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- Hacker News
- >The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age
NO. It really shouldn't. I will not comply. Porn sites can require this shit, but not the rest of the internet. Social media, dating websites, that's up to the users. If kids are on there, that's on the parents. Do your job, be the parent. I'm not going to let lazy good for nothing parents ruin the internet for everyone else.
by panny - Yeah I agree, forcing large websites to respect client side parental control settings is better (let the OS/browser set a request header with the age bracket that the website uses)by preisschild
- I have a hard time figuring out whether most of the comments are genuine or not.
Are you guys really in favor of giving governments and police corps more control and more power so that you are observed, monitored, restricted because "the internet is dead", "think of the children" and "you need to know who to sue"?
You guys are joking, right? Right?
by LeBit - "you guys" assumes all people defending this """idea""" (i'm being far too charitable here...) are actual europeans and not a botfarm.
(Cue the twitter profile origin country flag thing).
by dormento - A few things you can legally do online without ID or age verification in the US
1) buy cigars and pipe tobacco (but not cigarettes!)
2) Buy "CBD" by the pound
3) Buy ammunition, a barrel and the rest of gun parts for a glock, except a frame/receiver that can be 3d printed in a few hours to complete it.
4) Order and have delivered wine
But there are people arguing to skip all that and go to straight to ID for social media. It isn't about the children. It's about keeping tabs on who says what.
by mothballed - Is teens ordering wine a big issue in the US? Bigger than social media?by mr_mitm
- #1 isn't entirely true. It's a soft-gate but you are legally required to verify age on your site before completing the purchase (I run a boutique cigar brand [1]).by rglover
- Usually the delivery person asks for ID when delivering the wine?by Dwedit
- This initiative has the ID "ECI(2026)000011". If I understand this correctly, that means there have only been eleven citizen initiatives this year? Is that system working as designed, because that's a shockingly low number.
Edit: the initiatives themselves also have shockingly low numbers of signatures. A few thousand. A million are required for the EC to take notice. This system seems a bit shitty. But maybe I'm misunderstanding it.
by elric - I don't think that's too surprising, as even if you get 1 million of signatures the only thing you will get is "response from Commission". So they can reply with legalese for "get bent" and there goes your million signatures.by garaetjjte
- The name could also be:
"Stop overcontrolling and overregulating every aspect of our lives!"
- Hopefully this fares better than Stop Killing Games.by 220hertz
- SKG has fared pretty well, what do you mean?by righthand
- I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity, and that could solve problems like bots, socketpuppets, etc along with reasonable age-gating. It could be an ideal internet if it's properly applied. The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia. And sites could use it in inappropriate ways resulting in discrimination.by vid
- > I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity
Not without either being able to trivially let others use your proofs OR ending open computing. There is no zero knowledge proof about the slab of meat sitting in front of the screen.
by account42 - The title is misleading "No Age Verification" and then later on call for using ZKP to do Age Verification.
Is the Pirate Party supporting Age Verification now?
by zoobab - I think it's a missed opportunity to not have called it "Stop spying on every EU citizen online". It would make for great headlines and might finally wake people up when they see that the EU has rejected a proposal called that.
"Stop killing the internet" unfortunately means nothing at all to the layman, they will still be using it pretty much exactly as they were before, and governments will just claim "See, internet is still working".
by iLoveOncall - Great point. Reminds me of Biden’s constant whisper-scream “the future of democracy is at stake!”
Like, yeah, it was an accurate statement, but total shit if your goal is to get people up off the couch and into voting booth. Way too abstract and high-minded
by khazhoux - And keep pushing this until it passes. Keep repeating like they do chat control.by skeptic_ai
- "Stop enabling pedophiles in government"by Cider9986
- Agreed.
I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".
by ben_w - You may be overthinking this. It is privacy that means little to the regular joe. The internet they use every day and it being changed beyond recognition is much more tangible than privacy being curtailed just a little bit more.
And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.
The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.
These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.
by jck86 - Things are far more enjoyable as a teen when it s forbidden, remember the golden age of p2p!
Teens who want to see porn will be able to see porns, but they will learn somethings along the way to do so
This is caricatural of course, but it s just so dumb as law as enforcing age verification "anonymously" is just like a don quichotte battle at AI era
by damienmeur - > Teens who want to see porn will be able to see porns, but they will learn somethings along the way to do so
How will teens overcome the Android SafetyNet?
by fsflover - I often joke that every technical measure that prevents teens from watching porn is a way to make teens more tech-savvy.
Kids these days have it too easy, we need stronger protections or the next generation will make pathetic hackers.
by GuB-42 - I want the right to not be identified. I also want the right to SELF identify. I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify. The cost of running LLM botnets is going down. I cannot imagine how the next cycle of elections is going to be like on all countries. I understand the right to remain anonymous, that should remain, but that state should not be the default on these massively big platforms. Our brains and political systems are not designed for this. And no, "get people to get rid of their smartphone voluntarily" like I see on the comments is not going to happen.by josalhor
- >I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify.
You can do that already, Facebook is pretty close to exactly what you're talking about. They do a lot of work to identify real people and de-prioritize spam/bots. You can configure your account to only be able to interact with real people if you want. Many people like anonymity though, it's important for speaking truth to power and discussing topics which are outside the Overton window.
There's a good reason that many of the United States' founding fathers used pseudonyms when writing. Anonymity and real freedom of speech are foundational to democracy. If you can put someone in jail for saying something that the government doesn't like, then the government will be able to steer discourse towards outcomes it deems acceptable, even if those outcomes subvert the will of the people.
There's no real need to have the government force all websites to always authenticate all humans. The only real argument for such a system is to move us toward dystopian authoritarianism.
by Dig1t - Toxic culture was always there but it really took of with social media where users often have zero shame to self-identify. There are anonymous communities that are far more friendly than the common insta group. "My brain" is perfectly fine with anonymous users.
And yes, anonymity should be the default because otherwise the alternative is that you need to identify. If not, most users would stay anonymous because it is simply the smarter decision with the exception that you seek exposure.
by raxxorraxor - > I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability.
It is trivial to demonstrate that this is incorrect (despite sounding plausible). There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.
Among other considerations it's worth noting that most of the usual social feedback mechanisms are missing from typical online interactions.
> The cost of running LLM botnets is going down.
Agreed that this is an existential threat to anonymous discourse as it is typically implemented.
by fc417fc802 - There is a surprising amount of engineers who don’t understand what’s happening. So they deal with it as if it’s a funny thing… yeah if two police officers come knocking your door with hard data, you will just explain… and yeah, I mean kids, can bypass it… right? Wrong. This is not 1995. They can make very harsh laws and they can make it borderline impossible to bypass should some authority choose to do so.
The danger here is control: total and absolute control of who will be able to see what, at any given time. Once upon a time this was a hard problem, not anymore.
by atmosx