It was just announced that the targeted solution is a Zero Knowledge approach, where the website just receives a simple “not underage” without any additional information from a mini-wallet. This would be a solution that I could stand behind as it doesn’t use any 3rd party services for age verification. It’s akin to the COVID certificate.
the main probrem isn’t really what data is used for verification, but what data is made unavailable without it. if some conservative asshole decides that resources on sexual health (or alternate sexualities) are pornographic, then that information is effectively gone for everyone under 18 or without an account.
They’ve already decided so. It is all in Project 2025: queerness and sex-ed are considered pornographic. And platforms have been preemptively demonetizing and censoring info for similar topics (abortion and sex-workers resources also) for years.
The only system I’ll accept. Not necessarily for pornography and a lot of “save the children” claims are just pretext for privacy violations, but there are services that legitimately need to check some info and a zero knowledge approach is the most privacy preserving way to do that.
Even with the Zero Knowledge approach, you will still run an app on a phone (what if I don’t have one) that will make some call to the government’s servers, which will most likely know what website you’re trying to access. We’re moving the data mining from some third party to the government, which can be wrongly used later if some idiot comes into power. If it’s not making a call to a government’s servers, I would be surprised, since you could imagine someone just bypassing this to always return “Over 18”.
Even funnier (read “sad”), this initiative will probably rely on Google and Apple to keep it robust, and will likely have no availability on rooted phones or non-Google Play Services ones. It’s premature at best to deploy this in a meaningfully safe way.
What I understood is that the code of the app would be open so it can be Independently checked. It sucks that it comes to this and there will be a choice between plague and cholera, but I would rather have this approach than use 3rd party age verification services.
It was just announced that the targeted solution is a Zero Knowledge approach, where the website just receives a simple “not underage” without any additional information from a mini-wallet. This would be a solution that I could stand behind as it doesn’t use any 3rd party services for age verification. It’s akin to the COVID certificate.
Edit: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/age-verification-european-union-mini-id-wallet
the main probrem isn’t really what data is used for verification, but what data is made unavailable without it. if some conservative asshole decides that resources on sexual health (or alternate sexualities) are pornographic, then that information is effectively gone for everyone under 18 or without an account.
That is true. Sadly this is the direction society is going and it’s depressing.
They’ve already decided so. It is all in Project 2025: queerness and sex-ed are considered pornographic. And platforms have been preemptively demonetizing and censoring info for similar topics (abortion and sex-workers resources also) for years.
this is about the eu
I don’t stand behind any of it. We shouldn’t even give them an inch IMO.
The only system I’ll accept. Not necessarily for pornography and a lot of “save the children” claims are just pretext for privacy violations, but there are services that legitimately need to check some info and a zero knowledge approach is the most privacy preserving way to do that.
Even with the Zero Knowledge approach, you will still run an app on a phone (what if I don’t have one) that will make some call to the government’s servers, which will most likely know what website you’re trying to access. We’re moving the data mining from some third party to the government, which can be wrongly used later if some idiot comes into power. If it’s not making a call to a government’s servers, I would be surprised, since you could imagine someone just bypassing this to always return “Over 18”.
Even funnier (read “sad”), this initiative will probably rely on Google and Apple to keep it robust, and will likely have no availability on rooted phones or non-Google Play Services ones. It’s premature at best to deploy this in a meaningfully safe way.
What I understood is that the code of the app would be open so it can be Independently checked. It sucks that it comes to this and there will be a choice between plague and cholera, but I would rather have this approach than use 3rd party age verification services.