Discussion

A Note on Corporate Surveillance

direwolf20: Don't confuse the passport ID check with the "are you over 18?" checkbox. Both types of laws exist.

alliao: what do governments get out of this? Like I get it from ad/commercial perspective, but I don't see how this is highly unpopular from governments and still being implemented

Gigachad: It’s not highly unpopular. When polled, the Australian public were in favour of banning kids from social media.

andai: The normalization of the nanny state.

Noaidi: It depends on the type of government. A totalitarian government gets control out of it.

kungito: the internet is not the same as it was 20 years ago. the average person is now online, but they werent before. they dont understand where they are and need protection. there is still space on the internet, or whatever the next place will be, for the enthusiasts and other minorities. if we lose internet, something new will pop up. also, 20 years ago i didnt care so much about privacy on the internet, i just needed a cultural filter for the community im engaging with. privacy has always been a game of cat and mouse. 0 chance things stay the same for long

tom-blk: There have been pushes to implement similar instances of this for a while now. If this turns out to not be successful, expect futher efforts in a similar guise

elric: Age Verification and "banning kids from social media" are two different things. The former being an overzealous method of achieving the latter.Parental responsibility and better parental controls would be a MUCH better way of going about this.Of course, the polling public is blissfully unaware of the wide ranging consequences of such an Age Verification implementation. People will continue to pave the road to fascist hell with good intentions.

p2detar: [delayed]

gnfargbl: Age verification is highly unpopular amongst heavily online users, but the voting population overall is in favour: https://yougov.com/en-gb/daily-results/20250731-91334-2

stingraycharles: Seems like even under young voters more people support it than being against it.

izacus: Yp, similarly how gambling and smoking restrictions aren't popular among gamblers and smokers.

shrubble: The root password to the Constitution is “ITs4daChildren!”

palata: Disclaimer: talking about functioning democratic governments (obviously authoritarian governments are different).We do regulate a lot of things to protect the people, especially the children. It's common to make it illegal for children to drink alcohol, smoke stuff and drive vehicles, and it seems completely natural for many of us. We usually don't say "it should be legal for a schools to sell cigarettes and whisky to kids, because it's the responsibility of the parents to educate their kids".The same applies to the Internet: just like we don't want children to be able to buy porn in a store, we don't want them to be able to access porn on the Internet. Or, more recently, social media. So the obvious idea to prevent that is to do what we do in store: age verification.The problem on the Internet is mass surveillance, and done incorrectly, age verification adds to that. Technically, we can do age verification in a privacy-preserving way, but:- Politicians are generally not competent to understand "the right technical way", and the tech giants do benefit from surveillance. Even if they mean well, it's hard for them to take the right decision out of incompetence.- In some big countries that tend to set the technical norms (e.g. the US), many people completely distrust the government. But private companies have no interest in implementing the privacy-preserving solution, so the only viable way is with the help of government regulations (I would argue that the government should be the ones owning the service).- The vast majority of people, including the vast majority of politicians, do not understand and do not give a damn about surveillance capitalism. It just does not exist for them. And in those conditions, there is of course no reason to even consider a privacy-preserving solution, because it is technically more complex.I strongly believe that in many countries they mean to do well. They are just not competent to understand the problem, and they turn to tech giants who do understand it, but have an interest in making sure that the politicians implement it wrongly.

Gigachad: What the public perceives it to be is the only thing that matters though. The OP question was asking how governments are getting this through, and the answer is the majority approve of what they see to be happening.The average person is not thinking about the ability for journalists and whistleblowers to create anonymous Facebook accounts, they are thinking about Mark Zuckerberg trying to sell sex chatbots to their kids and discord pedo servers.

progval: I wish people would stop sharing this website, their research is massively written by LLMs and looks good at a glance, but it goes in every direction at the same time and lacks logical connections. And the claims don't really match their sources.Their initial publication was backed by a Git repository with hundreds of pages of documents written in just three days (https://web.archive.org/web/20260314224623/https://tboteproj...). It also contained nonsense like an "anomaly report" with recommendations from the LLM agent to itself, which covers an analysis of contributors to Linux's BPF, Android's Gerrit, and parser errors in using legislative databases. https://web.archive.org/web/20260314103202/https://tboteproj... . The repository was rewritten since, though.This post follows their usual pattern. The second source they link to has been a dead link for 11 months (https://web.archive.org/web/20250501000000*/https://www.pala...). There's a lot about Persona's design, MCPs, vulnerabilities, data leaks, but nothing proving they use it for mass surveillance. The entire case for it being mass surveillance rests on two points: that they interact with AI companies and they offer MCP endpoints (section titled "Persona's Surveillance Architecture")

apples_oranges: So to avoid it all I have to do is stop using social media? LGTM

c7b: And operating systems...

Noaidi: ....and email....

musha68k: Creeping normalcy into the substrate:>Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.[MERGED]https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/24/foss_age_verification...

Findecanor: I wonder if not private age verification could not be solved with the right cryptographic protocol.You would have to register using a digital ID with a government agency, to get a age certificate. Most European countries already have digital IDs, used for all sorts of things: such as taxes, online banking etc.Then that certificate could be used in some sort of challenge-response protocol with web sites to verify your age, creating a new user ID in each session but without divulging anything that identifies that particular certificate.I'm afraid that the alternative would be that social media would instead require login with the digital ID directly.

like_any_other: Perhaps the voting population should first be made acutely aware of the extent of surveillance they are under, and how much age verification would expand that surveillance, and then be asked again.They'll claim they already "know", but watch their opinion change after they get paper mail with a list of recently visited websites, or their words written on public or unencrypted chats, or their movement history thanks to phone spyware.

gnfargbl: That's likely, but only if it's possible to materially articulate some specific negative ways in which age verification data is actually being used.You and I can strongly suspect that there's a significant downside to these providers having so much sensitive personal data but, until that is proven, the voting population will only see the upside.

like_any_other: The death of online anonymity isn't negative and specific enough?People understand this intuitively - hire someone to obviously follow them everywhere, record everything they do (or only as much as current surveillance records), and they'll want to put a quick stop to it. Do the same thing, but out of sight, out of mind, and their correctly evolved instincts fail to carry over.

the_real_cher: In my opinion public private key is the base of all identification should be done.You keep your own private key and the government has your public key.

raincole: This is highly unpopular... on HN. Which heuristically implies it's popular in the real world.

villgax: It’s good that for non SFW stuff you do the need the internet anymore, just 72GB VRAM for all modalities. Public internet only for news/payments. Everything else can be offline, no more npm or React garbage needed either for frontend.

p2detar: [delayed]

verisimi: Always with the increasing government control. Heaven forbid people go online without training wheels. We need safety nets everywhere - a grazed knee means the state failed.

JimDabell: This is what Verifiable Credentials are for.https://walt.id/verifiable-credentials

caaqil: It's currently #1 on the front page too. HN drowning in AI slop, what a sight to behold.

rmnclmnt: Agreed. But would mean having to educate people on security, privacy and computing in general… Pretty sure most government like having most people uneducated on such things

farfatched: > Parental responsibility and better parental controls would be a MUCH better way of going about this.Call we do all three?Also, what about the irresponsible parents, or parents who don't have time/opportunity to be responsible over this issue?

cromulent2: Thank you. Investigative journalism is so important and I would happily believe some of the claims made here, but when I encounter even just a few sentences that sound LLM-written, suddenly I don't trust any of the statements in the source anymore. This site goes way beyond that, with a vibe-coded UI and generated articles. There might be value in what's reported here, but currently it requires a lot of work from the reader.

sneak: You misunderstand. The child protection angle is just a cover story. The actual reason for this legislation is to ban anonymous publishing; to ensure that every post on the internet can be linked back to an identity for retaliation.Verified anonymous age credentials don’t allow for this, so they don’t matter.The negative privacy implications are the primary features of these laws, not a bug. It is intentional.

Esophagus4: It seems like there are a few stories HN will really bite on:- age verification- chat control- RTO vs. remote work- AI bubble- ditching American tech

akdev1l: seems a lot of people already consumed this as truth.In the meantime a FOSS maintainer who is just trying to put the pieces in place to comply with the law (as written) got doxxed and harassed.I hate it here

uniq7: In your proposed scheme, it is in the best interest of web sites to store the certificates from users indefinitely, since it's the only evidence they have that prove that their users are not minors.Since authorities have the power of accessing that data and identify the user who created the certificate, this scheme is not anonymous.Authorities can access that data via court orders today, or via a global automatic mandatory data sharing law in the future.In the example of USA, even if for some reason people still trust the current Government (although ICE already accessed private medical records to track and arrest people), I don't see why they should trust all future Governments which will have retroactive access to all that data.

kkfx: On which hw? Because a smart-card (if open hardware and FLOSS) might be safe, certainly not a smartphone.

Xelbair: I hate this approach to them problem, because it is not a technical problem.Because it focuses on technical aspects and accepts the premise of 'age verification must be solved'. It doesn’t, and discretion what content and and what age children and teenagers can consume should be up to parents.Not government, nor corporations.

chii: "but we can't trust the parents to protect the children!"

coffeefirst: You don’t need anything this elaborate.Set parental controls on set up, pass a single flag to websites and apps, similar to the Global Privacy Control.No privacy is lost. Control is handed to the device owner, and implementation is technically trivial.

crest: You have to understand children are only cute little extensions of their parents until they 18, but on that day they better be ready for the real world™. /s

the_real_cher: I feel like you could do it in an app or a card with an NFC chip.People don't have to know security or cryptography to do their banking online.Either way it would be infinitely better than the current social security number situation we have.

rurban: You dont trust LLM's, writers with an IQ and knowledge much higher than ours? /s

SkyeCA: > I wonder why?Because the internet, for all it's good, has caused society and individuals some pretty serious problems. I don't like the idea of mandatory age verification, but having unrestricted internet access as a kid was objectively bad for me and many of the people I know.

righthand: That is your parent’s fault that it was bad for you. So don’t punish me or anyone else because you never learned control.

incomingpain: To ban 16 and younger from social media will require every user to be identified.The social media also cant just do it themselves with a box, "are you over 16, yes no" they will require to identify against the government.Essentially this makes it so that every user's actual ID is being tracked. Fully intended to control speech online.

armchairhacker: I support a rule to ban AI-generated/edited posts.Initially I thought they'd be fine, because AI-generated isn't intrinsically an issue and the comments can be good. But in practice, the AI posts tend to be slop, and usually there's a better human-written source for the same topic (for example, one of the many other recent "age verification is mass surveillance" posts here).

ck2: There is a very simple alternative to age verificationWHO IS PROVIDING INTERNET TO A CHILDthey are liablethere's no such thing as free open access internet without someone paying the billunless it can be demonstrated the child stole internet somehow, hacking, etc.then the person providing the internet is liable for the child's activitySame if you aren't going to supervise your child and they come home for hours after school and watch porn on the TVThey don't age verify to get cable TVIf you have a credit card, you are an adultSomeone is paying the bill, they are the adult, they are responsible

farfatched: What if the parent is not responsible?Should society help the child, by making it more difficult for them to access harmful material, in the same way we age verify alcohol?What if the parent is responsible, but finds themselves in a situation where they don't have the time/ability to either educate or set up robust controls? Should we make their responsibilities easier?

toenail: With this line of reasoning you can just take away any agency from individuals and put it into the hands of the state, which leads to totalitarianism.

Epa095: Would it not be trivial to make a webpage which proxies sites but with the headers removed, bypassing the whole thing?

malfist: I was told LLMs were at least as smart as Ph.D graduates

edoceo: It's easy-ish to verify someone is human and of-age without needing any intrusive agent. One big problem is that the folk pushing for surveillance via verification hate that model and have capital to crush the idea. Another is adoption of some system that works; where the perfect blocks what's good which results in no progress.

jwally: Its gross and I feel bad that these thoughts even exist and are nothing anyone should ever act on ... but - it would be amazing to see the panopticon the ad tech industry has created blow up in their face - looney toons style - and be subjected to a sustained doxing campaign. Not for swatting, and not for hurting, but to see people picket their personal residence, and call until their phone no longer works.At scale, this is dangerous, unethical, and why society has laws; but when laws to protect me (Equifax) are window dressing - I can't say I would feel awful if Equifax's ceo couldn't communicate via text or email with out everyone on planet earth knowing about it.Lol, I think I just invented wikileaks (derp)

michaelt: > In the meantime a FOSS maintainer who is just trying to put the pieces in place to comply with the law (as written) got doxxed and harassed.In my experience, when a country like Britain passes a censorship law, people in other countries like America don't enjoy being given the tools to comply with it, even if the tools are entirely optional.

shevy-java: It is not so easy to distinguish this with 100% accuracy though.For instance, a recent example from yesterday:https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/21982Part of this was written by AI, but with a human in "charge" who explained which part of AI was used here. Would that also be a bannable example for you? I am not so convinced that this is bannable per se. Perhaps it may be different if the AI-slop was not announced, but when it was announced and explained?> one of the many other recent "age verification is mass surveillance" > posts hereWell, it actually is. It taps very much into other similar laws e. g. "chat control", aka chat sniffing.

embedding-shape: The earlier you realize how little IQ and "knows a lot" means the person actually know what they're talking about, the easier life becomes. "Smart" people are wrong all the time, some say how they became smart in the first place.

anticrymactic: While this would solve the technical problem at hand. It lacks any safeguard against a very simple workaround of sharing your certificate or even posting for everyone to use.Fullly anonymous + untraceable attestation --> unlimited certificate sharing

shevy-java: This makes a lot more sense than merely assuming that Meta pushes for it. There are several actors here and none of them have the good of the people in mind. This is why Age Sniffing, labeled "Age Verification", must be abolished. It's an entry door of evil actors here. It has nothing to do with age "verification" yet alone "protecting the chilren" - that's just a lie. I am noticing this more and more, e. g. if you claim to want to protect children, but then you have underage people on youtube create content? So how does that make sense if you want to restrict them on the one hand (or, everyone else, in addition to that) but then let the de-facto censorship here be "loose"? In fact - why are any children viewable on youtube to begin with? That contradicts those age sniffing entities.

ac50hz: Share an attribute, not an identifier, https://yivi.app/en/for_developers/

farfatched: Public policy seems tricky if we must take every line of reasoning to its extreme.