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Comment by boomlinde | Hacker News Reader

Would social networks accepting Danish users have to implement the other end of that, or will they also be allowed to use less privacy-oriented age verification solutions (e.g. requesting a photocopy of the user's ID)?

It seems to me like it's either a privacy disaster waiting to happen (if not required) or everyone but the biggest players throwing out a lot of bathwater with very little baby by simply not accepting Danish users (if required).

The wording on the page also makes it sound like their threat model doesn't include themselves as a potential threat actor. I absolutely wouldn't want to reveal my complete identity to just anyone requesting it, which the digital ID solution seems to have covered, but I also don't want the issuer of the age attestation to know anything about my browsing habits, which the description doesn't address.

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> everyone but the biggest players throwing out a lot of bathwater with very little baby by simply not accepting Danish users (if required).

The biggest players in social media are precisely the ones that this law is targeting.

No one in charge of implementing this law is going to care whether some Mastodon server implements a special auth solution for Danish users or not, they are going to care that Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc. do so.

> No one in charge of implementing this law is going to care whether some Mastodon server implements a special auth solution for Danish users or not, they are going to care that Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc. do so.

And if that little Mastodon server ends up hosting some content that is embarrassing or offensive to the Danish authorities, laws like this will surely not be used to retaliate...

Arbitrarily and selectively enforced laws seem like an obviously bad thing to me. If the government can nail me for anything, even if they practically don't, I'll be very wary of offending or embarrassing the government.

Why do you think it's going to be arbitrary?

The law will obviously be framed in such a way as to hit the targets it is supposed to hit, avoid collateral damage. It's not like complete amateurs are writing our laws.

That it's going to be arbitrary is your own assessment. You said that "No one in charge of implementing this law is going to care whether some Mastodon server implements a special auth solution for Danish users or not, they are going to care that Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, etc. do so."

I responded by explaining why that wouldn't be a good thing.

Have you changed your mind on that point or are you simply not keeping track of your argument? Either way there can't be an honest discussion whether you have the memory of a goldfish or are deliberately ignoring what you've said.

I am talking about the purpose of the law and the way it is written. It's not hard to create a law that only targets the bigger services, just make it apply to entities with a daily user count above N. A law isn't a headline on Hacker News, it's a carefully written document.

> I am talking about the purpose of the law and the way it is written. It's not hard to create a law that only targets the bigger services, just make it apply to entities with a daily user count above N.

Why would they, though, if "no one in charge of implementing this law is going to care whether some Mastodon server implements a special auth solution for Danish users or not"? The EU CSAR proposal (which Denmark seem very much on board with) doesn't make such exceptions, so why should this law?

> A law isn't a headline on Hacker News, it's a carefully written document.

This is a non sequitur, and also pure speculation.

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