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Comments (297)

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  Bender
  The one and only method I will participate in is server operators setting a RTA header [1] for URL's that may contain adult or user-generated or user-contributed content and the clients having the option to detect that header and trigger parental controls if they are enabled by the device owner. That should suffice to protect most small children. Teens will always get around anything anyone implements as they are already doing. RTA headers are not perfect, nothing is nor ever will be but there is absolutely no tracking or leaking data involved. Governments could easily hire contractors to scan sites for the lack of that header and fine sites not participating into oblivion.I a small server operator and a client of the internet will not participate in any other methods period, full-stop. Make simple logical and rational laws around RTA headers and I will participate. Many sites already voluntarily add this header. It is trivial to implement. Many questions and a lengthy discussion occurred here [1]. I doubt my little private and semi-private sites would be noticed but one day it may come to that at which point it's back into semi-private Tinc open source VPN meshes for my friends and I.[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074
• dev_l1x_be
  We need a truly distributed point-to-point internet asap. Politicians going to do everything to limit free speech and free ideas in the name of protecting children while they already got all the powers to investigate and stop child abuse.https://meshtastic.org/
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  ronsor
  There's an angle everyone misses.Mandatory age surveillance everywhere is only going to result in massive, normalized ID fraud. You thought fake and stolen IDs were a problem before? You haven't seen anything yet.And half of it will be from adults trying to avoid privacy invasion.
• didgetmaster
  I have long thought that all content (local and remote) should be properly labeled with metadata. Just like the cans of soup in the supermarket, you don't have to open it to find out if it has peanuts, lactose, or MSG in it; you should be able to filter data before accessing it.You could define a set of 5 or six categories (nudity, sex, drugs, violence, etc.) and have a scale from 1 to 10 for each. Each content producer would rate each category according to defined criteria.Then each user, or their parent, can set what their own acceptable level is. If you set your violence level at 4 then nothing level 5 or higher will load.
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  cooper_ganglia
  THe government shouldn't be raising anyone's children, that's what parents are for. If you're a bad parent, your kids will get access to bad things and could become an adult failure.The future of your family and your legacy is up to you, not the government. We don't need age verification to restrict the social darwinism of raising children.
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  goda90
  Age verification can be achieved without destroying anonymity and privacy online using anonymous credential systems, but it has to be designed that way from the ground up, and no one pushing age verification is interested in preserving privacy.
• bloppe
  There are lots of ways to implement identity verification while preserving privacy. It's actually a super interesting engineering problem. Estonia has an excellent model to build on. The government can maintain a "traditional" ID system based on documents and in-person verification, and provide you with a device similar to a yubi-key or Bitcoin hardware wallet that could be used to share specific, cryptographically verifiable claims with third parties, like your age, or even just a boolean "over 18", but also your name or other information if you choose, with a way to control the access and audit which parties have verified which claims with the govt.
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  wxw
  How are folks recommended to get involved? Contact your local Congress member? I feel this thread has a lot of passion but is missing concrete, actionable steps.
• onetimeusename
  I've heard that we could use zero-knowledge ID proofs to show someone is of age without revealing any more but I don't think that's the plan and the demand for age restrictions doesn't feel like a grassroots effort of concerned parents. It feels like an NGO/bureaucrat driven law and I assume its purpose is to de-anonymize people on the internet.
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  znnajdla
  In the age of AI I think it’s only necessary and inevitable to implement some of kind of internet ID system to stop the massive onslaught of AI generated fraud, malicious hacking, and spam. If age verification is a Trojan horse to erase online anonymity, so be it, I see that as a worthy goal.Humans are inherently social, and social networks are based on trust. Trust is primarily a function of reputation, peer pressure, and legal consequences. Reputation requires tying behavior to a stable identity. Peer pressure only works when you’re not anonymous. For there to be legal consequences for bad behavior, we must identify bad actors. I don’t see why anyone would want to remove any of this. To protect some freelance journalists in Iran?Also I don’t think that the “pro privacy” activists really understand the scale and severity of harm being done to children through the internet. I as a programmer who makes my living on the internet, would gladly support the shutting down of the whole internet if it would save the life of a single precious child.
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  tim333
  >age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs. Digital IDs require everyone — not just children — to prove who they are before they can speak...Not if it's done in a half arsed way. I'm in the UK and so far my age verification has involved doing a selfie with the webcam for Reddit. That's it. No one needing my name, ID number etc. (Apart from banks of course).Really this is just the modern equivalent of putting the porn mags on the top shelf at the newsagent to stop the kids getting them. We don't need more.
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  retired
  Age verification on Australian social media has loopholes. Underage influencers use an agency to manage their social media for them. So anyone with enough followers or money can continue using social media under the age of 16.If you are going to implement age controls, you should implement a ban on underage influencers as well.
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  ericmay
  Just requiring it for social media companies is probably enough of a win to not have to pursue any further. We require age verification for sports betting and things like that, I'm not sure why we wouldn't do the same or some variation of that for other massively addicting products that we know as a matter of scientific study have a very bad impact on some number of kids.
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  mzmzmzm
  If you don't use X/Twitter anymore, XCancel makes it possible to read threads when not logged in: https://xcancel.com/GlennMeder/status/2049088498163216560
• sailfast
  It’s not online age verification. It’s online identity verification.Would you vote for that? Prove who you are to visit this website? Would you do it to access Hacker News? Your newspaper?Didn’t think so.
• motbus3
  It is not like a digital control for id verification could be used anyway to control a narrative in war times right?
• dirtikiti
  And the piece nobody is even considering...Responsible parents don't have separate OS accounts for their children.
• ilovecake1984
  I’d wager most people want more censorship of the internet.
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  kaboomshebang
  Kids will always find ways around regulation. Look at cigarettes, vapes, alcohol, weed; they will just get it from their dealers. Pornography? I expect something like: download a Torrent, get it from a classmate, share HardDrives in school, get it through an older brother.
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  gslepak
  Good: some commenters here realize it's an attack on privacyBad: some still entertain the idea that we should do age verification using some sort of crypto primitivesThere is no reason for age verification at all.I am from the goatse generation. Rotten.com. steakandcheese. Horrific stuff tbh, I mostly stayed away from it, and I didn't need a helicopter government to protect me from it.The moment you accept the narrative that kids need to be protected from the Internet you have already lost.You've already condemned those kids to a life of slavery. So much for protecting them.What we need is not online verification, but a competent government that does its existing job well.Who's been arrested over the Epstein files? Who is protecting those kids?No one.That same government wants to "protect" your kids by KYCing everyone.Give me a break.
• midtake
  I agree, doxxing yourself to some shady gray-market adjacent data broker is not acceptable as age verification, and age verification was safer using the honor system as before. But for some communities, especially social media communities, some kind of verification is better than none, otherwise what's to stop them from being overwhelmed with alt accounts that are used simply for harassment or other targeted objectives?People should not be able to misrepresent themselves on the internet, it may have been safe in low volumes but it is scary now and will be outright dangerous as a modality in the hands of AI agents. If you think teen mental health is bad now, wait until social media campaign capabilities previously only available to nation states fall into the hands of ordinary school bullies.Maybe age verification isn't the way to mitigate this obvious risk, but there has to be something that can be done to stop rampant sockpuppeting.
• jrexilius
  I can't agree with this enough and yet I think the long term danger is masked by the current problems for the majority of voters. I'm not hopeful.
• crazygringo
  I'm not a fan of online age verification, but this is completely absurd:> Every website. Every platform. Every app. Every service. Your children will never know what it was like to think freely online. They will never explore ideas anonymously. They will never question authority without it being logged in their permanent profile. They will never speak freely without fear that every word will be used...No. Nobody's proposing you need to verify your identity to read articles on the New York Times or Wikipedia or political blogs. And nobody is proposing you need to verify your identity to leave comments on a news article or blog post. And any proposed law around that would run into massive first-amendment constitutional hurdles. It would be struck down easily.There's always going to be a spectrum of websites that range from open and anonymous (like news and political discussion) to strongly identity-verified (like online banking). I don't like online age verification for particular sites, but at the same time I think it's completely misleading to see it as this slippery slope to a world where anonymous speech no longer exists.We can have reasoned arguments around how people's usage of sites is tracked and how to prevent that, without making this about free speech and "the hill to die on".
• aalaee
  For a forum that supposedly consists of hackers and tech-savvy people, this number of comments supporting age verification is concerning.The author has said a lot about what kind of future awaits with mass surveillance and AI, but I believe it’s not enough. Technofascism Is not that far away.
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  Havoc
  I have a fair bit of fatalism on this one.Saw it with the UK laws. It just gets rammed through. Whether it’s ignorance, malice, hidden force, a desire for surveillance state, genuine concern for children - doesn’t matter, the forces in favour are substantially more and seemingly motivated to try over and over until it sticks.Much like brexit or for that matter trump reelection I just don’t have much faith in wisdom of the democratic collective consensus anymore and I don’t think it’ll get any better in an AI misinformation echo chamber world. Onwards into dystopiaExceeding gloomy take I know
• giantg2
  So many pieces of law are flawed today, and the reason why should be concerning to all.I find it disgusting that most laws today are based on creating a perfect world instead of addressing harms in the least intrusive way. There is no balancing of interests, even when they state that there are. Every side complains about the others and potential future abuses, except when it is their plan. Nobody tries to design the law with a devil's advocate perspective to make as effective as reasonably possible (not perfect!) while limiting overreach.The real problem is the pursuit of perfection. A perfect world does not exist, nor will it ever (laws of nature, physics, etc). One person's view of perfect is not the same as another's. We've lost the capacity for legislative empathy through are impatience and self importance. It's no longer about restricting government and providing people with rights. It's about how we can use government to shove the desires of a majority or plurality onto the total population.There are ways to do age verification with reasonable anonymity, but they aren't perfect and can create underground markets (see gaming in China). At a certain point, we need to step back and put the responsibilities where they belong - with parents, instead of causing massive negative externalities on everyone else.Yeah, yeah, but the children...
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  barnacs
  Hopefully this will give yet another push towards decentralized, open source services. Platforms where noone and everyone is responsible and the state does not get to decide the rules.
• 131hn
  There’s age verification when you buy a gun. Not on a gun handle.Kids should not be able/allowed to buy/use devices that are dangerous for themBut the device itself should not care at the fallacious idea “it might be able to”
• Ritewut
  Just a reminder that the YC funds many of the companies pushing these laws and building the surveillance state.
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  cft
  There is a sudden concerted international push for online age verification, and we do not know where this push originates from. That is the scariest thing about it.
• seydor
  Usually Fear is the realm of governments. Modern republics are basically legitimized around the fears of something terrible happening, it can be communism, narcotics, the ozone hole, corona virus, terrorists, immigration, globalization, unrecycled waste or greenhouse effect.Private entities being frontrunners in AI Fear either means that these companies have too much unchecked power or that they have are covert instruments of governments.
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  baxtr
  Ok, maybe that’s a silly thought, but… couldn’t this be provided by Apple/Google anonymously?When you set up kids devices in your family they ask you to provide the birthday anyway.I’m keen to see the arguments against this.
• josefritzishere
  Age Verification is very offensive. It assumes guilt and creates risk to no societal benefit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_privacy
• yawniek
  ironically i think we need more social and stronger local social networks that have high identity validation and are "safe" spaces for the plebs. so that the perceived "threat level" from the free internet gets lower. basically hide the real internet a bit behind a small rock. its a slippery slope but it might be the better strategy unless some democratic societies achieve to put more modern "freedom guarantees" into their consitution.
• worthless-trash
  This whole problem is basically parents admitting they cant parent.
• stared
  Online age verification is an example of the Motte-and-bailey fallacy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy, https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bri...).It is easy to defend on the motte hill (protection of children, protection against abuse and heinous crimes), and easy to expand and farm on the bailey (universal surveillance, mass data collection, and the erosion of privacy).
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  anonym29
  It's worth pointing out that full digital identity verification ("doxxing" yourself to an untrustworthy, unauditable, legally unconstrained private company) is NOT the only way to verify adulthood. We have had a system in place which enables adulthood validation without enabling digital surveillance infrastructure, with a degree of false negative risk that society has deemed acceptable for nearly 100 years now. This idea is not my own, but I'm happy to share a reasonable proposal for it.The Cashier Standard – Age Verification Without Surveillancehttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47809795https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/7fe74381-a683-4f49-9c2b-1...
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  SirMaster
  "But age verification requires identity verification. Identity verification requires digital IDs."Um, no? iOS is doing age verification just by your credit card. I never saw people all that upset about giving their credit card info to their phone wallet app or even to a bunch of websites.
• callamdelaney
  Agree
• KaiserPro
  If it was the hill to die on, then we should have done a better job of stopping pervasive fraud, abuse and harm to everyone so that we wouldn't have been a need to bring in age verification.The reason we are up shit creek is because large companies didn't want to spend 2-5% of profits on decent editorial controls to stop bad actors making money from bending societal red lines (ie pile ons, snuff videos, the spectrum of grift, culture of abusing the "other side")They also didn't want to stop the "viral" factor that allows their networks to grow so fucking fast.This isn't really about freedom of speech, its about large media companies not wanting to take responsibility for their own shit.meta desperately want kids to sign up. There are no penalties for them pushing shit on them. If an FCC registered corp had done half the shit facebook did, they'd have been kicked off air and restructured.So frankly its too fucking late. Meta, google and tiktok will still find ways to push low quality rage bate to all of us, and divide us all for advertising revenue.
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  eykanal
  Alternative take: The fact that twitter / facebook / whatever allow arbitrary, unverified posting enables large-scale misinformation that led to, among other things, Russia's manipulation the US electorate and ultimate impacting the presidential election.This one-sided view has some good points, but for goodness sake, don't pretend that the alternative has no downsides.
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  semiquaver
  Why is it always “think of the children” used to abrogate the rights of adults?
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  shevy-java
  I agree. I don't call it "age verification" though - it is age sniffing. And it has nothing to do with children - that is the lie.What is fascinating is to see how governments ALL fall for it. There is zero resistance. This is fascinating to me. It shows how little real effort is necessary once you have the lobbyists in place. Kind of scary to witness too.It is an apartheid system. All apartheid slavery systems will eventually die, so age sniffing will die too. But it will most likely be a long fight as more and more money will be invested by crazy corporations such as Palantir and others.The whole "debate" is already not logical by the way. Let's for a moment assume the "but but but the kids!" is a real argument rather than a strawman argument, which it is. Ok so ... I am a "concerned parent", for the sake of discussion. I have three young kids. I am not a tech nerd. The kids see "unfitting content" on the antisocial media such as facebook and what not. So, what do I do? Well ... they have a smartphone? Aha, so ... I am not so concerned? Having no smartphone is no option? Ok so ... I say they can have a smartphone, but they may not use antisocial media. Ok. First - in any free society, is it acceptable that this kind of censorship is done on ALL kids? What if I, as a parent, do not agree with this? Well, tough luck - the laws force you into the age sniffing routine suddenly. But, even those parents who want the state to act as totalitarian: why would I want to hand over control to ANY politician for that matter? That makes no sense to me. I am aware that some parents may think differently, but do all parents think like that, even IF they buy into the "we protect the children" lie? I don't want ANY information from ANY of my computers to go into private hands here. So the whole argument already makes zero sense from the get go.Of course those who know how things work, they know that this is the build up towards identifying everyone on the world wide web at all times AND to make access to information conditional, e. g. if the state does not know you, you can not access information. Aka a passport system for the www. Built right into the operating system too. Windows already complied. MacOSX too. The battle for Linux will be interesting; it may be some hybrid situation, like systemd. And the systemd distributions will all succumb to age sniffing, courtesy of Poettering "this is really harmless if we store your age in the database, just trust me".
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  stackedinserter
  Very unpopular opinion here on HN: one can't stop it without direct physical action against those who push it.
• fithisux
  We now know all the arguments. No more need to persuade anyone.People will show what they are made of.
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  selectively
  An attestation-like system to detect humanity at time of post is absolutely for useful online spaces in the era of AI slop.The writing style of the author is very annoying.
• inquirerGeneral
  [dead]
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  zzzeek
  [flagged]
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  kelseyfrog
  [flagged]
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  streetfighter64
  Seriously, who cares this much about the internet? I for one will be happy if my kids spend less time online than me. Similar to what a smoker would feel seeing cigarettes finally be banned, I suppose.It's also ironic that this guy is so adamant about protecting the children on xitter. It's like preaching against racism on 4chan.
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  speak_plainly
  The argument being made seems plausible but it’s complete fear mongering. The surveillance mechanisms already exist and are in play and people can be identified in endless ways.States have broad power to do what is being feared in the thread and haven’t already and to think that they’re waiting for this final piece of the puzzle to enact some insane regime is laughable. They could do that right now without the internet at all.Social media is probably not healthy and kids should probably not be on social media. Age verification and age limits for social media will be a good thing for kids.Instead of fear mongering, finding a middle ground, like governments adding some rules and protections on how this information or system is used is probably a better response.I might be in the minority, but I think incorporating an identity layer into the internet itself should happen with the right protections for users and should have happened at the beginning of the net and is probably a result of lack of foresight by the creators of ARPANET.
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  cvoss
  > If you love your family, you must stop online age verification.> If you want the best for your children, you must stop online age verification.> Your children are being targeted. The infrastructure being built under the cover of child safety is designed to enslave them for the rest of their lives.Jumped the shark on that one, and really off-color. I'm less inclined to listen to guy, not because of his actual points, but because of how unreasonable he sounds when articulating them. A great lesson in how not to do rhetoric.
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  nonethewiser
  Im completely OK with verifying someone's age before distributing age-restricted services to them. That's what an age restricted service is, and obviously we shouldnt let porn companies distribute porn to minors (its already illegal most place). Just dont use porn, facebook, online gambling etc. if you dont want to share your identity.I can see why it's unfortunate but the idea posited that that it's somehow illegal in the US is ridiculous. You have no right to watch porn anonymously at the expense of holding porn companies liable for distributing porn to minors.Internet 1.0 was largely read only, ephemeral, or decentralized. Chat rooms, IRC, personal webpages, etc. There was anonymity and there were not age restricted services.Internet 2.0 introduced age restricted services and the enforcement lagged. The enforcement is now catching up. You can still do all the Internet 1.0 things anonymously but you can no longer gamble online as a 14 year old and hopefully soon you wont be able to watch porn either.