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Comment by bigbugbag | Hacker News Reader

one has to understand that the point is not to protect kids, it never is, but to control online activities. also this is not an organic law, this is the result of intense lobbying by transnational corporations such as facebook, pushing hard for this and there are reports from inside the parliament that this is rushed to be release ASAP despite not being ready or properly tested.

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Except that this kind of age verification is not what "transnational corporations such as Facebook" is pushing for. In fact such a system is probably the worst for them: they can't use the token for tracking, and it can make it harder for them to target children because it is likely to come with further restrictions.

What the tech giants want is OS level attestation. They want to control what you can install on your device, to me the thing to avoid at all costs. This is not it, this is an open source app that you can run anywhere.

The proposed solution is the closest you can get to one that is designed to protect kids more than to control online activities. The weakness of the system, where a determined kid can get through is a feature, not a bug! More than that and it becomes more about control and less about kids (who will get through no matter what).

I am not commenting on how necessary age verification is. Personally, I am all for a wide open internet but many people actually want to "protect the children". The argument wouldn't be used as a justification for surveillance laws if they didn't.

These companies are pushing for it, just as far as humanely possible from them. They're not in the business of protecting kids, but in the business of the plausible deniability.

Start here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47361235

And here's from the larger organisation, from another angle: https://techoversight.org/2025/07/29/bloomberg-meta-google-l...

> This is not it, this is an open source app that you can run anywhere

The service for EU age verification app requires Google Play Integrity API check. So as much as you "can" run the app itself anywhere, you are forced to do it on whitelisted build of an OS on a whitelisted device.

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