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Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech
- microgpt 3mo agoWhat are you talking about. They already have automated attribution of speech.
- firefoxd 3mo agoIt gives a new spin to: > Everything you say CAN and WILL be used against you. Especially when what you said has already been recorded and tied to your identity before you faced the authorities. Edit: from last week https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48632269
- jauntywundrkind 3mo agoLook at W Social. The governments will team up with anyone, no matter how shady, as long as they promise to try to restrict free, unattributed speech. They'll team up with absolute sharks, as long as those sharks are gonna help sack and battle the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48584497
- derektank 3mo agoDisliking data centers, illegal immigration, or taxes is not a crime in the United States, nor is posting inconvenient messages about politicians, nor is getting a little too rowdy in a group chat. And none of these things are likely to be made illegal any time soon. I always find this form of argument in favor of privacy (which is valuable in its own right to be clear) so roundabout. If you’re concerned about the government impinging on your freedom of speech, then why not write an essay arguing for expansive freedom of speech protections? That seems like a much more direct solution to the problem presented in this essay.
- arkhiver 3mo agofarmer arrested over datacenter debate: https://www.gadgetreview.com/arrest-him-the-moment-police-handcuffed-a-farmer-for-going-5-seconds-over-his-time-limit-at-data-center-meeting https://www.gadgetreview.com/arrest-him-the-moment-police-ha...
- derektank 3mo agoI’m not exactly sure how an abuse of power occurring at a public event relates to the question of privacy or freedom of speech. The law did not allow the officer to arrest the man for the content of his speech so he retaliated by enforcing a different law unjustly. This kind of selective enforcement of the law can be a violation of federal law and the man likely has standing to sue.
- derektank 3mo agoFor reference, a similar case of selective enforcement against an outspoken critic of the local government in Texas resulted in the critic receiving a settlement of $500k following an unjust arrest https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2025/10/15/i-feel-like-i-can-breathe-again-castle-hills-former-councilwoman-agree-on-500000-settlement/ https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2025/10/15/i-feel-like-i-can...
- microgpt 3mo agoit's an example of the government silencing people for speech
- charcircuit 3mo agoNo, it's an example of someone being told to leave, not doing so, and then being arrested for trespassing.
- microgpt 3mo ago[flagged]
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- triceratops 3mo ago"Don't let them win. Don't verify your age. Don't give up your identity. If you absolutely must, find one of the numerous age verification services and pay in Monero." Better yet, how about - "call your representatives"? Some nerds, for lack of a better term, think crypto and cryptography are the answers to every privacy problem. The only way to fix society and the law is by engaging with those things. Not sidestepping them with cryptography, an unscalable approach in any case. I'm deeply pessimistic about the future. The only group competent enough to oppose identity verification has its head in the sand.
- dopidopHN2 3mo agoHave you been to a city council meeting lately ? Ever? I'm trying to push for surveillance regulation where I live. I'm there monthly. Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck. Yesterday I was editing a clip of one of them lying overtly. It will be a minor inconveniences. what we call democracy is a dog and ponies show. So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all
- triceratops 3mo ago> Calling your representative is the best way to realise that they don't give a fuck That just means not enough people did it. > So maybe cryptography is not that ridiculous, after all Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then? It. Doesn't. Scale.
- dopidopHN2 3mo ago> That just means not enough people did it. Indeed. When enough people call that when they switch the meeting time and change the voting rules. ( we suing for that ) They still don't give a fuck. They really want to have more surveillance. Its like their is a vested interest ? > Until they make that illegal. What'll you do then? OK, let's make numbers illegal. Land of the free! Also, what does "making encryption illegal" entail, exactly? Does that encompass HTTPS? What does not scale exactly about using encryption at rest and point to point ?
- wuyuan 3mo agoYou're right. Many countries use the protection of minors as an excuse, but in reality, they just want to strengthen the regulation of speech.
- microgpt 3mo agoWe should actually protect minors, then they won't be able to use it as an excuse. Right now it works as an excuse because minors are being harmed by the unrestricted internet, mostly by social media.
- m0unta1ntube 3mo agoThey will always bring up a fringe matter to prove that statement wrong, no matter how much you will protect minors, someone else will still harm them and that is enough to justify these actions
- microgpt 3mo agoSo why bother ever doing anything at all
- jorisw 3mo ago> they just want Because you know their motivations. You've spoken to 'them'.
- sixsupersoup 3mo agoAutomated fines, like traffic radar control for free speech, will also become a norm as they won't be able to put everyone in jail. But I'm not sure the liberal anarcho-tyranny power will be indefinitely immutable. Speech control might be one their last try to keep control in the west. They will crumble like soviet union.
- microgpt 3mo agoThey have this in Germany for copyright. If you torrent, you automatically get a fine letter in your email. If you don't pay, you get a court summons in the post. If you take it to court, you will lose that case and also have to pay court fees.
- Nursie 3mo agoIt's funny how this played out in different countries. In Australia there is no chance of anything happening, because the courts ruled that payouts were limited to provable incurred losses. You pirated a movie? The maximum awarded at the end of a court case is going to be about $20, and as you can't buy very much lawyer-time for $20, it's never taken to court and the copyright-holders have effectively stopped pursuing people here.
- microgpt 3mo agoI imagine they still go after prolific totrenters
- threeshells 3mo agoImagine a machine mounted on the wall that prints you a ticket every time you swear
- thomastjeffery 3mo agoThat, and it defines children as perpetrators instead of victims. What right could a citizen ever claim in a world where even children are guilty? There is a huge difference between protecting children and prosecuting/punishing children. Age verification can only be an implementation of the latter.
- onion2k 3mo agoIf we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. People struggle to consider the second-, third-, and nth-order effects of anything so asking them to consider what else might happen if we bring in laws and technical mechanisms to 'protect the children' is unfortunately too a big leap for a lot of them. Most people are bad at spotting causal links between parts of a system, and people who are good at it exploit that.
- rdiddly 3mo agoJournalists are supposed to be helping the people by doing it.
- ElProlactin 3mo ago> If we taught systems thinking in schools things like internet age verification would never get past being an idea on the back of a napkin. But why would we do that? If we taught people how to think, they wouldn't sit their toddlers down in front an iPad for 8+ hours a day to entertain (read: keep them occupied and quiet) them with YouTube videos, sign them up for a Facebook account before they could wipe their own butts, etc. The sad irony of this age verification thing is that if we had a decent society and parents with common sense, age verification wouldn't even be a topic.
- dozerly 3mo agoParents with common sense comes from teaching children common sense. You have to fix the child education issue first, a lot of adults are too far gone to educate at this point.
- Synthetic7346 3mo agoHow can you fix the child education problem without fixing the parent education? School is but a few hours a day, and kids spend more time with parents and learn from them. I was lucky that my parents liked to read and encouraged me to read, but my friends didn't have the same exposure that I did and never liked to read books.
- bluegatty 3mo agoThe author made an assertive statement without any hint of rhetoric, reasoning, historical parallel, evidence, legislative example etc.
- LandenLove 3mo agoMy theory is that age verification is just another way to push human verification. These large tech companies need a way to verify a user is a real person and not an AI bot. Both for displaying ads to real users and cutting down on spam. Nobody would support a "give away my anonymity online so I can be shown an ad for Coca Cola" bill. But it's easier to sell a law to boomers and lawmakers if you use the disguise of "It's for the children ." As if any of these companies care about the well being of children. See Meta confirming their platforms affect the mental health of children and doing nothing about it. Also platforms like TikTok and YouTube optimizing their algorithms for stealing user's attention spans.
- tryauuum 3mo agoThe ad companies I think would want the opposite If they cannot distinguish real people from bots they can just charge more for more ads shown !
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- LandenLove 3mo agoI imagine that the companies who purchase these ads will see a drop in conversions and start to ask questions.
- try-working 3mo agomany platform companies probably do not want to verify that a user is real, except in certain niche cases, as bots help them pump their numbers.
- LandenLove 3mo agoIt might be a nice stock boost in the short term, but the goal for a majority of these companies is to sell ads. If advertisers see a drop in conversions, I doubt the platforms could keep the fake user ruse going for long.
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- initramfs 3mo ago"The Carnival in Venice was first documented in 1296, with a proclamation by the Venetian Senate announcing a public festival the day before the start of Lent. Unquestionably one of the most well-known Carnival festivities in the world, the Carnival of Venice is rife with mystery, adventure, and conspiracy. The day served to break down barriers between people of different economic standings and religious beliefs. During the Renaissance, masked comic performers performed in Venice's piazzas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_in_Italy#Venice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival_in_Italy#Venice "The tradition of wearing masks seems to stem from the 13th century. During the ages the Venetians disguised themselves with mask whenever they thought necessary. It allowed them to escape from the rigid rules of the class hierarchy. All classes could mingle, men could be women, women could be men. It also led to unwanted behaviour, from throwing eggs filled with ink to all imaginable kinds of vulgarities. Masks made people unrecognisable, so they could not be prosecuted. Near the end of the Republic, the right to wear masks in daily life was severely restricted. By the 18th century, it was limited to three months starting at December 26 and ending on the last day of Carnival, Shrove Tuesday. Masks were also used in ceremonies, eg. when ambassadors arrived and at the five ritual grand banquets offered each year to Venetian dignitaries by the doge. This resembles the Masquerade Balls during Carnival nowadays. Venetian noblemen and noblewomen wore a costume called a bautta consisting of a white mask (volto), a tricorn hat (tricorno), a hood worn under the hat (zendale) and a tabarro, a loose-fitting cloak. There were subtle differences between noble and non-noble (cittadini or popolani), and the popolani were known to wear more colorful, fun masks to festivities like the bull runs." https://www.carnival-in-venice.eu/venetian-carnival-masks.html https://www.carnival-in-venice.eu/venetian-carnival-masks.ht...
- pineapple_opus 3mo agoMask in real life then, mask in social internet now. Meaning stays the same. I like this analogy.
- BenFranklin100 3mo agoCalls to mind a quote attributed to Cardinal Richelieu, 16th century Secretary of State for France: ‘If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him”
- ropable 3mo ago[flagged]
- zarzavat 3mo agoI don't like age verification. However I'm not concerned about it. The internet needs new spaces that are more decentralized and less in bed with governments. We already lost our freedom when we agreed to move from IRC to Discord, from phpBB to Reddit, etc. The teenagers who are blocked from mainstream social media will deliver us new free online spaces that are better than what they're blocked from.
- Gigachad 3mo agoWhat we need is more personal spaces. Less feeds, more small group chats with people you actually know. I'm totally fine with destroying Reddit/Twitter/etc
- tancop 3mo agoi want more feeds than centralized services can ever have. on bluesky youre not limited to fyp and following you can install literally hundreds of options. almost all of them are open source and self hostable. theres a place for group chats and tight communities but we also need global spaces where you can reach anyone. you cant promote your new album or start organizing a union or share some really good pics with the world if all you have is individual servers.
- ligne 3mo agoReddit and Twitter can buy their way out of those problems (hell, they can buy their way out of trouble for literally generating sexual abuse content). What makes you think they'll be affected more than the operator of a little Mastodon server do the same?
- vasco 3mo agoThis is like saying you're not concerned about war because people will notice war is bad and stop doing it. It's not a smart position to hold that bad things are good because they may bring on reversals.
- pineapple_opus 3mo agoThey already have started right ? Like example - bluesky (bsky.social)
- OutOfHere 3mo agoWe do need a decentralized scalable permissionless platform for speech. For it to remain sustainable, there should be a slight cost in Monero to making each post on it, preloadable in batches.
- microgpt 3mo agoHave one. Called the internet.
- OutOfHere 3mo agoIt is not censorship resistant without using the domains of some foreign nations.
- microgpt 3mo agoIt's actually very censorship resistant. You may need to think outside the HTTP/browser box. If you can get a single uncensored physical link you can use it to route traffic. You can also encapsulate traffic in protocols that bypass the censor or protocols the censor doesn't understand yet. And you don't have to pass traffic through a cloud server farm if you use IPv6.
- btbuildem 3mo agoThis is a reminder to curate and prune all your past social media contribution, because when this goes thru, you KNOW they will apply it retroactively. You'd loathe to lose your cushy job over a moment of lucid honesty back in 2011.
- microgpt 3mo agoIt's already too late for that but you can at least, by deleting now, reduce the chances they see it.
- kgwxd 3mo agoNot your HN account though. They even stopped replying to my annual emails asking if it's "possible" yet. They originally help me change the name, and scrub any replies that mentioned the original name. That's not enough though, thanks to old copies of the site data that still have my original name, linked directly to the real HN post it appears on, showing up in search results.
- microgpt 3mo agoIf you're in Europe, you can sue them under GDPR? They won't obey - HN explicitly chooses to disobey European laws - but having an arrest warrant out might be inconvenient enough for them to do it anyway.
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- iamflimflam1 3mo agoThis is already happening if you want to visit the US. Customs officers will look at your social media accounts to make sure you are compliant.
- microgpt 3mo agoAnd if you say you don't have any, they'll assume you're lying and deny you.
- ranyume 3mo agoIt's good that I don't have any reason to go to the US.
- a96 3mo agoAs you can see, it's quickly coming to other countries near you.
- HerbManic 3mo agoI have wondered that. I have this one and a very VERY bland Facebook that I post something stupid on every 12 months or so. So in a strange way I have accidentally shielded myself.
- raffael_de 3mo agosurveillance of foreigners (particularly) with residence in a different country is a different issue from surveillance of own citizens.
- account42 3mo agoAnd the neat part is that you can have agreements within a group of countries (say about five) to have them surveil your citizens and share what they find with you while you do the same for them.
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- RachelF 3mo agoAge verification is just one part of this crackdown. Device attestation is another - making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system and apps linked to your ID.
- shevy-java 3mo ago> making sure you're using an unmodified government approved operating system Will be interesting to see if this leads to more Linux systems being deployed. Then again with systemd supporting age sniffing (https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954 https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954), evading this becomes harder and harder.
- darkwater 3mo agoEvading what exactly? If the age verification is a flag sent by the OS and you are the OS administrator, you can do whatever you want.
- LtWorf 3mo agoSure, but your device won't be able to connect to anything useful.
- Klonoar 3mo agoSystemd changes don’t make it harder, you control the damn OS at the source code level if you choose.
- M95D 3mo agoTheoretically, yes, but Gentoo with all their resources couldn't keep even eudev alive. How much free time does one person need to maintain a fork of the entire systemd?
- zahlman 3mo agoWhy would it? Such a government would just... not approve Linux, if it interfered with their objectives.
- quotemstr 3mo agoIt doesn't have to be, FWIW. We have all the technology we need to decouple attribution from identity. We can achieve efficient and mathematically perfect unlinkability. Yet the powerful continue to insist on "papers, please" anonymity-rending personal authentication over anonymous authorization. It's not often that the villains of history so clearly identify themselves. My bunch is that the people driving this stuff were unaware that age verification could be privacy-preserving and can't exactly back down now.
- stretchwithme 3mo agoMaybe it should be possible for a parent to set a child age in a device. Everyone else can stay anonymous. I look forward to hearing why that won't work and what problems it will cause.
- vasco 3mo agoHow does the parent prove they are the parent. All you need is to think about the next step, come on now.
- kulahan 3mo ago…upon device purchase? Very obviously?
- vasco 3mo agoThe verification is not done per device but per usage session.
- microgpt 3mo agoWhy are you telling someone else how their hypothetical implementation works?
- vasco 3mo agoThere's no hypothetical, they tried to equate this to basically buying a gun where you do the certification on purchase. Internet connected devices are not planned to be controlled like that but per session. Under that model what they proposed is obviously not going to work.
- kulahan 3mo agoComment 1: “maybe it should be this way” Comment 2: “it can’t be that way because of this” Comment 3: “but it can, because it could maybe be this way” You: “There was no hypothetical” Oh my god the comments are getting so stupid. Please, I beg you to stop.
- NoPicklez 3mo agoI think you can look at all things pessimistically, like this article does but at the end of the day we all agree that there are things online we don't want our kids seeing or engaging with and it takes regulators to push how we protect them from those online places. What other options to regulators have? Age restriction has been around for longer than the internet itself, so its regulators applying that logic to the online world. Whilst I think age verification has its issues, I don't see what other options they actually have. I'll also make the point that in Australia, our regulations explicitly require that Government ID verification CANNOT be the only way and that companies must adopt an additional approach. Almost everything in technology used to protect us can be used against us by those want or choosing to do the wrong thing, does that mean we don't do anything?
- microgpt 3mo agoI like the California law where the device owner sets the parental controls and apps have to obey them or get fined.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoThis is the best solution I've seen, and it's also the simplest. No authority is involved other than the parent. No complicated protocols, or heavy CS theory about privacy preserving algorithms. Just one setting, "this device belongs to a minor" and apps either honor it or they are not allowed in the App store. Will some parents turn it off for their 14 year old? Yes, but some parents buy beer for their 14 year olds. That's a different problem. Apple, Google, and the social media companies could have done this 10 years ago and we would not even be having this debate today. But they decided they didn't have any social responsibility for what their devices and software did, so here we are.
- microgpt 3mo agoExactly! We - the tech industry - decided not to do it in a sensible way, so now we have clueless politicians saying something must be done, and mandating the stupid ways because they are clueless.
- NoPicklez 3mo ago> These "age verification" laws are - by design - identity attribution systems. They attribute digital identities (accounts) to physical identities (SSN, ID, etc..). This is government's ideal situation, the ability to quickly (automatically?) get identifying information about inconvenient people regardless if they're a criminal or not. I'll call it out because your article doesn't, but does reference Australia. Here our eSafety commissioner has set the requirements such that the use of Government ID for verification must not be the only option. There are other age verification technologies that do not assign identity but use other means as a method to identify age. For example, when our ban came into play I wasn't all of a sudden required to offer my ID.
- anon-3988 3mo agoRight now, our identity is kinda tied to a string of letter (password). This password can technically be passed around, created and destroyed at will. Tomorrow, our identity is going to be tied to you as a person. So messages will be signed by YOU as a person.
- shevy-java 3mo agoFascism will lose in the long run. Right now the lobbyists coordinate rather effectively, looking at how many democracies already succumbed here. Well, we need direct democracy - the system that we have right now with regard to democracies, is undermined by corruption.
- freefaler 3mo agoCory Doctorow had a very profound talk about it very long time ago (10+years). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg As the internet become the place where people do a lot of things, no government (and especially no security services) will be able to keep themselves from trying to control it or at least monitor it. And with the new LLM features they can automatically do much more than before. Human nature is a constant and when the government sees an easy way to enforce something, many more bureaucrats will try to do it.
- jimbob45 3mo agoWhat would you say to someone who is afraid that a bad actor will find their kids on Discord/Minecraft/4chan and encourage them to commit suicide or shoot up their school?
- tryauuum 3mo agoI would tell them to not give their children internet access at all until they think they are ready. Does it sound realistic? I don't know. From technical point of view certainly realistic, a child doesn't have money / devices of his own
- m0unta1ntube 3mo agoListen to your children, give them attention, they are your responsibility, don't give them internet access if you find it unsafe
- aucisson_masque 3mo agoIf I say something illegal during a meeting, people will notice it and will report it to the police. Then I may get arrested or fined. Why should it be different on the internet ? Provided we live in countries where freedom of speech is enacted. Of course in Russia or china it's different but surely they already have tools like that.
- stavros 3mo agoBecause perfect law enforcement means society can never change. Imagine if, back when it was illegal to be gay, every gay person was immediately sentenced. Do you think we'd be accepting homosexuality today?
- fyredge 3mo agoYes, because the zeitgeist still changes regardless of enforcement. If all gay people were sentenced purely for their sexuality and nothing else, how long do you think it will take for ordinary folk to change their view? I reckon not long, unless the society is completely devoid of empathy and justice.
- stavros 3mo agoIf you think that a society that actively harassed and persecuted homosexuals would spontaneously take pity on them, we have such different understandings on the world that debate can't be productive.
- piokoch 3mo agoYup "protecting kids" has a long, long history of being used as an excuse to restrict citizens rights, yet something like Epstein Island was happening with all the proponents of child protection being happy visitors of the said island.
- nephihaha 3mo agoJevon McSkimming, the second most powerful person in the New Zealand police, under Jacinda Ardern, was arrested not long ago for viewing extreme kiddie porn involving animals and torture. He had been doing so on his work computer! Complaints had been made against the man for years and been thrown out because of who he was, and the material was only found by accident. This same individual had been yet another one of those arguing for tighter controls on the internet and free speech for the peasants. Another one of these "one rule for me, another for thee" types.
- mawadev 3mo agoIf you look at how workers are mistreated in authoritarian corporations and how some people say it is perfectly fine because you get paid a lot of money to be used and abused, I can't imagine what a reality like this would look like. It does not stop with what you post online, we still can't really tell how our phones know about stuff we talk about irl to serve ads.
- raugustinus 3mo ago[flagged]
- h4kunamata 3mo agoAge verification is an excuse to hide the fact that parents have become useless and should have their rights of becoming parents revoked. If you ask any millenial, none of this bs existed during our time, parents wouldn't think twice to educate you, if you know you know haha That statement is weird in itself because said parents are yesterday's millenial. Add to that how companies and governments are trying to become a China. You cannot silence those that you don't know who they are. Ohh did you say something a politician or a cop didn't like??? Now they can hunt you down and force you to delete the post or whatever. Sci-fi movies are no longer just si-fi movies, it is easier than never to: 1. Know how you are and all the consequence behind that 2. Be a victim of identity theft. Look at how many millions of personal information including passports have been leaked into the dark web. In 2026, if you have the right skill and like doing the wrong thing, you can be anyone because their name, address, phone, photo, passporte, everything, is right there. What gives me peace of mind is that by the time everything goes to shit, I am not longer in this world lmao haha
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- pibaker 3mo ago> should have their rights of becoming parents revoked. Ok. So what does it mean to revoke the right for someone to become parents? Be honest and be specific.
- alt227 3mo ago> Ohh did you say something a politician or a cop didn't like??? Now they can hunt you down and force you to delete the post or whatever. Thats not true, as displayed by the recent Afroman case. https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-lawsuit-lemon-pound-cake-cec https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/19/entertainment/afroman-law...
- Garlef 3mo agoThe bad thing about this: Can you trust future governments to respect "Nulla poena sine lege"?
- SwellJoe 3mo agoIt's also a huge gift to the very surveillance capitalists they're pretending to protect children from. It de-anonymizes everyone, including children, and with the first exploit and dump of of the database (which will absolutely happen), all those children's real identities will be known to every predator in the world in addition to the social media companies who've already shown they can't be trusted with personal data or the ability to track people across the internet. It is a catastrophically dangerous idea, and it's exactly what the abusive social media companies want.
- KaiserPro 3mo agoPoint number 2 doesn't take that long and is largely automated. This is the thing that so upsetting with the discourse. Privacy is already eroded, its just by private companies, not the state. All social networks have a gateway for law enforcement that allows getting extra details about users. There is another gateway with ISPs to correlate IPs with end users. In the USA you can just buy most of that info through brokers. Sure, people who takes precautions it takes extra work, but for dave on facebook, its pretty automatic. I really wish people would foccus on that bit, because the way to get privacy back is to get a handle on social media companies(and google). They are the ones who've eroded our privacy, and if we just say "Oooo age gating is bad mmkay" without a viable alternative, then we'll all get something worse. The solution is to limit what social media companies can profit from, so _they_ can regulate what shit they put in front of kids eyes. They can totally do it (after all how much porn is actually hosted on youtube? its really really hard, because they put in place systems to stop it.)
- msy 3mo agoI find myself in an odd predicament. For nearly all my life I would have seen all of this as an unconscionable anathema. But having watched what social media has done to our society, the tsunami of bullshit collapsing critical thought, science and reason I just don’t think civilisation can survive this without controls. Too many people are too gullible, too uncritical for it to survive without the state being able to curtail harmful speech at scale. Do I hate it? Absolutely. But I hate the alternative more. And I want the bounds of acceptable speech to be decided by my democratically elected government, not a bunch of American billionaires determined to burn society to the ground so they can pan the ashes for yet more gold.
- shakna 3mo agoWouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices, and improve things for everyone, rather than force the audience to carry the weight of responsibility?
- bcjdjsndon 3mo ago> Wouldn't it be better to curtail social media's addictive design choices Hacker news has a doomscroll front page. Ive never notice you have a problem with it
- shakna 3mo agoHN specifically does not. You have to click "more", leading to most people not moving beyond two or three pages, rather than infinite scrolling.
- bcjdjsndon 3mo agoSo clicking to the next piece of slop is ok, but scrolling is bad?
- shakna 3mo agoOur current research shows that people don't click. But they do scroll. So... Yes. Infinite scrolling makes it harder to break the feedback loop, and harder to control self-interruption. It also increases the overall dopamine experienced. Pagination, allows the user to regularly break from the cycle, and most people take advantage to do so. It allows people to notice fatigue. Which is exactly why most social media sites no longer use it. As the 'inventor' of the infinite scroll said: > [it is] one of the first products designed to not simply help a user, but to deliberately keep them online for as long as possible - Aza Raskin
- pvacodes 3mo ago[dead]
- sunshine-o 3mo agoThe irony is AI already have more freedom of speech and maybe reach compared to humans in most "western democracies".
- nephihaha 3mo agoI feel we are preaching to the choir here. How do we get this message out to the wider population when it's being corralled so much? I think this Cloudflare business ties into it, although it is masquerading as bot protection.
- TrackerFF 3mo agoIn the intel industry, it is known that metadata is more or less enough to identify people. That's state/military intel. Several countries have already implemented bulk acquisition / collection of data that "crosses the borders", which is a ridiculous concept. If you're located in, say, Norway - and send someone who is also located in Norway a message via Messenger, there's a good likelihood that message will go to some foreign located Meta server, and back to Norway. When this was being implemented, there was some noise and protests from experts, but that's about it. For the general population it went quietly and without notice.
- knollimar 3mo agoIsn't that the point of e2e encryption? Maybe I have a privileged US take but I've always not cared much for a border crossing in a round trip. It always seemed like a needless expense to have a full vertical server stack in each country to me. Wondering if someone can explain the logic
- zrn900 3mo agoThe objective of these digital id laws being pushed through age verification is to be able to easily ! legally ! prosecute the dissidents. That's one thing the intelligence agencies could not do with their illegally collected data.
- WhereIsTheTruth 3mo ago[dead]
- tomb_raider_II 3mo ago[dead]
- Ouman 3mo agoThe scary part is not "age checks today, secret police tomorrow". It is that once there is a convenient identity-verification layer for normal internet use, it will be very hard to keep it limited to the original purpose... Every future regulator, prosecutor, platform and "think of the children" campaign will have an incentive to expand it
- marsven_422 3mo ago[dead]
- boomskats 3mo agoI'm honestly amazed that people are only just figuring this out. I know that reads like I'm being snarky, but I'm not trying to be. Within the last decade in the UK we have had (among others): - the 2016 Snoopers' Charter - the 2022 Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act - the 2023 Public Order Act - the 2023 Online Safety Act - the 2024 Addendum to the 2016 Snoopers' Charter Couple that with the whole push to repeal the 1998 Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, and the fact we've started imprisoning pensioners for holding up signs, and it's really difficult to _not_ see exactly where this leaves us. I wish I could look away and get on with my life, but I can't - and I'm starting to realise that that is also part of the design. The increasing reluctance to express controversial opinion online isn't an accidental side effect of all of this legislation. It is intended behaviour, the desired outcome.
- iamnothere 3mo agoIt’s a great time to build parallel systems and networks among likeminded individuals. If you see tyranny coming, your options (other than silent complicity) are pretty much build a support network or exit.
- callamdelaney 3mo agoBritain doesn't need a European court to grant human rights to its own citizens. You know that the human rights act is not preventing government crackdowns on speech and privacy, and you will also know that the intention is to replace it with a human rights bill of our own. The current act is being used by lawyers and judges to force migration on a country which never voted for it. Now would we trust the clearly compromised political class we currently have to implement it? Probably not.
- uwagar 3mo agoage verificiation is throttling of speech. so the internet becomes again like TV or newspaper. u can transmit with license only. not anonymously.
- nosyke 3mo agoThis isn't necessarily true as you'd actually be surprised how easy it still is to go place an anonymous ad in your local newspaper. Not all of them will allow it but quite a few still make it fairly easy.
- Keycheinxx 3mo ago[dead]
- FergusArgyll 3mo agoTechies have a real blind spot here. This stuff is very popular, like bipartisan support popular. Yes, it's a precursor to terrible things and they will happen but you have to convince people the the harms outweigh the benefits. Just asking "Why can't they tell the point of this" is not helpful or true. "The point of this" is decided by those pushing it, those pushing it are not politicians, they're parents and they're pushing it because they're scared of social media, not because they want to censor you. You need to explain to and convince those parents that this will result in something worse.
- enoint 3mo agoI don’t see a groundswell of parents pushing for this. In fact, I suspect the only messages my representative received about this were negative, from parents. A table will be leaked with your child’s name, birthday, pattern of online access, and brand of phone. To protect your child is to fight that leak. Your representative might say, “oops, cybersecurity so hard, who could have seen this coming?” but his party shields pedophiles. Someone posting nasty comments online gets to enjoy anonymity. My kids, who know better than to comment at all, still end up on that table.
- aichi 3mo ago... use Monero. Why author didn't start with this claim? Intention would be more clear
- zetanor 3mo agoWhat is the clear intention?
- Varelion 3mo agoGonna repost this comment I made last week, as no one interacted with its core idea. I am torn. I have bore first-hand witness to the scale of the PsyOps war waged on the American people by institutions near and far. Artroturfing to sew division to one means of another. In all these operations, anonymity is what drives it. I was born and raised in the anonymous internet, and tasted its freedoms. I oppose censorship. But, at this point, I have come to wonder it it would be best to always have your real-life personality attached to all you do. At least to any action that feeds an algorithm or creates something someone else can see. It is the nature of the internet that you could never achieve absolute censorship -- and maybe anonymity should belong to the hackers and tinkers with the will and drive to hunt and craft for it. I do not like holding this opinion, because it feels as though it is on the similar boat as that of those who 'pull up the ladder after themselves'. Increasingly, I see it as pulling shut the trapdoors to hell. P.S. This goes without saying -- it's also the only was to defend against "ai" bots. EDIT: I'm thoroughly convinced that my initial position here was wrong. Yeah -- easy to forget that, with, COINTELPRO, the feds are not bound by the same laws as the people, and that oligarch-controlled media will bend over backwards to give them backdoors. Thanks for all the feedback.
- lotsofpulp 3mo ago>But, at this point, I have come to wonder it it would be best to always have your real-life personality attached to all you do. I also had similar thoughts to you, but seeing the election results of the previous decade in the US makes me question the premise that transparency will lead to desirable results because the majority have good intentions.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- clcaev 3mo ago> In all these operations, anonymity is what drives it. The most egregious, prolific lies out there have been fully attributed; and perhaps especially because of attribution, people vehemently disagree on which are the lies. Those who wield outsized power experience attribution of speech asymmetrically. Filtering societal communication supports the concentration of power.
- not_your_vase 3mo agoDo you remember the pipa/sopa protests from like a decade ago? The internet, as we knew it, is over. It has been dead for a few years, but it is getting clear now only. It had its great moments, while it lasted.
- Cthulhu_ 3mo agoNote that age verification does not rely on you handing over identifying information to the party requesting it, that's just one possible implementation. Another more privacy conscious one is e.g. iDIN or whatever comes after, which works a bit like oauth in that you're redirected to a trusted 3rd party like your bank which only confirms "this person is 18+" to the requesting party. The only thing that the requester needs to save is the "this person is 18+ as verified by this party". Granted, that's still an avenue for law enforcement to find out who you are, but then, so is your internet service provider or VPN (where the VPN is likely already a honeypot)
- zrn900 3mo ago> Note that age verification does not rely on you handing over identifying information to the party requesting it It most certainly does, because it has to: https://reclaimthenet.org/starmers-social-media-ban-surveillance-state https://reclaimthenet.org/starmers-social-media-ban-surveill... "Monday’s headline was a ban on under-16s using social media which, to some, sounds about as sinister as a wholesome ribbon-cutting until you ask the obvious question nobody in Downing Street wants asked aloud: how, precisely, do you stop a fourteen-year-old from opening Instagram without first checking the age of the forty-year-old? You don’t. You can’t. So everyone gets carded. Britain is lifting the system wholesale from Australia, where a computer first scans your face and guesses your age from your cheekbones, then, failing that, surveils you to death, studies your browsing habits and the hours you keep, and then, when the algorithm throws up its hands, simply demands your passport."
- Nevermark 3mo agoAge verification starts the gating of Internet access by governments. Any site, with any concern about age of user liability, is likely to adopt the practice. Strong laws, sold on their face value safety benefits, will increase that liability. You won’t see any laws removing or limiting that liability. The trend will be many more sites becoming government-gated, than we are imagining now. Beyond surveillance, it’s a real step into government permissioned internet access, on an individual citizen level.
- akoboldfrying 3mo agoI agree. But it's not clear to me that the downsides of this outweigh the upsides. The government has control over many areas of life, and in most cases I feel that to be on balance a good thing, even though governments can be corrupt or inefficient. Consider some other domain, like roads. In every country, the government issues licenses that include photographic ID to residents to drive on roads; driving without a license is illegal and can result in fines or even imprisonment. But this level of government control feels normal to people, and most would say the safety benefits outweigh the government interference.
- recursive-call 3mo agoThat’s because the consequences of unsafe driving is people dying or being maimed. Other than suicide and that one incident with facebook, people do not die in appreciable numbers due to things that happen on the internet.
- akoboldfrying 3mo agoPeople die on roads anyway, even with government control. And if there were no official government control, most roads would still not be a free-for-all -- in most places, informal community standards for road use would have developed in their stead. It is only the difference between these two states of affairs that government control of roads buys us. (FWIW I certainly think the difference is likely very large and government control of roads is therefore warranted.) One of the consequences of the government knowing who wrote or said everything on the Internet would be that it would be much harder for organised crime like drug and human trafficking to operate. Of course, another well known consequence is that the opportunity for government corruption is greatly magnified. My point is that the safety improvement is significant enough that the debate is worth having. Attitudes to government involvement vary from place to place. In Germany, you need to register your home address with the local government; while most Americans would chafe at this level of government "surveillance", a majority of Germans are comforted by it.
- jmyeet 3mo agoThe word "China" isn't mentioned once here and that really highlights how shallow this piece is. I've scannned the comments and there's the usual tropes about lack of freedom of speech but let's look at some recent events: - A 30 year prison sentence for tansporting a box of zines in Texas [1]. To do so they invented "antifa" as an organization out of whole cloth and will now use those convictions as further proof. I've seen this compared to the Salem witch trials; - Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, was detained and there is still ongoing deportation proceedings. What for? Organizing a peaceful protest at Columbia against the genocide being committed by Israel [2]; - Renee Good and Alex Pretti who were simply protesting ICE were killed essentially in cold blood and there have been zero consequences; - Over 700 charged under the Terrorist Act in the UK for expressing support for Palestine. Defenders will argue Palestine Action is a designated terrorism group without asking why. Also, that's how it always works. Slavery was legal once. Freeing slaves was illegal. Does that make the Underground Railroad a terrorist organization? Today it would; - In ~35 states in the US to work for or in government you have to express varying degrees of loyalty to Israel or at least commit never to boycott Israel eg [3]. To date, the Supreme Court has never substantively taken up these cases as the clear First Amendment violation they are; - In PA, the Swarthmore 9 are being charged over their protests with the bullshit charge of "defiant trespass" [4]; - In Australia, in the wake of the Bondi shooting, new anti-"hate crime" legislation was passed that is so broad and sweeping that the Greens claim you could be charged with criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu [5]. - Numerous examples of the administration pulling funding and bringing colleges to heel over not cracking down sufficiently on Gaza protests. So why I find these tired tropes about China so exhausting and lazy is because: 1. Look at what's happening here and in the West at large; and 2. Ironically, China has a system for age verification that actually works and the answer is really simple. The government issues the IDs. It can verify the IDs. We do this all the time with employment (eg E-Verify). You can even do it in such a way that the app doesn't get any sensitive information. But it's like people say "you can't trust government" (even though the government already has all that data) and then thinks that a private company is the only possible solution (eg Peter Thiel's Persona). If you've gotten this far you should know that at no point in any of the above have I argued for age verification. So far all I've said is that there is an absolute double standard in the fearmongering around it and that is it possible to create a relatively effective regime for it without handing everyone's data to Peter Thiel. I think it's inarguable at this point that what we're doing now has been a dismal failure and something's gotta give. I think we should start by attacking the financial incentives here, namely: 1. Tech companies already use behavioural analysis to guess your demographics. If they figure out you're under 18 you should have a restricted experience. That should include no advertising, a much more limited algorithmic feed, etc; 2. Stop tech companies from being able to sell advertising to minors. Don't allow an advertiser to target an audience that includes minors as best as the tech company knows they are minors. I personally think we could eliminate a bunch of harm just by attacking the advertising incentive here. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/24/prairieland-texas-ice-protests-zines https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jun/... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Mahmoud_Khalil [3]: https://www.txdot.gov/manuals/csd/ncp/standards_for_contracts/contracting_requirements-i1007955/prohibition_on_contracts_with_companies_boycotting.html https://www.txdot.gov/manuals/csd/ncp/standards_for_contract... [4]: https://iacenter.org/2026/06/27/swarthmore-9-on-trial-for-pro-palestine-encampment/ https://iacenter.org/2026/06/27/swarthmore-9-on-trial-for-pr... [5]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/21/criticism-of-benjamin-netanyahu-made-be-an-offence-under-australias-new-hate-speech-laws-greens-warn-ntwnfb https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/21/criti...
- kusokurae 3mo agoI should probably stop advocating for systematically killing the ultra-wealthy huh
- riffraff 3mo ago> These "age verification" laws are - by design - identity attribution systems. They attribute digital identities (accounts) to physical identities (SSN, ID, etc.. No, they don't. The proposed EU verification system provides a proof of age to the service but no physical identity data. This is possibly a slippery slope, but I don't think it's correct to state the two things are equivalent.
- ipodopt 3mo agoMaybe not the laws, but the systems being built are attribute based.
- jklowden 3mo agoCount me among those who think publishers should always know who they’re publishing. When law enforcement comes knocking, a warrant should be all they need. Meta can’t shrug and say they don’t know who Batman1964 is. There’s nothing new in publishing anonymously, just ask George Elliot. What’s new is the notion that publishers have no liability. Social media companies do not claim to speak for themselves. They have no reporters, no sources to protect. They’re one giant “letters to the editor” section. They should know for whom they speak. Whether or not a writer commits libel is for the courts to decide. Neither the writer nor publisher has the right to avoid responsibility by camouflage.
- mpalmer 3mo agoFreedom of expression is inseparable from the right to privacy. Should journalists be forced to reveal their sources if the subject of a claim sues for defamation?
- rini17 3mo agoFreedom of expression is not absolute and never was. Should everyone just shrug off anonymous hoaxes and hate speech?
- whearyou 3mo agoFeels like the run up to the "current world" in a Peter Watts novel
- andai 3mo agoI thought they were gonna wait until internet is flooded with AI content indistinguishable from human content, i.e. wait until people are begging for a "real human" badge which can only be enforced by ID. Instead they're forcing it early with the "but the children!" thing again.
- AvAn12 3mo agoWhy participate? Why not just skip any site that wants a photo of ID? Also, those sites run massive liability risk for the inevitable data breaches that will occur.
- redmaple892 3mo agoI hear these alarm bells but what I don't understand is what the solution is to non-human or state actor internet commenting or social media campaigns. Most (maybe all?) sites are full of this. Without any sort of verification - how can this ever be solved?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- bethekidyouwant 3mo agohow were you convinced that this needs to be solved?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- fool0 3mo ago@DrScience,@theotherhobbes,@frendziz The title is almost obvious. Surveilance is already 24/7/365. If you're not completely appalled you haven't been paying attention. With regards to 'democracy', as with jurors, common-sense is a mixed bag... A politician in an area close to mine ran a write-in campaign contacted ~8000+ people, got ~5k votes. The Democrat on the ballot was unknown, signed-up last minute, gave no ballot statment, didn't advertise, or canvas and won; surmisably because they were listed as Democrat. Another, earlier, was a Democrat state representative who got redistricted out of their seat by their own party for lack of toeing the party line. Most of my ballot here is single person for each category, Should a challenger come up... well money is speech and thus taxation is censorship, and propaganda costs. When you hear a politician speak they are psychologically projecting from their own affectual experience. Freedom ended with the concept of allodium. We've all been slaves ever since. Don't believe that, walk nude, spouting nazi, or Stalinist slogans at work or even in your front yard or porch and see if you can pay your property tax or rent for the next period.
- naasking 3mo agoPoliticians keep looking for excuses to break consumer encryption, and the youth social media harms are just the latest excuse that has received broad support. So disappointing.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3mo agoData collection, surveillance and ad services, through the vector of "social media", is just a precursor to age verfication The term "social media" as used here means a third party website, e.g., Mark Zuckerberg's website, Elon Musk's website, Larry Page's website, etc., encouraging internet users to communicate and/or share files with other internet users via the website, allowing the third party to intermediate, collect data, perform surveillance and provide ad services to other third parties who want to target the "social media" user
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoOnce again 4chan is the last bastion of freedom.
- simontheowl 3mo agoHonestly, I don't know why this is such a big deal for people. There is no right for anonymous free speech, just free speech. The idea that you should be able to do everything anonymously is certainly nothing that I've seen in the constitution.
- enoint 3mo agoDo you have a preferred implementation: 1. Self-attestation 2. Government ID scan 3. Face capture, AI age estimation 4. Cryptographic age token
- klad_majoor 3mo ago“it's really just a precursor to attribution of speech, particularly attributing your words to your real identity.” How silly to remember that’s how mankind interacted and verified information and reliability for millennia, before Social Media made sockpuppetry trolling and lynch parties the favorite tools for social change. But I guess most Social Media users must be whistleblowers and/or living in totalitarian states.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- magenta4 3mo ago[dead]
- cx42net 3mo agoIt seems that age verification (much like chat control) is getting more and more inevitable. Instead of arguing on the bad this brings, we should push our authorities to enforce mechanism that still respect the anonymity of a person. France's "France Identité" started to implement an approach that respect anonymity by using what they call a "double anonymity: a principle that ensures that neither the adult site nor the age-appropriate provider can know who is accessing what. Using advanced cryptographic technologies—digital signatures and zero-knowledge proofs—the system generates proof of age without revealing identity or browsing history." (source: https://entrevue.fr/en/police-justice/verification-dage-sur-les-sites-pornographiques-le-double-anonymat-un-bouclier-contre-le-tracage-des-internautes/ https://entrevue.fr/en/police-justice/verification-dage-sur-...) French's state should already have these informations from us (as a French citizen) so asking them to provide a certificate that guarantee my age seems like an obvious choice, and giving that digital certificate to any site without having to tell the issuer where I'm going is, I think, the best solution for the worst project. (There a lot of news about this, but mostly in French. If you are curious: - https://www.franceinfo.fr/societe/pornographie/l-arcom-impose-le-double-anonymat-pour-verifier-l-age-des-utilisateurs-sur-les-sites-pornographiques_6832331.html https://www.franceinfo.fr/societe/pornographie/l-arcom-impos... - https://www.frandroid.com/culture-tech/web/2962099_france-identite-voici-une-solution-propre-pour-prouver-son-age-sans-donner-son-nom-ni-son-age-exact https://www.frandroid.com/culture-tech/web/2962099_france-id... )
- bingoMen 3mo agoIt is interesting how the article frames "opposition to immigration" as a threat for the state or reason to prosecution. Therefore, the state would prefer it if everyone opposed it, especially in a fascist state. What is illegal immigration? I think it's funny that most people who scream about freedom only mean their own freedom. "Age verification" is nothing more as a new law, from a state. You all so naive that the state would stop by their "own" citizens, because... because why?
- cheesepaint 3mo ago>> These "age verification" laws are - by design - identity attribution systems. At least in the case of the EU, this is not the case. The age verification is performed anonymously based on the eWallet.[0] [0] https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/930450954/The+Age+Verification+Manual https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EU...
- arendtio 3mo agoCredit where credit is due: Mr. Trump does a good job of showing the world why you should not give the state too powerful surveillance systems. The problem is not if you have done something ethically wrong ('I have nothing to hide'), but if you can trust the people who will have control over those systems in the future. Who will be in control in 10 years?
- husamia 3mo agoThere is almost no mention of cryptographic frameworks like Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). Technologies exist that can mathematically prove a user is over 18 without revealing their date of birth, name, or identity to the website or the state.