[sciencejerk]

It is suspicious to me that "age assurance" is trending EXACTLY as AI agents become capable of autonomously operating a personal computer in the same way a human office worker would.

I'm afraid "age assurance" has nothing to do with "the children".

[sigmoid10]

>It is suspicious to me that "age assurance" is trending EXACTLY as AI agents become capable of autonomously operating

It is not, because your premise is false. This whole thing has been going on for as long as kids have been online. The early 2000s tried (and obviously failed) by using credit cards. The UK tried and failed last decade to ban porn for minors this way. AI tools are probably not even on the radar for the kind of politicians that keep pushing this.

[M95D]

> AI tools are probably not even on the radar for the kind of politicians that keep pushing this.

Forget about the politicians for a bit. There still are many regions on the globe where no age verification is mandatory, yet websites chose to implement it anyway. Why, if not for tracking and bots?

[sigmoid10]

Well, because of things like COPPA I imagine most companies wouldn't want to risk anything here. So unless you have a website that is somehow guaranteed 100% blocking all traffic from the US or American citizens, you may as well implement it. But very few (if any) public websites will fall into that category.

[chii]

> I'm afraid "age assurance" has nothing to do with "the children".

and you should be afraid, very afraid. Because none of these (and other measures to invade privacy) has ever had anything to do with children.

[u1hcw9nx]

The point of ZKP in EU wallet is that it separates checking age and privacy.

You can both give a proof your age and not lose privacy.

[xinayder]

Except that ZKP for sensitive data is far from being a thing, and also, I don't want the fucking government to have anything to do with what sites I access. Period.

Why the hell do I need to login to my digital wallet to access a fucking website???

[dlubarov]

What do you mean? Proving things about sensitive data without revealing it is what ZKPs are for. If you mean that the tech isn't mature enough to be trusted yet, I think there's some truth to that, but it depends on what software we're talking about specifically. Zcash has been in production for almost 10 years now.

[Almondsetat]

The web is not a magical place detached from reality. Wanting absolutely zero goverment involvement (which does not mean spying btw) with it is frankly absurd.

[brigandish]

The web has not had age gating via large-scale government coercion since its inception. To claim that it's absurd to think we can do without it is to detach from that reality, and is itself absurd.

The irony.

[Almondsetat]

I am not making an argument based on tradition. I couldn't care less that the web has not been government-gated for the past X years, because through this logic you should adhere to any dumb tradition or custom humans have ever had. I am concerned with the present and the future of the web's impact on the world, which of course requires government intervention like any other big phenomenon or technology in the history of humanity.

Before snarkily calling "irony", at least understand the topic of discussion and make appropriate comparisons.

P.S.:

Not only is your assumption false, since in its first years the web was only accessible to academics so the gating was implicit, but the internet itself from its beginning to the present day requires heavy governmental intervention and international collaboration to make it work. Do you know what's behind the cables that carry your bytes? The ICANN? The IANA? I hope you never do, if you dislike government involvement this much

[brigandish]

> I am not making an argument based on tradition.

I know, and neither am I. Perhaps you misread my comment.

> I couldn't care less that the web has not been government-gated for the past X years

That is clear.

> because through this logic you should adhere to any dumb tradition or custom humans have ever had

Not only is that statement a non-sequitur, since neither of us is making an argument based on tradition, it's also entirely irrelevant.

> I am concerned with the present and the future of the web's impact on the world, which of course requires government intervention like any other big phenomenon or technology in the history of humanity.

An assertion that is a) going beyond the subject, thus creating a straw man, and b) when applied to that actual subject, completely undermined by my comment.

My actual comment, not the one you appear to have decided to respond to that I haven't written, wouldn't write, and thus doesn't exist.

> Not only is your assumption false, since in its first years the web was only accessible to academics so the gating was implicit

The subject is *explicit* age gating. Nothing implicit, and nothing that isn't age gating is relevant.

> Do you know what's behind the cables that carry your bytes? The ICANN? The IANA? I hope you never do, if you dislike government involvement this much

Firstly, that is snark, but fair's fair I suppose. The irony.

Secondly and much more importantly, I dislike age gating via large-scale government coercion, the subject of this discussion.

Could you respond to that? Specifically, age gating via large-scale government coercion.

[u1hcw9nx]

Web will not have age gating after this either.

The authentication requirements for some web pages have exited for a long time.

[rocqua]

A significant risk with ZKPs is that they can make a lot of explicit control rules palatable by making the side effects much less extreme.

If a company can come up with a reasonable reason to check something, then a ZKP enables that check without wider harm to privacy. But it still gives the narrow harm to privacy that otherwise wouldn’t exist.

Put differently, privacy concerns have shielded us not just from surveillance, but also from powerful control. Control in the form of “you are only allowed X if you meet criteria Y”. With ZKPs, that shield of “why would I tell you enough information to determine Y” stops working. But those conditions on X are harmful more broadly.

Take the US border checks of Social Media. Are those more OK if all of a sudden there’s a ZKP you have to give of never having called Trump a cunt in any private message?