments that are worth what they are worth (with the same kind of reasoning, we shouldn't have gun control, because the next step is to control everything, right?).

> Mullvad isn't writing this blog post because

Mullvad sells some kind of privacy (as much as a VPN can offer), and here they share their opinion about age verification. With which I mostly agree: the only viable age verification implementation is through ZKP. I tend to disagree with the slippery slope argument, and that "the government abuses everything they can". If you think like that, doesn't that make you an anarchist?

[roenxi]

You have misunderstood the article. It says, and I quote,

> Right now, the EU app does not have ZKP functionality, contrasting Ursula von der Leyen’s claim that the app ”is technically ready to be used”. But more importantly, the app is currently designed to always function without ZKP technology; if ZKP is unavailable, the app falls back to a non-ZKP model.

So you have failed the test of pointing at somewhere that has implemented ZKP. You can try again if you like.

> I actually have. Have you? Seems like you haven't read the article. Mullvad is complaining about the fact that the app seems to support both ZKP and identity verification,

Again, this is factually wrong. And it is why people are getting labelled as "authoritarian" - they proposed a system that sounded decent, then they actually implemented something else that is a standard authoritarian ID system with a fig leaf for people to pretend they didn't. As was expected, given that this always looked like an ID card play with a false moustache.

> I tend to disagree with the slippery slope argument

They haven't made it up the hill yet, they're already down the slope. the EU implementation doesn't use ZKP. That's a big part of why they're being included as one of the authoritarian forces in this push that people are upset about.