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Comment by Bukhmanizer | Hacker News Reader

If you didn’t realize that making teens verify their age online meant that everyone had to verify their age and identity online, that’s just a dangerous level of stupidity.

The issue is everyone wants some quick and easy solution when the truth is we’re going to need to get much more intentional as a society about this. Take phone bans. Everyone wants to ban phones from schools/classrooms, but the truth is in a lot of places phones are already banned from school. But we’ve spent the last 3 decades taking away any power from teachers to enforce their rules so kids just do it anyway.

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> If you didn’t realize that making teens verify their age online meant that everyone had to verify their age and identity online, that’s just a dangerous level of stupidity.

And it is completely unnecessary in many cases. There are many cases where a third party cannot give access to something to a minor, but the parent is able to give consent anyway. So give parents the tools they need to tell online services, "hey, this is a child so act accordingly" rather than having the government enter the loop. For example: a web browser can ask the operating system for an age verification token, then relay that token to the website. Given that most operating systems these days have the notion of privilege and most operating systems make it difficult for unauthorized users to gain administrative privileges, it should be reasonably secure.

Of course, there are going to be weaknesses in such a system. On the other hand, there are going to be weaknesses to any system. There are also going to be situations where that level of protection is inadequate, but we're talking about access to controlled substances levels of concern here rather than kids getting access to age inappropriate videos. And chances are it doesn't have to be 100% effective anyhow. It just has to be effective enough to discourage people from targeting minors with age inappropriate content.

It's only unnecessary if you assume the goal is actually protecting children, as opposed to entrenching even more data collection and identity tracking.

There are zero knowledge proof systems that nobody would have a problem with because nobody ever knows who is accessing the content, only that they are allowed or not.

Ironic to call people aware of this stupid.

There's always smart ways to do things. The government will choose the cheapest and hire the most generic IT consulting firm to do it which won't get close. Or if they don't do it themselves, they'll just fine big companies unless they follow an overbearing and forever expanding checklist of requirements where the companies lawyers will be forced to choose the most extreme options or risk exposure.

Meanwhile kids will use VPNs, browser extensions, ID spoofing, piracy, etc will become the norm to bypass it and law abiding adults (including good parents and people without kids) will be burdened with the results.

The parent called people stupid. That was uncalled for and I'm educating them.

I don't support these policies myself.

Zero knowledge proofs don't matter, these verification systems already exist and they require you to show live video of your face to confirm you're the actual living person that matches your credentials.

You could have a completely anonymous tech solution to this, but it doesn't matter, because platforms and governments want video proof of life and identity, and they want to keep the data.

Don't ignore the context of this discussion.

Someone just said anyone who believes in privacy and content restrictions is stupid. Except those two concepts are compatible.

The context of this discussion is political realities of censorship, an area where your theoretical proof of compatibility means nothing.

Since I live in America I should give up on climate change and healthcare and childcare and housing and all forms of protections of rights, because our internal beliefs and goals at all times must always be a reflection of the state of the real world.

You can't hope or advocate for a better future? That's silly.

They are not compatible with political reality. Hate to beat on a cliche, but this is a classic example of the "tech solution to a political problem" trope.

> There are zero knowledge proof systems that nobody would have a problem with because nobody ever knows who is accessing the content, only that they are allowed or not.

If you truly believed that this was going to be the solution that governments were going to use, yes you’re still an idiot. Ok, maybe incredibly naive to be charitable. But still have you paid even the slightest bit of attention to pretty much anything a governmental institution has done in the last 15 years?

And anyone who believes in universal healthcare? Idiot. Voting rights and holidays? Idiot. Civil rights? Idiot. Want to stop climate change, damn, idiot.

Wow, so intellectual you are to say nobody can hold ideals.

What you’re defending is people willingly giving up their own freedoms because they got outraged over something they read on the internet.

And instead of owning up to that fact, saying “oh no, but that’s not what I expected, I expected these laws to affect someone else, not me”.

What on earth is this response

They're repeatedly calling people idiots (despite not understanding the topic at hand) and saying nobody can hold ideology if it cannot be implemented immediately in a political climate. What am I supposed to respond with?

Zero knowledge proofs won't be zero knowledge in practice when organizations the size of governments are involved. They want a backdoor on your devices too (or already have one).

But that's not related? Google already knows when you watch porn through Chrome on an Android, but it's not related to age verification.

zk-SNARK would have worked for age verification while remaining anonymous.

Because ZKPs aren't the whole system.

If it allows regular checking (and they all basically have to), I can determine someone's exact birth date when they become an adult. If a system allows me specifying an age to check (as many do), then I can determine anyone's birth date.

Further the vast majority of people do not understand ZKPs. If some random website asks them to go verify their age by installing software or going to a website that requires them to upload an ID, a good percentage will simply balk. The fear of lack of privacy, regardless of actual privacy, creates a major chilling effect on speech.

The truly galling part is that all of this nonsense only exists because parents won't spend a couple minutes setting up parental control software. For goodness sake, it takes 30 seconds to turn on a filter that blocks all porn on the screen on an iPhone. I have little doubt that if governments required it - or simply paid for it, they could get apple/microsoft/google/etc to modify their parental control software to detect social media as well.

I agree with you, the blocks being done are neither needed nor implemented ethically.

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