Far better to promote device controls than service ID checks.
* It allows parents to decide what age to allow kiddo to see certain content, not the state.
* It allows others to restrict content too. E.g. a gambling addict who doesn't want to see gambling content.
* It has no risk of leaks etc for adults.
I'd like to see laws mandating that service provides respect a new content restriction header or something like that.
seanalltogether · 2h ago
I completely agree. Android devices already have rudimentary access controls for kids through Family Link. I'd much prefer governments put pressure on Google, Apple and Microsoft to provide full control of locking down devices, apps and websites that can be managed through a kind of family service. Let me lock things down using government supplied blocklists, or google, apple blocklists with the ability to selectively enable whatever i want for the kids.
trinix912 · 3h ago
But wouldn’t that be too easy to counterfeit? Or if it were handled by a special government-approved piece of software that’s then just DRM all over again.
stebalien · 2h ago
Counterfeit what? This is about labeling and filtering: the device doesn't present an ID, the device prevents the user from accessing content with/without specific labels if so configured.
Specifically, governments mandate that:
1. Websites/apps/etc. MAY label content (via headers) indicating when their content/service is/isn't appropriate for some specific audience (e.g., children) according to X/Y/Z regulations. Websites/apps/etc. MUST NOT incorrectly label their content.
2. Devices that can access the internet must not be sold directly to miners without parental consent.
3. Devices that can access the internet must include parental control software can be configured to allow/forbid all apps/content that may contain content not deemed suitable for children (in the jurisdiction where the device is sold).
Importantly, this kind of solution solves the "borderless internet" problem:
1. Device sellers are regulated in the jurisdiction where they sell the device.
2. Service providers take no (additional) per-jusrisdiction responsibility until they start labeling their content. By labeling their content, they are claiming to abide by specific regulations.
ndriscoll · 2h ago
> 3. Devices that can access the internet must include parental control software can be configured to allow/forbid all apps/content that may contain content not deemed suitable for children (in the jurisdiction where the device is sold).
Highly likely to be the end of free software/general purpose computing, which would be quite a bit worse than identifying yourself to companies providing adult material (in a world where ads haven't corrupted everything, you'd identify yourself when paying for it anyway just like any other e-commerce transaction).
WarOnPrivacy · 2h ago
> governments mandate that ... Websites/apps/etc. MAY label content (via headers) indicating when their content/service is/isn't appropriate
Which government? This list of pornographic film studios indicates they reside in many countries.
Past that, the USA alone has thousands of governments. Many have opinions.
scott_w · 15m ago
Unfortunately the UK has demonstrated that it’s quite possible to go after a lot of adult material even beyond our borders.
chmod775 · 1h ago
This might somewhat reliably work for children aged up to ~8, but above that many determined literate children will be able to circumvent these things for themselves and their friends. We had all kinds of tricks up our sleeves to play RuneScape in CS class and read various video game guides that would have normally been blocked by word filters in the school's proxy server. How are you going to stop a kid who figured out how to boot some Linux from portable media and is now handing these out to their entire friend group? At some point your only option is to closely watch them every second, but then what's the point of all that electronic parental control nonsense in the first place?
The only reason these kinds of controls may appear to work is that younger children simply aren't interested in the stuff that may be blocked.
thomassmith65 · 2h ago
The internet badly needs a standard system for people to verify their age*, identity**, etc but it's a terrible idea for that system not to be pseudonymous.
* as in "I am over n years old", not "my exact birthday is nnnn-nn-nn"
** as in "I am a unique human you know as <uuid>", not "I am John Q Smith"
JohnFen · 1h ago
> "I am a unique human you know as <uuid>", not "I am John Q Smith"
That just makes <uuid> an identifier like your name. <uuid> becomes yet another piece of PII, increasing your exposure.
Further, it will even inevitably get linked to your other identifiers in various databases over time. This problem is why pseudoanonymization isn't really that useful.
thomassmith65 · 51m ago
The idea isn't that a human gets one uuid to be used everywhere, but that each site gets one of the human's many uuids. Someone still needs to track which uuids belong to which human, but at least it's not a random, possibly insecure or disreputable website.
Almondsetat · 1h ago
This can only be done by delegating the verification to national eIDs systems. This way the website simply asks the government: is this person >18? and the trusted government platform can reply without disclosing additional information.
ndriscoll · 1h ago
It doesn't need to be a national system. The relying party could give the browser a list of acceptable token providers to choose from, and the browser selects one it knows the user has already registered with, for example. There's no reason a private party couldn't be considered trusted to perform identity verification (e.g. banks have KYC requirements already).
wmf · 1h ago
Realistically the only acceptable sources are government. For example in the US you basically need a state ID (driver's license), military ID, or passport. And the state systems are now federally regulated (Real ID).
ndriscoll · 21m ago
The bills I've seen in the US indicate that you need to use a commercially acceptable solution (so don't mandate government), and include regulations for private providers to follow.
jrvieira · 1h ago
Why do you think that's the only way?
Almondsetat · 1h ago
Your public, verifiable identity already exists because the government keeps track of it. Why would a third party need to be involved if the infrastructure is already available straight from the source? Also, if multiple providers existed, how could platforms avoid duplicates, in case of need?
JohnFen · 20m ago
It's not the only way, but since the government already has lots of personal information about you, having them also do the ID thing means that I wouldn't need to expose myself to yet another company or otherwise expand my attack surface.
Apple and Google are working on that but it isn't available everywhere yet so a lot of sites are outsourcing age checking to various untrustworthy companies.
delusional · 2h ago
What would you do with <UUID>? How would you verify that you are actually <UUID> or 18 years old?
Tadpole9181 · 1h ago
Zero knowledge proofs from a provider who has your ID allows validation without data leaking.
Though creates other issues with, i.e. selling validation tokens.
docdeek · 2h ago
I know it is not the same as ‘prove who you are to surf’ but when I open the page and am greeted with a note that explains that, in exchange for reading the article, The New Yorker will share my personal information with 219 different partners, you sort of wonder where the anonymity they are so worried about has gone.
>> "We, and our 219 partners use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. We may also use these technologies to gauge the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, target advertisements, and analyze website traffic. Some of these technologies are essential for ensuring the proper functioning of the service or website and cannot be disabled, while others are optional but serve to enhance the user experience in various ways. We, in collaboration with our partners, store and/or access information on a user's device, including but not limited to IP addresses, unique identifiers, and browsing data stored in cookies, in order to process personal data."
xethos · 1h ago
The writers and editors understand that privacy is central to their lifestyle and work - few sources will allow exclusively on-the-record interviews.
The accountants that pay the writers and editors believe that, to make the math work of "Cheap enough that a viable number of subscribers will pay", the subscription must be ad-subsidized.
These are two seperate groups, and lumping them in to call them both hypocritical is lazy in thought, or ignorant in recognizing that the New Yorker is more than one person. Yes, change should start at the paper running the story. The fact they haven't yet convinced all their subscribers or accountants, and ~~possibly not even~~ presumably the public at large, does not detract from their point.
Edited, but struck-through instead of deleted
Zealotux · 3h ago
Is there any serious investigation or a good article that explain how these ID check laws got simultaneously rolled out in the UK, EU and Australia? As well as the main payment processors heavily restricting adult content? It seems like there are remarkably powerful groups pushing for these things, or maybe it really is just happenstance.
tmnvix · 11m ago
You might find the following video useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ2AokZujC0 (The UK’s Online Safety Act didn’t come from Parliament or the public) Jump to about the 4:20 mark to skip the history of Carnegie.
The video makes the case that it was private interests that pushed for this in the UK - specifically the Carnegie 'charity'. They apparently defined the problem (i.e. what 'online harms' are), lobbied for it to be addressed, and then largely authored the policy/solution.
Edit: The claim is also made that Carnegie operates parallel influence and alignment campaigns globally. That may reveal the link you are looking for.
Jommi · 13m ago
the mandate existed forever in different levels, but now they actually finally ended up deciding on waht kind of techinical implementation would exist.
donmcronald · 3h ago
Canada too. It’s corporate interests that want a government mandated customer base with a legal requirement to participate. Get ready for verified id on everything, and to pay for it via taxes.
trinix912 · 2h ago
An additional consequence is it’s going to be significantly harder to set up an alternative social media site, as you’ll have to play by these rules which might end up favoring a certain provider’s implementation, or delegating the government the ability to shut down your site on a whim (even if through a court). This, I think, is way more concerning than having to ID your account on Meta.
pmontra · 1h ago
Next step: mandate that every web site verifies the identity of its users, no matter the content, whether users register or not. Goodbye old style personal static sites and blogs. Everyone forced to join a content silo or serve no content.
chamomeal · 1h ago
Yeah I’m wondering the same thing. I feel like this came out of nowhere, all at once.
Before this I was only aware of a few instances of ID checks, like Utah and pornhub, or something?
Now laws are getting passed all over the place. Is this something that people really want? I guess I’m just out of loop?
DoneWithAllThat · 32m ago
Anecdotal but my UK friends ere blindsided by this too, at least a number of them who are otherwise quite clued in. They said they felt like they had no idea this was coming at all.
dillondoyle · 1h ago
There is definitely a thread globally.
Plenty of these groups pushing these laws are already publicly linked via $ and staffer revolving door: DonorsTrust -> SPN -> ALEC -> CLI -> Heritage -> $ from Dunn & Wilks and other christian millionaires -> continue the circle etc. [6, 7]
Their playbook - which is sadly working:
- far right christian anti-porn, anti-lgbtq crusaders use 'child safety' or revenge porn to organize public outrage and direct that pressure on the choke point of payment processing. For example the writer of the viral pornhub article worked for anti-porn christian group that also helped pass extreme anti lgbtq laws in africa, such as Uganda's gays “should be castrated” insanity [1]
- Recent Australian version of this same story. Again, the buried lede is going after queer content (not by accident) [2]
- Same in the UK: ADF creates UK branch. CARE, Christin Concern, etc. Same anti-porn, anti-lgbt. Same tactics and messaging. Also throw in anti-abortion. [3, 4]
- Groups like Heritage & ALEC & SPN put out the blueprint and write the actual laws. Copy paste across red states. For instance Project 2025 advocates sending porn producers to jail & again backdoors targeting of Trans and queer people [8]. Another example in Tennessee [5]: define drag as adult only. impose narrow worldview that any gender expression not assigned at birth is wrong and adult only (pornagraphic). Just throw away 1a and dare scotus to blink on law 'loopholes' with private right of action b.s.
It's all just to inflict their christian worldview and 'morals' on the rest of us.
You know the porn thing is just a b.s. excuse to get their foot in the door because only a couple of large companies like Aylo (formerly Mindgeek) comply. They are the only porn sites with the $ and morals to actually moderate in the first place.
Whilst the other 99% of the internet is just an open stream of content with no care & no humans in the loop.
Therefore it's all just virtue signaling at best, and personally I see a very organized sinister plot to impose christian rule. Could you imagine if it was a muslim group organizing at this scale? Sharia anyone?
Ah yes, the eternal horseshoe of censorship, where both ends of the political spectrum discover they're passionate defenders of "the children" and "democracy" whenever it's convenient for controlling what others can see and say.
The same payment processor chokepoints and platform pressure tactics you're describing have been gleefully wielded by progressive activists to deplatform "dangerous misinformation," "hate speech," and "extremist content."
Remember when everyone cheered Mastercard and Visa cutting off WikiLeaks? Or Cloudflare and Kiwifarm? Or celebrated when payment processors started dropping anyone deemed "problematic"? The infrastructure for financial censorship didn't materialize overnight when Christian groups discovered it existed.
The left pioneered the modern "advertiser pressure" playbook - organizing campaigns to get platforms to ban everything from "Russian disinformation" to "COVID misinformation" to whatever qualified as this week's "stochastic terrorism." The same NGO-to-government pipeline exists there too: activist groups coordinate with sympathetic staffers, push model legislation, and pressure companies through ESG scores and brand safety concerns.
Both sides have their "think of the children" trump cards. One side waves "grooming" and "pornography," the other waves "radicalization" and "harmful content." Both genuinely believe they're saving society from moral decay, they just disagree violently on what that decay looks like.
The real tragedy is that both camps are so busy fighting their culture war that they've handed unprecedented censorship power to payment processors and tech platforms who answer to no one. Congratulations to both teams - you've successfully created the infrastructure for whoever wins to impose their vision of morality on everyone else.
jwr · 2h ago
I find it sad that all these problems have solutions already (see for example https://sovrin.org). You do not need a full ID or exact birthday to perform a check for age.
As usual, mental laziness means that complexity kills the acceptance of good solutions and instead we legislate privacy-invading garbage.
8organicbits · 1h ago
The link appears to be for a project that shutdown.
thinkingemote · 2h ago
It seems very coincidental but totally unnoticed by many that this is occurring during discussions about AI bot activity and how to control access. ID access is a human check fundamentally with an on the surface primary aim of age checking.
To me its noteworthy that it seems that most of those who would agree that checking for human vs bot is a Good Thing are very opposed to checking for human vs human. It's advocating for the same tools, same machines, same algorithms.
I like to try to find a metaphor (or is it a simile?): it's a little bit like building surveillance and spying tools for nation states and campaigning and protesting to spying by nation states on your own person. It could be like protesting against selling arms to armies while advocating for personal gun ownership.
sharpshadow · 48m ago
It’s really hard to imagine getting asked for an ID online and outside those mentioned countries not noticeable at all that something that fundamentally changed. It certainly affects the behaviour of the person if they showed their ID before and can easily be taken to responsibility. Would not even be surprised if they try to prosecute people who faked it to access online content.
tantalor · 45m ago
The old way of using driver's license (or any ID) to verify age is the antipattern.
We shouldn't replicate that in technological solutions.
ID is for "who you are", which doesn't matter for the types of things we use for age checks (bars, etc.)
There should be a way to verify your age without showing ID.
Sure, ID can do that. It is sufficient, but it should not be necessary.
DoneWithAllThat · 33m ago
How do you propose a system to be effective that proves you are over a particular age but also does not prove that you are you? In other words I don’t see a way to solve the problem of needing both proof of identity and proof of age to accomplish proof of age.
Jommi · 12m ago
great time to build fine tuned open source passport and "alive" face generation models
stego-tech · 4h ago
I’ll say it again: the fact an adult has to sign up and pay for internet service and devices that can access those services should be all the age verification needed, full stop.
If parents don’t want kids getting into mischief online, then they need to restrict device and network access appropriately.
The internet was never intended for children, and we need to stop placing the onus on other adults to police themselves instead of on parents to police their children.
jajuuka · 4h ago
I disagree. The internet was intended for children. It was intended for everyone. Getting access to information, learning material, how to's, class work, doing class work, research, etc are just as much a part of the internet as surfing Pornhub or gambling.
I do agree with everything else though. The onus is on the parents to do their job as a parent. If the goal is to protect children then improve the tools available to parents. They already have tons but the work is never done.
stego-tech · 3h ago
The internet was never intended for children. It was intended for everything you said above, but with the intention for adults to access that content and self-moderate.
For kids, we had services like Prodigy and Compuserve that distilled the internet into approved content suitable for minors. We can - and probably should - go back to that, rather than throwing youth onto the regular internet and letting them fend for themselves online.
WarOnPrivacy · 2h ago
> The internet was never intended for children.
There are no records indicating the relevant early engineers said this or felt this way.
I imagine someone did down the road but then we're into "Some guy had an opinion about the internet" territory.
antonymoose · 3h ago
I disagree with your agree. While the “buck stops (t)here” with a parent, we also live in a society with rules and expectations around what a youth can access and what there is expectation on all of us to play by those rules.
My child cannot walk into a gas station and buy beer or cigarettes, cannot buy liquor, cannot buy a machine gun, cannot walk into an adult book store or a strip club, cannot operate a motor vehicle.
If you, an adult, aid and abbet my child in any of these activities you’re likely going straight to jail.
You do not magically get a pass because “the internet.” We live in the real world, with laws, with rules, with social expectations. It’s time for the free pass to end.
atmavatar · 2h ago
A child also can't obtain a credit card and pay to hook up an internet connection on their own.
If you want a true apples-to-apples comparison using your list - you've already purchased beer, cigarettes, liquor, a machine gun, adult books, and a motor vehicle and brought them all home. At that point, it is your responsibility as a parent to ensure your children do not use any of them. Why should internet access be any different?
What you're really asking for is an adult other than you to be present in your house to ensure your children don't use things that you don't want them to. That's called a nanny. Unfortunately, the way in which you want this to work is for every house hooked up to the internet to be required to have a nanny.
No thank you.
SpicyLemonZest · 2h ago
Internet access should be different because it's fundamentally broader and harder to limit than those things. If most people got their drinks from a machine with a monthly subscription, I would definitely say that the machine should check your ID before dispensing beer. Perhaps it has "parental controls" that let you set a beer password, but this is an incomplete solution; it's not practical for me to audit every drink dispenser my kid might spend time around, and it does nothing to protect children of irresponsible parents who can't be bothered to set it up.
baobun · 50m ago
To make alcohol you need sugar, water, and yeast.
No way is internet access "fundamentally broader and harder to limit" than alcohol access.
GauntletWizard · 2h ago
This is an insane take in a world where you cannot access basic public services, pay bills, or really do business at all without an internet connection. Connecting your house to a public road is not an invitation for biker gangs to throw drug parties in your backyard, and connecting to the internet is not a free-for-all either.
timdev2 · 1h ago
I find your public road network analogy interesting. Should your car require you to prove your age before it will start? How else can we protect your kid (and others) from the dangers of an 8 year old taking the family sedan for a spin?
JohnFen · 1h ago
> in a world where you cannot access basic public services, pay bills, or really do business at all without an internet connection
That world doesn't exist, though (at least not in my part of the US). I don't need the internet to do any of those things.
dfxm12 · 2h ago
As a child I did most of those things offline. Hell, I bought tickets to R rated movies too. I know people who made fake ID's. I've been to parties where the hosting parents didn't care if we had a screwdriver before we were 21. No one went to jail. I could have bought cigs, too, but I was never interested. I had a few family members die horrible smoking related deaths. I'm not sure how this fits in with your analogy, but I dunno, beside accessing free adult material, it's probably easier for a child to do all of those things offline (but even then, lots of people have premium channels with ondemand nudity, too, so who can really say for sure?).
It's not a pass, it's just a reflection of the real world, which is not as rigid with rules and expectations as you are making it out to be. In any case, I'd rather the Internet remain as free, as in speech, as possible. If the cost of that is little Billy sees a nipple on a computer screen while daddy isn't watching, I think we'll be OK with the consequences. The consequences of the alternative is likely worse, and the article goes into this.
throwawayqqq11 · 2h ago
Your argument is a slippery slope bc there is alot of complexity to adress, you are effectively trying to black-list, so putting the burden on the parents will always be a better a solution bc they are simply closer to the root of the problem, so better positioned to white-list.
Not to speak of the risks of a fully deanonymized web, once naiive black-listing doesnt cut it anymore...
And btw, your kid could possibly buy all items you named online today, black markets are a consequence of unmet demand. So what now? Talk about parental oversight or AV for amazon and TOR?
Guthur · 3h ago
The goal has nothing to do with children, this is control.
The UK has a long long history of over reach with all of theses initiatives.
The UK governments is desperate to keep a increasingly fragile society from boiling over and their natural inclination is to censor, it's what they have always done.
jajuuka · 1h ago
Unfortunately this isn't just a UK only issue. EU has passed similar rules and many US states have as well. Google is going to run it's age verification program in the US this month as well for everyone on Youtube. If the AI thinks you're 13 or younger then it will prevent many features until you send them government ID. So a lot of people are dealing with this dystopic idea of handing over personal information to third parties to use the internet.
I will say the UK has a history of really stupid laws like this though so it's not exactly surprising that it would happen. But it's more surprising how it's spread and succeeding in so many places.
TimorousBestie · 3h ago
> The internet was intended for children. It was intended for everyone.
ARPANET and the related early nets were intended for sharing research and sharing scarce computing resources for research purposes.
Everything else was an accident of the telecoms wanting to get their respective beaks wet.
stego-tech · 3h ago
This^
Requiring age verification online would be like requiring my ID every time I wanted to drink a beer I already bought. I already had to give my ID when buying internet service, and again when I got the credit card I use to pay for it, and again for the bank account I use to pay the credit card, and the job that puts money into my bank account, and to buy the car that gets me to and from these places.
If you’ve allowed a minor online without so much as a web filter in place, you’ve already lost the battle. Punishing strangers for your failure to police your own network devices and children is a complete abdication of your responsibilities as a parent.
toast0 · 2h ago
> I already had to give my ID when buying internet service, and again when I got the credit card I use to pay for it, and again for the bank account I use to pay the credit card, and the job that puts money into my bank account, and to buy the car that gets me to and from these places.
I'm not accustomed to providing ID to get internet service. Some providers run a credit check, but many don't. And if they don't check credit, they don't need your ID. At least in the US, there's an army of prepaid cell providers that don't offer credit and don't check ids.
Prepaid credit cards are a thing. Bring some cash to a grocery store, and for a small fee, you can get an internet capable payment method. Or my local credit union offers debit cards for 'teen checking' accounts, but there's no age restriction; they check ID, and I'm pretty sure they require an adult sponsor.
metalman · 1h ago
your both wrong ;) the internet was almost unintentional, anybody but geeks useing it is just an accident......moving forward... it seems that everyone must be given a phone number, an email.address, a web site that functions as a personal repository, and store/business portal, blog, work space, etc,etc and that priviliges acrue, naturaly through time and effort. Kids could be automaticaly tied to and supervised by parents, and be flat out unable to get into the adult web.....and adults would be flat out prevented from partisipating in the kido-verse
cept perhaps parents through,(sigh) moderated forums where they could deal with, the, inevitable.....
Klonoar · 2h ago
It kind of blows my mind that the early internet had explicit carve outs for kids-only spaces (AOL Kids Only or whatever, Yahooligans, etc).
I’m sure someone has tried to bring it back but it’s interesting to me that the public at large seems to have forgotten these ideas.
kylecazar · 4h ago
There's a lot of precedent in the real world to force providers of a service/product to verify the age of the consumer. What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
I think this pov tends to come from people that are nostalgic for the wild west days of the web. It doesn't matter if the internet was not originally intended for children -- they're here, en masse, and now society is looking for solutions.
stego-tech · 3h ago
> What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
Metaphor time:
Consider a liquor store in a physical space, and a porn site on the internet.
The liquor store requires ID at point of sale because it has limited entry and exit into the building. It has physical restrictions making it harder for minors to enter, and harder to exploit their way into accessing age-restricted items. This is because the physical world is always shared by default, and we must make rules securing adults-only spaces in a world that’s intrinsically shared with children.
A digital porn site exists on a realm solely built by adults, that requires adults to access in the first place. A child cannot sign up for an ISP, a child cannot buy their own cellular phone[1], and a child cannot decide to share their coffee shop or library WiFi for free to everyone within range. At some point, a child requires the assistance of adults to enter the internet. That makes the internet a de facto space for adults first, not children, and that is why I vehemently disagree with vilifying the majority of users (adults) just to “protect” kids who will bypass those age checks like they’ve successfully done for decades.
There will always be youth finding a way to procure pornography, drugs, or alcohol underage. The difference with the internet is that it’s by adults, for adults, and that children are guests who should be supervised by adults in their circles - not by policing all the adults online through intrusive surveillance measures.
[1] Children can, of course, use cash or cards to buy prepaid phones and airtime in many countries. I do not think this should be allowed and would be a better venue to restrict access than a surveillance state.
kyledrake · 2h ago
Another really important distinction here is simply that drugs and alcohol damage health, cause cancer, cause brain damage, cause car crashes and kill people, and photons of humans having sex with each other are probably orders of magnitude less harmful and it would require a massive amount of scientific research to prove to me otherwise.
I'm not critiquing your argument, I'm really just sitting here in amazement that the zeitgeist thinks these are of similar harm.
pickleglitch · 4h ago
If a bartender asks to see your driver's license, that's fine. Now imagine a bartender asks to see your driver's license, and then run it through a scanner to capture a digital image of it, which they then store in a folder for the owner to peruse at their leisure. It's not the same thing, at all.
ndriscoll · 1h ago
The difference in this scenario is that bars and retailers can actually do that and it's perfectly legal (AFAIK in the US), while a porn site doing that is explicitly illegal according to all of the bills I've read. If you hand it to a store clerk to read and they scan it real quick, you can't even react before it's done, and then what are you going to do? You have no recourse. The clerk almost certainly can't even remove the information. In addition to the legal side, digital ids do have some protections against this designed in.
kylecazar · 3h ago
100% agreed. Execution matters a lot, and the hope is that ZKP etc gain traction in verification flows to prevent such shenanigans.
KenSF · 3h ago
In the real world, we have many businesses which will look at ones gov't issued ID, most bars for instance. We have other businesses which will record the information off ones ID, most dispensaries for instance. I will go into the first. I will not go into the second. Verifying my eligibility is one thing. Recording my data for later use is a very different thing. I can tell the difference in the real world because I can see the process. Online, it is impossible to tell. Providers can build a reputation for privacy, think Proton.
You say we are looking for solutions. There are better solutions, including privacy preserving solutions, which can work. We just don’t have any of those yet.
kylecazar · 56m ago
I agree, and I advocate for adopting such solutions. I'm definitely not a fan of sending my ID to an arbitrary 3rd party with no visibility into how it will be processed. I am confident that if verification becomes the norm, a good solution will become ubiquitous (whether that's Google's ZKP or something else).
But, dismissing the whole verification effort on principle because "it's the internet and it's inherently for adults" is silly and unrealistic, IMO (not that you were). It's just not the world we live in anymore, the internet is used by everyone, for everything, and we should build accordingly.
baobun · 40m ago
> a good solution will become ubiquitous (whether that's Google's ZKP or something else).
Believing that Google's solution will be truly ZK, interoperable, or good is similarly silly, unrealistic, and not the world we live in anymore. Unfortunately.
cortic · 3h ago
>What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
The most dangerous people on earth who are not in prison are on the internet; It is an adult place. Making it look like a child friendly place will not change this. But it will lure more kids online unsupervised and unprotected.
EA-3167 · 4h ago
One of THE major selling points for the internet is the option of anonymity, is that true for your other examples? I'd add what exactly is the point in this context? For alcohol sales or tobacco sales you can see the rationale in public health, clearly stated data about reducing accidental deaths, road accidents, and violence.
Where is the equivalent here?
kylecazar · 4h ago
In the U.S, to get into an R-rated movie without a parent you need to show ID to prove that you are 17.
But you can watch videos of people being beheaded in subreddits by simply signing in.
My point is that if a society decides that certain content should be age restricted -- it being on the internet shouldn't make the difference.
I largely think that age restriction laws are ridiculous. BUT, I don't think the internet is some special haven, exempt from all of society's standards/laws enforced offline.
yugioh3 · 3h ago
your first statement is not correct. at theaters in the US, ID is only required if the moviegoer appears under 17. there is no blanket ID check nor recorded storage of those IDs.
also worth noting that in most places in the US, it’s not a legal requirement to card, but a industry agreement with the MPAA (self regulation)
EA-3167 · 3h ago
Watching a movie in a theater is... just casual entertainment. The internet is a "place" where billions of people communicate, do business, are entertained, and share confidential information.
I don't think that's a very good comparison, even setting aside the points made in other replies to you.
calvinmorrison · 4h ago
that's also the selling point of the illegal underground gambling strip club speak easy i often go to.
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
It was never about "protecting the children", that's just the glazing they wrap internet censorship in so citizens would swallow it.
Case in point, the same UK politicians who try to burry the Muslim grooming gangs story where kids got harmed, are now suddenly the ones pushing for Internet ID to "protect the children". If they cared so much about the children, why didn't they go after the grooming gangs immediately, instead of trying to hide it.
What they want is internet censorship, to take away the internet freedom of assembly, the ability to control and ban any criticism from the public targeting politicians and the elite the same way they do to mainstream media. No more people taking about political scandals, corruption, illegal immigration, sex scandals, Epstein list, Ukraine, Gaza, law enforcement abuse, mass shootings, etc, they don't give a damn about the kids.
stego-tech · 4h ago
I’m aware, but I go right back to the substance of the original conceit instead of letting myself get dragged into the details; that’s how you get these ghouls accusing you of being a pedophile or claiming you want to show children pornography in the classroom.
You gotta attack the root argument: this space was never intended for children, and it is the sole responsibility of parents to protect their children in adults-only spaces like the internet.
crinkly · 4h ago
Eh use their own hammer against them. Calling someone a pedophile is libel in the UK. Sue them!
stego-tech · 4h ago
Maybe in the UK it is, but not necessarily in other jurisdictions. Besides - and you gotta trust me on this - down that way lies madness, and it’s honestly part of their intent (see: Streisand Effect) by libeling or slandering you.
Healthy, adult-only spaces online have been leading a “no minors” crusade for decades. We bar minors from our spaces, and promptly eject them when discovered. That said, we’re also far more familiar with any politician or puritan with the reality that kids will find a way into adults-only spaces if they really want to be there, and likely succeed because their parents are wholly absent or utterly incompetent at managing their kid’s online presence and access.
This always goes back to the parents. Every single time.
FirmwareBurner · 3h ago
> that’s how you get these ghouls accusing you of being a pedophile or claiming you want to show children pornography in the classroom.
People keep saying this but I've never seen it happen IRL. Probably because previous generation of people who are now parents, grew up with uncensored internet and turned out largely all right, or at least the issues they have (economy, jobs, housing) aren't due to a lack of internet censorship to "protect" them.
>You gotta attack the root argument: this space was never intended for children
That only distract people from the government trying to censor free speech on the internet using kids as a human shield.
stackskipton · 1h ago
> Probably because previous generation of people who are now parents, grew up with uncensored internet and turned out largely all right, or at least the issues they have (economy, jobs, housing) aren't due to a lack of internet censorship to "protect" them.
As Millennial, internet we grew up in is vastly different from internet the kids are growing up in. Our access was different and content pushing was much different.
FirmwareBurner · 43m ago
You're moving away form the core issue again.
Do you think these online ID rules will:
1. actually keep kids safe from bad stuff? kids in the UK already bypassed it, and Instagram and TikTok are already bad for kids and not getting blocked so who's it really protecting?
2. or will it mainly be used by the government to easily doxx and crack down on those who speak against it while kids still can access porn?
stego-tech · 3h ago
> That only distract people from the government trying to censor free speech on the internet using kids as a human shield.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth to that point: we already know this, but we’re the exception to the norm.
Listening to non-technical folks, they genuinely believe the internet is entirely hardcore smut that’s destroying kids and that we’re actively soliciting minors with sexual content. That’s not remotely true, but more people believe that narrative than the technically correct argument that this is all just a mass surveillance ploy by the government to weed out and persecute “undesirables” by wielding sex as a weapon.
So now picture how we sound making the technically correct argument to the masses who believe the narrative: we sound batshit insane, and they won’t listen to us.
Instead if we take the side of faulting absentee parents for failing to police their kids online, then that usually results in their defensive rebuttal of “we both work full-time, and I don’t have the time or skill to do this!”
That’s what we want to hear. That argument can be reasoned with, because they’re correct in their justification, even if the act they’re justifying is wrong. Once they admit that, we can take their side in more constructive ways, like:
* Yeah, tech companies do make it too easy for kids to go online and wade into adult spaces. Big Tech and Social Media companies should do more to curate a child-only space that’s entirely curated rather than throwing them onto the open internet by default
* Yes, the fact everything requires kids to be online in front of a screen is bad, and we should be mandating kids have healthier relationships with technology by limiting their access or promoting better understanding of its functions
* Yeah, a society where both parents have to work full-time to survive does hinder child development and prohibits parents from nurturing their growth in desired ways. We should build a society where one parent can stay home full-time and be the caregiver and mentor children need to thrive
* Yeah, these devices are deliberately complicated to prevent easy moderation by parents of their children, and it’s by design. We should create regulations that make it easier for parents to secure their children’s devices, not make it easier for kids to get online
See? Once we pivot the argument back to, “You’re right in your feelings but wrong in your attack vector, let’s work together on this”, we’ll get more support and allies in building a better solution for everyone.
FirmwareBurner · 39m ago
>Listening to non-technical folks, they genuinely believe the internet is entirely hardcore smut that’s destroying kids and that we’re actively soliciting minors with sexual content.
For the majority of people "the internet" just means Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok, GMail, Amazon and Youtube. There's not much prono stuff there harming kids in order to have the government implement more radical measures than the laws we already have (COPPA in the US, other shit in the EU).
If they'd really want to help kids they would just ban Tiktok and Instagram and all these instant dopamine brainrot apps, not sites where kids might see some breasts.
scott_w · 3h ago
> Case in point, the same UK politicians who try to burry the Muslim grooming gangs story where kids got harmed
Please don’t spread lies to make your point. The current Prime Minister was the DPP who oversaw the prosecution of the Rochdale scandal and worked on changing reporting and investigation. Listen to Andrew Norfolk’s interview with the News Agents if you’d like a citation.
meowkit · 4h ago
And we should be pushing for ZKP verifiable identification.
The problem with ZKPs, especially for age verification in the US, is that it you obviously still need some digital identity to perform the proof against. That not only doesn't exist in the US, but introduces a sensitive identity that like any other can be leaked.
The same is true for cryptocurrency of course but that risk is implicit in holding a private key to spend in the first place.
cmdli · 4h ago
If there is no provable link between the service and the identity, however, there isn't that much harm in the leak itself. It just becomes a list of names and ages which are a dime a dozen on the internet. Hell, if the identity service was the government itself then it would be entirely useless outside of getting a list of people who have a driver's license (is this public info already?)
wmf · 1h ago
In the Google and Apple systems you have to load your driver's license and all its contents and then your phone issues a proof of age. However a bug could leak the entire contents.
pr337h4m · 4h ago
In this case, compromise is equivalent to surrender
nemomarx · 4h ago
I'd prefer zkp if we're doing this at all, but I think you could go simpler still. Google is skipping it for accounts with an associated credit card, that would work in lots of sites really
mindslight · 3h ago
No, we most certainly should not! Zero knowledge proofs are not some magic privacy faerie dust that can be sprinkled around to provide any desired security property.
For this use ZKPs are trivially proxyable, and thus this type of system also requires additional security properties from treacherous computing [0] - specifically remote attestation which prevents your ability to run code of your choosing on your own device.
And Google (et al) are quite eager to supply this type of environment ("Safety" Net, WEI, etc). This is exactly why the new UK system requires the use of a locked down corpo-controlled phone, and why corpos are pushing this idea that there is a "secure" way this can be done.
Essentially they are advertising the cool privacy-preserving half of the system, without mentioning the necessary other half that destroys privacy and freedom.
[0] "trusted" computing in corpo speak. In other words, a crippled model of computing that the corpos can trust us to have.
I wonder when there will be first Generate ID as a Service (GIDaaS). I would expect something like choose state, ID type, pay 10USD in crypto and now I am Joaquim van Ender from Netherlands.
Of course, this will get combated by governments letting tech companies to query IDs against their databases, which inevitably will leak the IDs which will then make this exercise pointless.
Jommi · 8m ago
yup
ryandv · 4h ago
The web is ripe for disruption.
Decades of historical baggage, technical cruft, and now a new set of encumbrances in the form of aggressive state surveillance under the moniker of "regulation;" it's strange to me that there are no movements in this space to replace an aging and decrepit web that has grown increasingly user hostile.
ActorNightly · 3h ago
A lot of the tech "movements" that are all about disruption have leaned heavily conservative in the past decade, and its the conservatives that are implementing these rules.
There was some merit to being anti-establishment in the past under Democratic leadership because for sure there were issues, but thinking that the conservative party is the way out because they are all about personal liberty and freedom, when in reality they are the complete opposite, is why you don't see the same amount of effort being put into this now.
Levitz · 2h ago
>A lot of the tech "movements" that are all about disruption have leaned heavily conservative in the past decade, and its the conservatives that are implementing these rules.
Hard disagree. Look at the reaction from the Tea app, a whole lot of concern for the women and their info, not a peep about the men who didn't even consent in any way. Am I supposed to believe it's conservatives?
Chat control in the EU is also not coming from conservatives, it's a bipartisan issue through and through.
ryandv · 1h ago
Yes well you see, women and the LGBTQ+ are always right and morally infallible; all men are simply subhuman conservative racists. As subhumans they are not entitled to basic human rights or required to provide consent for anything.
Try as you might to refute this progressive axiom in vain; better to simply just double down on an assumption nobody has ever been able to refute, and carry it to its necessary conclusions.
whall6 · 4h ago
should be pretty easy to do once starlink has full global coverage... could easily circumvent ISPs
riffic · 3h ago
Starlink itself is an ISP. so you're going to circumvent an ISP - with an ISP?
whall6 · 3h ago
sure, why not? I'm not saying that I personally could, but the entire network of starlink satellites is owned by one person. Interesting to think about the possibilities at the very least
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
Starlink isn't above government laws the same way how Youtbe, Apple, Google, Facebook and your ISP aren't. If the EU/UK/Australian governments say 'jump', these companies will say 'how high' or face criminal charges. They aren't gonna die on a hill and go to jail to protect your anonymity and privacy when the armed law enforcement show up at their offices with subpoenas. Their business and freedom is more important than your privacy.
You need to talk to push for change in your democratic government, not try to find technical workarounds around government tyranny while going on with your day as if what your government is doing is normal.
tiberius_p · 2h ago
Will we have to share our ID when we connect to Tor too?
wmf · 1h ago
I expect Tor will just be completely blocked in UK/EU/Australia.
radicaldreamer · 40m ago
That’ll come as part of a VPN ban…
mathiaspoint · 4h ago
I'm just going to bounce if you ask for ID and if I can't find a forum I like I'll get a foreign VPS and host it myself.
The only way around that is to kill the internet, good luck recreating North Korea's intranet as a replacement.
WhereIsTheTruth · 4h ago
Can we go back to when the same people kept spitting "social credit, china bad" narrative
Tasteless rulers
jajuuka · 4h ago
We're supposed to be copying the good parts of other countries, not the bad ones. It's definitely mind blowing seeing the pivot from "great firewall of China, they don't have access to open information and that's why we're better." to "we need a great firewall too" in such a short amount of time.
nerdjon · 2h ago
Slightly bothered that it seems like the article is conflating an app/website choosing to implement some form of verification vs a law requiring it.
I think that if a website or app wants to make this choice, they should be allowed too. Obviously we should expect that they have proper security, and we should make the choice on if we want to take that risk. But I think it is a perfectly valid choice by the developer, and users can choose whether or not they think it is worth it or use a competitor that doesn't (or a competitor is created that doesn't).
But the issue of laws requiring it I think is where things have gone too far. So much of this is being framed as "protect the children" but most of it really seems to be fueled from a puritanical "porn is bad" and needing to make it harder to get access too for adults. I really wish we could move past this as a society, stop vilifying it, being ashamed of sex, etc.
And likely throw in some tracking of what people are doing online since now you no longer have the anonymity.
Edit:
If you really truly are trying to "protect the children"... Maybe educate them instead of hiding things from them.
ChrisArchitect · 2h ago
Related:
Ready or not, age verification is rolling out across the internet
All of this so people can pretend to live in another community instead of the one they physically reside in.
For the actual issue, Tea would be better suited with a web of trust system rather than forcing identification audits. If a woman is inviting male accounts then a web of trust would allow the service to shutdown anyone invited from the bad account (similar Lobste.rs bans).
contingencies · 5m ago
Old news. It's kind of telling when the article is published on a paywalled site that was once a newspaper.
anonfordays · 4h ago
The internet will interpret ID checks as damage and route around it.
betaby · 4h ago
How? Please explain in technical details.
ActorNightly · 3h ago
For porn, AI porn is clearly going to be the winner. 4chan has been on this full steam, with guides on how to create it.
For games, piracy is going to be huge again.
For sites, externally hosted websites will gain more traffic.
dt3ft · 2h ago
The dark web is about to gain a whole lot more users.
rolph · 3h ago
the internet is not your browser, or the WWW.
the internet is a connectivity resource that is simply about exchanging data.
those who can work beyond the web browser have thier options, let the web fail is one of them.
The web can be worked around in much the same way it is now, but advancing tech for peer to peer hosting of localized blogs/sites, whiteboards, and indexes of like peers, strong development of IP8 like protocols, is an other.
betaby · 2h ago
I don't buy that. History shows that's not happening. We have fewer independent sites now than we had 20 years ago. Developed countries like UK factually criminalized running forums. 'the internet is a connectivity resource' is less and less true given that sites getting blocked by DPI, DNS and on raw L3 IP addresses by countries like Spain, Italy and many other.
pessimizer · 2h ago
Also, there used to be 10000 ISPs and you'd literally know the the first names of the people who did customer service at yours. Now, like everything in modern capitalism, there are like five.
The government can just turn off the internet for you personally by making a few calls. They could make you show digital id before every access. They could make in a felony to provide internet to somebody on the proscribed list. They could just make a few grants dependent on it, and never make it a law.
People who think the internet is magical have Marvel-movie brain. I'm wondering whether we're going to station troops in fabs to make sure no chips leave that haven't been backdoored, or whether we'll have to register hard drives with the state (with sniffer dogs looking for violations.)
Tor isn't going to save us. Tor is a US Navy project. If Tor and bitcoin weren't useful for the government themselves to do secret communications and money transfers, they could just announce (again) that crypto is terrorism, and shoot people who get caught running exit nodes or mining.
Once in the US, every piece of mail with a book in it was opened, and the book checked to see if it was on a banned list or looked like it should be. They were primarily concerned about birth control information and dirty literature with too many double entendres. Do we really think that no hypothetical future US government would do that over trans, Israel, Russia, Russia, Russia or China? We've done it to keep people from wearing condoms.
Still shocks me that the big cases that broke US censorship in literature were in the mid-60s. Miller's Tropic of Cancer still had the potential to put you in jail in 1965. And people are like "it's literally impossible to keep me from pirating anime."
They can turn off your bank account.
salawat · 11m ago
>They can turn off your bank account.
Ding ding ding. And you can't disintermediate without becoming a felon.
vorpalhex · 4h ago
Other sites that don't oblige the rules will come up and gain traffic. If those sites gain ire from the UK then they will migrate or be replaced.
See OnlyFans et al where the alternatives have slowly been taking over as OnlyFans is forced to become ever more restrictive.
Technically multiple tools are available from poor IP blocking that technically meets the requirement (eg malicious compliance) to tools like ohttp where the origin is unaware of the customers location and can claim genuine surprise.
This is basically a repeat of the UK PirateRadio. Either there's about to be a PornBBC (heh) or users and sites will migrate around ofcom.
TimorousBestie · 3h ago
> PornBBC
Well, that’s absolutely begging for some domain squatting.
riffic · 3h ago
The idiom is a reference / alludes to a quote (originally John Gilmore, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it"), and should have been noted as one:
A poor enforcement of such a goal(since it's led by government, this is just about a guarantee) will give birth to a new movement in technology to completely avoid it. I am ready for this.
josefritzishere · 23m ago
This is a hard no.
FirmwareBurner · 4h ago
It's not "the Internet" who wants to check your ID, it's politicians who want to, since the internet is the new place where citizens are exercising their freedom of assembly rights and that frightens politicians.
Life would be so much easier for Trump if people stopped pestering him online about that bloody Epstein list, or if EU citizens would stop pestering their politicians about the crimes of illegal immigrants.
They want to control your speech using the daily boogieman flavor: terrorists, protecting the kids, Russian trolls, etc
trinix912 · 2h ago
Exactly. As always, the debate gets fixated on the “think about the kids!” part instead of looking behind the curtain. It’s then impossible to make a sound counterargument (in the eye of the non-technical majority), as you’re easily dismissed for “supporting the horrors”.
izzydata · 1h ago
It would be ironic if they limit free speech online to such a point that people start exercising their freedoms in person.
FirmwareBurner · 30m ago
They want you to do it in person because there they can:
1. brand protestors as radicals and arrest them, serving as a public warning to deter others.
2. police(outside the US) have a major force advantage over unarmed population and can easily overpower you, whereas online they do not have any kind of power without censorship, which is why they're trying to gain control over it
neko_ranger · 3h ago
Lots of discussion on this and not much comparison to another democratic country (South Korea) that already implement this type of control. Account creation for non-critical services (games, etc) requires a SSN type equivalent during signup, so they very clearly know who is associated with the account.
They also implement child specific locks, such as limiting the duration kids can play a game, and for only specific hours (not during night time).
Almondsetat · 1h ago
Does the platform host 18+ content?
Yes ---> Require ID to view/register
No ---> Can register without ID in a read-only mode. To interact with other people, "upgrade" account with ID verification
* It allows parents to decide what age to allow kiddo to see certain content, not the state.
* It allows others to restrict content too. E.g. a gambling addict who doesn't want to see gambling content.
* It has no risk of leaks etc for adults.
I'd like to see laws mandating that service provides respect a new content restriction header or something like that.
Specifically, governments mandate that:
1. Websites/apps/etc. MAY label content (via headers) indicating when their content/service is/isn't appropriate for some specific audience (e.g., children) according to X/Y/Z regulations. Websites/apps/etc. MUST NOT incorrectly label their content.
2. Devices that can access the internet must not be sold directly to miners without parental consent.
3. Devices that can access the internet must include parental control software can be configured to allow/forbid all apps/content that may contain content not deemed suitable for children (in the jurisdiction where the device is sold).
Importantly, this kind of solution solves the "borderless internet" problem:
1. Device sellers are regulated in the jurisdiction where they sell the device.
2. Service providers take no (additional) per-jusrisdiction responsibility until they start labeling their content. By labeling their content, they are claiming to abide by specific regulations.
Highly likely to be the end of free software/general purpose computing, which would be quite a bit worse than identifying yourself to companies providing adult material (in a world where ads haven't corrupted everything, you'd identify yourself when paying for it anyway just like any other e-commerce transaction).
Which government? This list of pornographic film studios indicates they reside in many countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pornographic_film_stud...
Past that, the USA alone has thousands of governments. Many have opinions.
The only reason these kinds of controls may appear to work is that younger children simply aren't interested in the stuff that may be blocked.
* as in "I am over n years old", not "my exact birthday is nnnn-nn-nn"
** as in "I am a unique human you know as <uuid>", not "I am John Q Smith"
That just makes <uuid> an identifier like your name. <uuid> becomes yet another piece of PII, increasing your exposure.
Further, it will even inevitably get linked to your other identifiers in various databases over time. This problem is why pseudoanonymization isn't really that useful.
You should look at selective disclosure JWTs and wallets. https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-oauth-selective-...
Though creates other issues with, i.e. selling validation tokens.
>> "We, and our 219 partners use cookies and similar methods to recognize visitors and remember their preferences. We may also use these technologies to gauge the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, target advertisements, and analyze website traffic. Some of these technologies are essential for ensuring the proper functioning of the service or website and cannot be disabled, while others are optional but serve to enhance the user experience in various ways. We, in collaboration with our partners, store and/or access information on a user's device, including but not limited to IP addresses, unique identifiers, and browsing data stored in cookies, in order to process personal data."
The accountants that pay the writers and editors believe that, to make the math work of "Cheap enough that a viable number of subscribers will pay", the subscription must be ad-subsidized.
These are two seperate groups, and lumping them in to call them both hypocritical is lazy in thought, or ignorant in recognizing that the New Yorker is more than one person. Yes, change should start at the paper running the story. The fact they haven't yet convinced all their subscribers or accountants, and ~~possibly not even~~ presumably the public at large, does not detract from their point.
Edited, but struck-through instead of deleted
The video makes the case that it was private interests that pushed for this in the UK - specifically the Carnegie 'charity'. They apparently defined the problem (i.e. what 'online harms' are), lobbied for it to be addressed, and then largely authored the policy/solution.
Edit: The claim is also made that Carnegie operates parallel influence and alignment campaigns globally. That may reveal the link you are looking for.
Before this I was only aware of a few instances of ID checks, like Utah and pornhub, or something?
Now laws are getting passed all over the place. Is this something that people really want? I guess I’m just out of loop?
Plenty of these groups pushing these laws are already publicly linked via $ and staffer revolving door: DonorsTrust -> SPN -> ALEC -> CLI -> Heritage -> $ from Dunn & Wilks and other christian millionaires -> continue the circle etc. [6, 7]
Their playbook - which is sadly working:
- far right christian anti-porn, anti-lgbtq crusaders use 'child safety' or revenge porn to organize public outrage and direct that pressure on the choke point of payment processing. For example the writer of the viral pornhub article worked for anti-porn christian group that also helped pass extreme anti lgbtq laws in africa, such as Uganda's gays “should be castrated” insanity [1] - Recent Australian version of this same story. Again, the buried lede is going after queer content (not by accident) [2] - Same in the UK: ADF creates UK branch. CARE, Christin Concern, etc. Same anti-porn, anti-lgbt. Same tactics and messaging. Also throw in anti-abortion. [3, 4] - Groups like Heritage & ALEC & SPN put out the blueprint and write the actual laws. Copy paste across red states. For instance Project 2025 advocates sending porn producers to jail & again backdoors targeting of Trans and queer people [8]. Another example in Tennessee [5]: define drag as adult only. impose narrow worldview that any gender expression not assigned at birth is wrong and adult only (pornagraphic). Just throw away 1a and dare scotus to blink on law 'loopholes' with private right of action b.s.
It's all just to inflict their christian worldview and 'morals' on the rest of us.
You know the porn thing is just a b.s. excuse to get their foot in the door because only a couple of large companies like Aylo (formerly Mindgeek) comply. They are the only porn sites with the $ and morals to actually moderate in the first place.
Whilst the other 99% of the internet is just an open stream of content with no care & no humans in the loop.
Therefore it's all just virtue signaling at best, and personally I see a very organized sinister plot to impose christian rule. Could you imagine if it was a muslim group organizing at this scale? Sharia anyone?
------
1 https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/30/us-far...
2 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/steam-itch-takedowns-credit-ca...
3 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/02/us-anti-abor...
4 https://care.org.uk/cause/online-safety
5 https://time.com/6267962/tennessee-drag-bill-law-hold-friend...
6 https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/donorstrust/
7 https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SPN_Ties_to_ALEC
8 https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/project-2025-por...
The same payment processor chokepoints and platform pressure tactics you're describing have been gleefully wielded by progressive activists to deplatform "dangerous misinformation," "hate speech," and "extremist content."
Remember when everyone cheered Mastercard and Visa cutting off WikiLeaks? Or Cloudflare and Kiwifarm? Or celebrated when payment processors started dropping anyone deemed "problematic"? The infrastructure for financial censorship didn't materialize overnight when Christian groups discovered it existed.
The left pioneered the modern "advertiser pressure" playbook - organizing campaigns to get platforms to ban everything from "Russian disinformation" to "COVID misinformation" to whatever qualified as this week's "stochastic terrorism." The same NGO-to-government pipeline exists there too: activist groups coordinate with sympathetic staffers, push model legislation, and pressure companies through ESG scores and brand safety concerns.
Both sides have their "think of the children" trump cards. One side waves "grooming" and "pornography," the other waves "radicalization" and "harmful content." Both genuinely believe they're saving society from moral decay, they just disagree violently on what that decay looks like.
The real tragedy is that both camps are so busy fighting their culture war that they've handed unprecedented censorship power to payment processors and tech platforms who answer to no one. Congratulations to both teams - you've successfully created the infrastructure for whoever wins to impose their vision of morality on everyone else.
As usual, mental laziness means that complexity kills the acceptance of good solutions and instead we legislate privacy-invading garbage.
To me its noteworthy that it seems that most of those who would agree that checking for human vs bot is a Good Thing are very opposed to checking for human vs human. It's advocating for the same tools, same machines, same algorithms.
I like to try to find a metaphor (or is it a simile?): it's a little bit like building surveillance and spying tools for nation states and campaigning and protesting to spying by nation states on your own person. It could be like protesting against selling arms to armies while advocating for personal gun ownership.
We shouldn't replicate that in technological solutions.
ID is for "who you are", which doesn't matter for the types of things we use for age checks (bars, etc.)
There should be a way to verify your age without showing ID.
Sure, ID can do that. It is sufficient, but it should not be necessary.
If parents don’t want kids getting into mischief online, then they need to restrict device and network access appropriately.
The internet was never intended for children, and we need to stop placing the onus on other adults to police themselves instead of on parents to police their children.
I do agree with everything else though. The onus is on the parents to do their job as a parent. If the goal is to protect children then improve the tools available to parents. They already have tons but the work is never done.
For kids, we had services like Prodigy and Compuserve that distilled the internet into approved content suitable for minors. We can - and probably should - go back to that, rather than throwing youth onto the regular internet and letting them fend for themselves online.
There are no records indicating the relevant early engineers said this or felt this way.
I imagine someone did down the road but then we're into "Some guy had an opinion about the internet" territory.
My child cannot walk into a gas station and buy beer or cigarettes, cannot buy liquor, cannot buy a machine gun, cannot walk into an adult book store or a strip club, cannot operate a motor vehicle.
If you, an adult, aid and abbet my child in any of these activities you’re likely going straight to jail.
You do not magically get a pass because “the internet.” We live in the real world, with laws, with rules, with social expectations. It’s time for the free pass to end.
If you want a true apples-to-apples comparison using your list - you've already purchased beer, cigarettes, liquor, a machine gun, adult books, and a motor vehicle and brought them all home. At that point, it is your responsibility as a parent to ensure your children do not use any of them. Why should internet access be any different?
What you're really asking for is an adult other than you to be present in your house to ensure your children don't use things that you don't want them to. That's called a nanny. Unfortunately, the way in which you want this to work is for every house hooked up to the internet to be required to have a nanny.
No thank you.
No way is internet access "fundamentally broader and harder to limit" than alcohol access.
That world doesn't exist, though (at least not in my part of the US). I don't need the internet to do any of those things.
It's not a pass, it's just a reflection of the real world, which is not as rigid with rules and expectations as you are making it out to be. In any case, I'd rather the Internet remain as free, as in speech, as possible. If the cost of that is little Billy sees a nipple on a computer screen while daddy isn't watching, I think we'll be OK with the consequences. The consequences of the alternative is likely worse, and the article goes into this.
Not to speak of the risks of a fully deanonymized web, once naiive black-listing doesnt cut it anymore...
And btw, your kid could possibly buy all items you named online today, black markets are a consequence of unmet demand. So what now? Talk about parental oversight or AV for amazon and TOR?
The UK has a long long history of over reach with all of theses initiatives.
The UK governments is desperate to keep a increasingly fragile society from boiling over and their natural inclination is to censor, it's what they have always done.
I will say the UK has a history of really stupid laws like this though so it's not exactly surprising that it would happen. But it's more surprising how it's spread and succeeding in so many places.
ARPANET and the related early nets were intended for sharing research and sharing scarce computing resources for research purposes.
Everything else was an accident of the telecoms wanting to get their respective beaks wet.
Requiring age verification online would be like requiring my ID every time I wanted to drink a beer I already bought. I already had to give my ID when buying internet service, and again when I got the credit card I use to pay for it, and again for the bank account I use to pay the credit card, and the job that puts money into my bank account, and to buy the car that gets me to and from these places.
If you’ve allowed a minor online without so much as a web filter in place, you’ve already lost the battle. Punishing strangers for your failure to police your own network devices and children is a complete abdication of your responsibilities as a parent.
I'm not accustomed to providing ID to get internet service. Some providers run a credit check, but many don't. And if they don't check credit, they don't need your ID. At least in the US, there's an army of prepaid cell providers that don't offer credit and don't check ids.
Prepaid credit cards are a thing. Bring some cash to a grocery store, and for a small fee, you can get an internet capable payment method. Or my local credit union offers debit cards for 'teen checking' accounts, but there's no age restriction; they check ID, and I'm pretty sure they require an adult sponsor.
I’m sure someone has tried to bring it back but it’s interesting to me that the public at large seems to have forgotten these ideas.
I think this pov tends to come from people that are nostalgic for the wild west days of the web. It doesn't matter if the internet was not originally intended for children -- they're here, en masse, and now society is looking for solutions.
Metaphor time:
Consider a liquor store in a physical space, and a porn site on the internet.
The liquor store requires ID at point of sale because it has limited entry and exit into the building. It has physical restrictions making it harder for minors to enter, and harder to exploit their way into accessing age-restricted items. This is because the physical world is always shared by default, and we must make rules securing adults-only spaces in a world that’s intrinsically shared with children.
A digital porn site exists on a realm solely built by adults, that requires adults to access in the first place. A child cannot sign up for an ISP, a child cannot buy their own cellular phone[1], and a child cannot decide to share their coffee shop or library WiFi for free to everyone within range. At some point, a child requires the assistance of adults to enter the internet. That makes the internet a de facto space for adults first, not children, and that is why I vehemently disagree with vilifying the majority of users (adults) just to “protect” kids who will bypass those age checks like they’ve successfully done for decades.
There will always be youth finding a way to procure pornography, drugs, or alcohol underage. The difference with the internet is that it’s by adults, for adults, and that children are guests who should be supervised by adults in their circles - not by policing all the adults online through intrusive surveillance measures.
[1] Children can, of course, use cash or cards to buy prepaid phones and airtime in many countries. I do not think this should be allowed and would be a better venue to restrict access than a surveillance state.
I'm not critiquing your argument, I'm really just sitting here in amazement that the zeitgeist thinks these are of similar harm.
You say we are looking for solutions. There are better solutions, including privacy preserving solutions, which can work. We just don’t have any of those yet.
But, dismissing the whole verification effort on principle because "it's the internet and it's inherently for adults" is silly and unrealistic, IMO (not that you were). It's just not the world we live in anymore, the internet is used by everyone, for everything, and we should build accordingly.
Believing that Google's solution will be truly ZK, interoperable, or good is similarly silly, unrealistic, and not the world we live in anymore. Unfortunately.
The most dangerous people on earth who are not in prison are on the internet; It is an adult place. Making it look like a child friendly place will not change this. But it will lure more kids online unsupervised and unprotected.
Where is the equivalent here?
But you can watch videos of people being beheaded in subreddits by simply signing in.
My point is that if a society decides that certain content should be age restricted -- it being on the internet shouldn't make the difference.
I largely think that age restriction laws are ridiculous. BUT, I don't think the internet is some special haven, exempt from all of society's standards/laws enforced offline.
also worth noting that in most places in the US, it’s not a legal requirement to card, but a industry agreement with the MPAA (self regulation)
I don't think that's a very good comparison, even setting aside the points made in other replies to you.
Case in point, the same UK politicians who try to burry the Muslim grooming gangs story where kids got harmed, are now suddenly the ones pushing for Internet ID to "protect the children". If they cared so much about the children, why didn't they go after the grooming gangs immediately, instead of trying to hide it.
What they want is internet censorship, to take away the internet freedom of assembly, the ability to control and ban any criticism from the public targeting politicians and the elite the same way they do to mainstream media. No more people taking about political scandals, corruption, illegal immigration, sex scandals, Epstein list, Ukraine, Gaza, law enforcement abuse, mass shootings, etc, they don't give a damn about the kids.
You gotta attack the root argument: this space was never intended for children, and it is the sole responsibility of parents to protect their children in adults-only spaces like the internet.
Healthy, adult-only spaces online have been leading a “no minors” crusade for decades. We bar minors from our spaces, and promptly eject them when discovered. That said, we’re also far more familiar with any politician or puritan with the reality that kids will find a way into adults-only spaces if they really want to be there, and likely succeed because their parents are wholly absent or utterly incompetent at managing their kid’s online presence and access.
This always goes back to the parents. Every single time.
People keep saying this but I've never seen it happen IRL. Probably because previous generation of people who are now parents, grew up with uncensored internet and turned out largely all right, or at least the issues they have (economy, jobs, housing) aren't due to a lack of internet censorship to "protect" them.
>You gotta attack the root argument: this space was never intended for children
That only distract people from the government trying to censor free speech on the internet using kids as a human shield.
As Millennial, internet we grew up in is vastly different from internet the kids are growing up in. Our access was different and content pushing was much different.
Do you think these online ID rules will:
1. actually keep kids safe from bad stuff? kids in the UK already bypassed it, and Instagram and TikTok are already bad for kids and not getting blocked so who's it really protecting?
2. or will it mainly be used by the government to easily doxx and crack down on those who speak against it while kids still can access porn?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth to that point: we already know this, but we’re the exception to the norm.
Listening to non-technical folks, they genuinely believe the internet is entirely hardcore smut that’s destroying kids and that we’re actively soliciting minors with sexual content. That’s not remotely true, but more people believe that narrative than the technically correct argument that this is all just a mass surveillance ploy by the government to weed out and persecute “undesirables” by wielding sex as a weapon.
So now picture how we sound making the technically correct argument to the masses who believe the narrative: we sound batshit insane, and they won’t listen to us.
Instead if we take the side of faulting absentee parents for failing to police their kids online, then that usually results in their defensive rebuttal of “we both work full-time, and I don’t have the time or skill to do this!”
That’s what we want to hear. That argument can be reasoned with, because they’re correct in their justification, even if the act they’re justifying is wrong. Once they admit that, we can take their side in more constructive ways, like:
* Yeah, tech companies do make it too easy for kids to go online and wade into adult spaces. Big Tech and Social Media companies should do more to curate a child-only space that’s entirely curated rather than throwing them onto the open internet by default
* Yes, the fact everything requires kids to be online in front of a screen is bad, and we should be mandating kids have healthier relationships with technology by limiting their access or promoting better understanding of its functions
* Yeah, a society where both parents have to work full-time to survive does hinder child development and prohibits parents from nurturing their growth in desired ways. We should build a society where one parent can stay home full-time and be the caregiver and mentor children need to thrive
* Yeah, these devices are deliberately complicated to prevent easy moderation by parents of their children, and it’s by design. We should create regulations that make it easier for parents to secure their children’s devices, not make it easier for kids to get online
See? Once we pivot the argument back to, “You’re right in your feelings but wrong in your attack vector, let’s work together on this”, we’ll get more support and allies in building a better solution for everyone.
For the majority of people "the internet" just means Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Tiktok, GMail, Amazon and Youtube. There's not much prono stuff there harming kids in order to have the government implement more radical measures than the laws we already have (COPPA in the US, other shit in the EU).
If they'd really want to help kids they would just ban Tiktok and Instagram and all these instant dopamine brainrot apps, not sites where kids might see some breasts.
Please don’t spread lies to make your point. The current Prime Minister was the DPP who oversaw the prosecution of the Rochdale scandal and worked on changing reporting and investigation. Listen to Andrew Norfolk’s interview with the News Agents if you’d like a citation.
https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...
The same is true for cryptocurrency of course but that risk is implicit in holding a private key to spend in the first place.
For this use ZKPs are trivially proxyable, and thus this type of system also requires additional security properties from treacherous computing [0] - specifically remote attestation which prevents your ability to run code of your choosing on your own device.
And Google (et al) are quite eager to supply this type of environment ("Safety" Net, WEI, etc). This is exactly why the new UK system requires the use of a locked down corpo-controlled phone, and why corpos are pushing this idea that there is a "secure" way this can be done.
Essentially they are advertising the cool privacy-preserving half of the system, without mentioning the necessary other half that destroys privacy and freedom.
[0] "trusted" computing in corpo speak. In other words, a crippled model of computing that the corpos can trust us to have.
Of course, this will get combated by governments letting tech companies to query IDs against their databases, which inevitably will leak the IDs which will then make this exercise pointless.
Decades of historical baggage, technical cruft, and now a new set of encumbrances in the form of aggressive state surveillance under the moniker of "regulation;" it's strange to me that there are no movements in this space to replace an aging and decrepit web that has grown increasingly user hostile.
There was some merit to being anti-establishment in the past under Democratic leadership because for sure there were issues, but thinking that the conservative party is the way out because they are all about personal liberty and freedom, when in reality they are the complete opposite, is why you don't see the same amount of effort being put into this now.
Hard disagree. Look at the reaction from the Tea app, a whole lot of concern for the women and their info, not a peep about the men who didn't even consent in any way. Am I supposed to believe it's conservatives?
Chat control in the EU is also not coming from conservatives, it's a bipartisan issue through and through.
Try as you might to refute this progressive axiom in vain; better to simply just double down on an assumption nobody has ever been able to refute, and carry it to its necessary conclusions.
You need to talk to push for change in your democratic government, not try to find technical workarounds around government tyranny while going on with your day as if what your government is doing is normal.
The only way around that is to kill the internet, good luck recreating North Korea's intranet as a replacement.
Tasteless rulers
I think that if a website or app wants to make this choice, they should be allowed too. Obviously we should expect that they have proper security, and we should make the choice on if we want to take that risk. But I think it is a perfectly valid choice by the developer, and users can choose whether or not they think it is worth it or use a competitor that doesn't (or a competitor is created that doesn't).
But the issue of laws requiring it I think is where things have gone too far. So much of this is being framed as "protect the children" but most of it really seems to be fueled from a puritanical "porn is bad" and needing to make it harder to get access too for adults. I really wish we could move past this as a society, stop vilifying it, being ashamed of sex, etc.
And likely throw in some tracking of what people are doing online since now you no longer have the anonymity.
Edit:
If you really truly are trying to "protect the children"... Maybe educate them instead of hiding things from them.
Ready or not, age verification is rolling out across the internet
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44781492
For the actual issue, Tea would be better suited with a web of trust system rather than forcing identification audits. If a woman is inviting male accounts then a web of trust would allow the service to shutdown anyone invited from the bad account (similar Lobste.rs bans).
For games, piracy is going to be huge again.
For sites, externally hosted websites will gain more traffic.
The government can just turn off the internet for you personally by making a few calls. They could make you show digital id before every access. They could make in a felony to provide internet to somebody on the proscribed list. They could just make a few grants dependent on it, and never make it a law.
People who think the internet is magical have Marvel-movie brain. I'm wondering whether we're going to station troops in fabs to make sure no chips leave that haven't been backdoored, or whether we'll have to register hard drives with the state (with sniffer dogs looking for violations.)
Tor isn't going to save us. Tor is a US Navy project. If Tor and bitcoin weren't useful for the government themselves to do secret communications and money transfers, they could just announce (again) that crypto is terrorism, and shoot people who get caught running exit nodes or mining.
Once in the US, every piece of mail with a book in it was opened, and the book checked to see if it was on a banned list or looked like it should be. They were primarily concerned about birth control information and dirty literature with too many double entendres. Do we really think that no hypothetical future US government would do that over trans, Israel, Russia, Russia, Russia or China? We've done it to keep people from wearing condoms.
Still shocks me that the big cases that broke US censorship in literature were in the mid-60s. Miller's Tropic of Cancer still had the potential to put you in jail in 1965. And people are like "it's literally impossible to keep me from pirating anime."
They can turn off your bank account.
Ding ding ding. And you can't disintermediate without becoming a felon.
See OnlyFans et al where the alternatives have slowly been taking over as OnlyFans is forced to become ever more restrictive.
Technically multiple tools are available from poor IP blocking that technically meets the requirement (eg malicious compliance) to tools like ohttp where the origin is unaware of the customers location and can claim genuine surprise.
This is basically a repeat of the UK PirateRadio. Either there's about to be a PornBBC (heh) or users and sites will migrate around ofcom.
Well, that’s absolutely begging for some domain squatting.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore
Life would be so much easier for Trump if people stopped pestering him online about that bloody Epstein list, or if EU citizens would stop pestering their politicians about the crimes of illegal immigrants.
They want to control your speech using the daily boogieman flavor: terrorists, protecting the kids, Russian trolls, etc
1. brand protestors as radicals and arrest them, serving as a public warning to deter others.
2. police(outside the US) have a major force advantage over unarmed population and can easily overpower you, whereas online they do not have any kind of power without censorship, which is why they're trying to gain control over it
They also implement child specific locks, such as limiting the duration kids can play a game, and for only specific hours (not during night time).
Yes ---> Require ID to view/register
No ---> Can register without ID in a read-only mode. To interact with other people, "upgrade" account with ID verification
Why is this so difficult to implement?