Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
New privacy legislation is about 20 years overdue. Between age verification, privately owned national camera networks, and above all else, data brokers, citizens need to reassert their right to anonymity.
In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage.
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. If that's not considered to be a problem, then the California approach of just asking the device owner is much better and you still don't need the ZKP.
Too late. I'm pretty sure it's already not allowed in many countries, including most of Europe.
They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
Perhaps we should distinguish between institutions that require strong identity (phone networks shouldn't be in this list but are, which is a separate argument) and institutions that really shouldn't, like random websites.
I hate that banks do that, right after that asinine Apple/Google monopoly proliferation. But “giving my face” to an institute where I was, since forever, required to submit a photo ID to join is a far cry from handing it over to earn the privilege of being exposed to whatever brainrotting garbage infests antisocial media these days…
I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.
If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.
Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
No. Tor is for the CIA. It won't work for them unless we use it as well. Criminals also find it useful.
It's easy to verify this. Tor was originally written by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag. While all three were working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
iCloud private relay has done more in just a few years than Tor ever has, by being opt-out for iOS users instead of opt-in like Tor. Now platforms can’t rely on IP based reputation, instead relying on either a computational challenge (Cloudflare, Anubis) or de-anonymization (recaptcha relying on being signed into a Google account more than anything, especially when using private relay).
I think you overestimates the protection Tor provides. We have seen multiple cases of people getting caught on there, and CIA probably owns half the exit nodes anyways.
You're on Y-Combinator here, a start-up incubator all about AI and launching new things, that literally used to be run by Sam Altman, and that was the launching pad of OpenAI.
And you're surprised there is a lot of AI content?
I think it is great that people point out LLM generated articles here on HN. Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content... So, please, list the indicators and telltale signs from the specific article or blog post (like others have done here already). At least I would appreciate it a lot.
>>Sadly, it feels like I am slowly loosing my skill to identify LLM speak. Maybe I am getting worn out of all LLM content...
Its quite simple, at least by HN rules. If you dont like an article, post "This is LLM" and move on. Within 5 minute your post will be voted t o the top.
Exactly. I stopped reading part way through. The first thought was ... this seems like quite a lot of words to say not an awful lot of contents. And then the sentences started jumping out.
> A verification regime does not need your approval — it needs your participation
It is upsetting. Is it worth surrendering one's practice of thinking and communicating effectively in order to resist corporate overreach? Or is such a neglect doomed to result in the very problem of passivity that this post pushes back against?
Amen. I don't really notice the AI speak, especially if the content makes sense like TFA.
But man am I tired of the "Too good to be made by a regular person, but too average in every way to be made by a graphic designer" [1] graphics. It's just so smarmy somehow, "hey isn't my article a blast with these slick graphics?"
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)?
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them".
And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
> If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service
There is such a thing as principled resistance? Not everything has to pass some EA effectiveness test. Some inconvenience or discomfort is rewarded by the self-integrity bolstered by rejecting things you don't support.
Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011).
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated
A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa)
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
103 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 59.9 ms ] threadWhat law?
In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.
EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
No. Tor is for the CIA. It won't work for them unless we use it as well. Criminals also find it useful.
It's easy to verify this. Tor was originally written by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag. While all three were working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
And you're surprised there is a lot of AI content?
bots are like 50% of the internet now brah: https://cybersecuritynews.com/bots-surpass-humans-in-web-tra...
Its quite simple, at least by HN rules. If you dont like an article, post "This is LLM" and move on. Within 5 minute your post will be voted t o the top.
Easy karma farming!
> A verification regime does not need your approval — it needs your participation
Ugh
But man am I tired of the "Too good to be made by a regular person, but too average in every way to be made by a graphic designer" [1] graphics. It's just so smarmy somehow, "hey isn't my article a blast with these slick graphics?"
1 - seen today in a funny nymag article about AI bodega signs: https://www.curbed.com/article/ai-slop-bodega-signage-design...
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing
Off topic but I was really astonished to find Ezra Klein on the list of permanent members.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
There is such a thing as principled resistance? Not everything has to pass some EA effectiveness test. Some inconvenience or discomfort is rewarded by the self-integrity bolstered by rejecting things you don't support.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
How? There are no forms on the website.
Wouldn't it actually be logical for a person advocating for privacy not disclosing his identity?
The state I saw appears to be preserved in the first Wayback Machine snapshot:
https://web.archive.org/web/20260622140511/https://nevergive...
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees
No way to opt out of the scan.
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
Here is a good article on it: https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-...