oh good, and your authoritarian government can know you're in the closet and trying to figure out how to leave the country, too!
no, fuck this idea so hard. if this is inevitable, our duty is to build technology that defeats it
no, fuck this idea so hard. if this is inevitable, our duty is to build technology that defeats it
mourn the loss of the internet we knew and be ready to sacrifice ease of use to return to lower-tech/still-underground options.
The answer, therefore, is not bitching on the internet about all the wet blankets who only see negative outcomes, but acknowledging that everything we know needs to end eventually including ourselves, and balancing optimism for the short term with cynicism for the long term. And thus discovering that a healthy cynicism for the future predictions is probably appropriate, unless you truly want to live forever and have infinite energy for everything. But that's a god.
From my perspective, negative expectations do have a higher chance of turning out real, but because negative expectations most often are just code for human misalignment. We have some philosophical, instinctual, or aesthetic (etc.) preferences, but then reality is always going to be broader than that. So you're bound to hit things that are in misalignment. It takes active effort to cultivate the world to be whatever particular way. But this is also why I find simple pleas to cynicism particularly hollow. It comes off as resignation, exactly where the opposite is what would be most required.
Naive implementations are easy and cheap. And, if these tools and their entire software tree is not open-source, we cannot verify it's security.
We just have to trust that the developers are good at what they're doing. When every company under the sun has had multiple data breeches, I'm not too keen to do that.
Open-source the entire stack, show me a few white papers proving it's cryptographically sound, then I'll consider it. Until then, we should do with these tools what they deserve: being shoved up the government's ass.
Second, if a porn website, social media, video game or whatever other thing regulators want to discourage people visiting kicks you off into an age verification takes requires you to some system/site, even an independent one, that requires you upload your ID, a fair number of people will simply refuse simply due to lack of understanding in how it works and trust that it actually is anonymous.
Third, every implementation I've seen doesn't work for some/all non-citizens/tourists.
And finally and more importantly, the ease at bypassing those systems means it's unlikely to stop anyone underage and ultimately is no better than existing parental control software, so all one is doing is restricting speech for adults.
- [2025-04-29] https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
- [2025-07-03] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...
- [2025-06-11] https://zeroknowledge.fm/podcast/363/
this is supposed to be HACKER news, not fucking bootlicker news
There are real problems that haven't been fixed; the driver's license concept correctly implemented might be better than continuing down this path. I view it as we can make a good standard; or let a bad standard be dictated.
Obviously. Why do YOU think I'm angry-posting about it on the orange shithole site with the username "dingnuts" ?
That doesn't stop cloudflares marketshare takeover. It doesn't stop CAPTCHA which will filter out bots using these ids. It provides an easy method for hackers to use. It filters out the curious kids.
In the end it solves nothing and creates more problems.
Clicking through some captchas and installing an adblocker just isn't the hard life you're trying to claim it is.
In an internet driver's license system, remember that your computer would have to be locked down, and only able to access government-approved websites using government-approved clients - something like they have in China, or like using an iPhone but worse.
Once the ability for any site to verify your identity was set up, all sites would have to verify your identity, or lose their own verification, under one of many standard excuses like protecting the children.