New age-verification laws and tools are designed for child safety on social media and the internet, but adults are in the crosshairs, say privacy experts.

New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.

    • Kraiden@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      People will find a way around verification

      Sure, but that’s true regardless of implementation. Your Great Firewall approach is by far the easiest to circumvent, and comes with by far the biggest drawbacks. Even worse than handing a face scan and a copy of your ID to every website that asks.

      To have a perfect system

      Who said anything about perfect? The system is NOT perfect. What it IS though, is private, and better than the alternatives.

      You either accept that system isn’t perfect or push for complete surveillance.

      Says who? It doesn’t have to be that black and white. “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” as the saying goes. You don’t have to accept your privacy being violated, AND you don’t have to just roll over, give up, and let kids access anything they want.

      You seem willing to risk what will turn out to be surveillance

      No. My whole point is that the privacy/anonymity and age verification are NOT mutually exclusive. You CAN have both.

      I’m more skeptical and not trusting of those in charge

      Your idea LITERALLY lets those in charge decide what information you get access to, so maybe you should be a little more skeptical.

      how much someone trusts their government and corporations

      I trust neither. That’s why I like the system I’m describing. It puts ME in charge of MY data, and gives me controll over who gets to use it, and exactly what they’re allowed to do with it

        • Kraiden@piefed.socialEnglish
          11·
          3 days ago

          My idea is already in place

          Yes, and by turning it on you are opting in to allowing your ISP to decide what information you get access to. Making that the default is a TERRIBLE idea.

          your ID that is linked

          There is nothing linking your account to you IRL. This is what I’m having a really hard time getting through to people. That situation cannot happen. “The people who wrote the system” don’t at any stage get access to information that could expose you. Your data never leaves your sphere of influence. That’s what makes the system so great.

          Only proposal I’ve liked is being able to buy tokens at a store without any ID being logged and buying new ones when it expires. Like the mullvad VPN gift cards.

          Yes! What I’m trying to describe is that process, but in a digital space. Swap the store with a LOCAL app (ie: one that doesn’t phone home, and can generate the tokens on your device), and swap the ID with the cert file, and you’ve got the same process in the digital space, with all the same benefits

            • Kraiden@piefed.socialEnglish
              11·
              3 days ago

              you’d have to trust the code and to be an approved system would require the government to sign off on it

              No! That’s the great part, because it’s just fancy crypto maths, there’s no reason it couldn’t be a FOSS app. Estonia has several 3rd party providers, and they do get certified, but that’s not a necessity

              So turn it off.

              Tell that to the people in China. Seriously, if you get a chance, read the article I linked. It’ll do a much better job than I ever could at explaining why what you’re describing is just about the worst possible solution to this problem imaginable.