Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Internet

Guess it's back to FidoNet, then?

    
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Don’t be fooled. Age is just a convenient lever. Identity verification is coming for the whole Internet, and will be advertisers’ and fascists’ collective wet dreams.

Considering the fact there are global blackmail operations, utilizing the rape of children, that no one in positions of power anywhere ever seem truly interested in doing anything about, I'd say that once again, the stated "protect the children" objective probably isn't the aim...
I don't need to avail myself of anything requiring it.
- Don't be so sure, if they force this at the ISP level then in order to have an account you'd need to prove your identity.
My prediction is that this is more about banning VPNs than about age verification. Start with this, then when everyone is "using VPNs to break the law" they have an excuse to ban VPNs.
Governments world wide likely see VPNs as incredibly dangerous. Plenty of examples of countries like Iran cutting off the internet entirely to prevent protests from organizing.
I think they want their own great firewall.
- That would kill ATMs and a bunch of other things. Work from home, too, but I doubt the government cares about that much.

It wouldn't even be half bad...if they used the technology available to us and implemented it as zero knowledge proofs, where your ID cryptographically attests that you are a certain age without disclosing any other info.

But they don't. Because it's not about age, it's about identity and surveillance

Thats what the EU is doing. They have a controversy of requiring some kind of device integrity check to get the proof, but the crypto is good
its never about protection of the kids
it never was
- No it's not, because the creeps shoving this 'protection' down everyone's throats, are the ones harming kids.
If my ID cryptographically attests something can't the organization the issued the ID still match it to me?
Wouldn't it be enough for some smart kid to get the ID of their grandma and post it on 4chan so that all the other kids can use it? How would you detect leaked certs?
- For the first part of the question: I have to think/find a specific protocol to verify my intuition...
  For the second part of the question: no that is not possible. Cryptographic material is stored in a Smartcard/secure platform module which (in simple terms) means the key material can't be extracted. So you always have to be physically in possession of the ID card/device with digital wallet in order to use it. Further you have to know a PIN or be able to present some biometric features to
  So yeah a smart kid can nick their grannies ID, find out her PIN or socially engineer her into providing biometric features. But it would only be valid for that one attestation.
They don't (at least partly) because the pioneer of this, the UK, doesn't have a national identity card and so doesn't have the ability to enforce the provision of standards in their ID.

British users need to verify their ages to access r/periods

Ah yes, periods. A thing that famously only happens to adults. What the ever-loving fuck?

I'm not surprised that something on a topic that I consider "basic women's health" is being blocked. Why, though? Is it too sexual (because vagina)? Is it too violent (because blood)? A teenager could have a million period-related questions without any part of it being "adult only."

But I guess all of us should've thought about that when we decided to be born with female reproductive systems. So dangerous, so violent, so political.

Finally a good reason to leave the internet

Seriously. If this hits I'm looking for a new career path. Leaning towards leaving the IT world as it is already.
- I'm lucky, I'll be retiring in 10 years. At that point, I'm going to disconnect. I've got plenty of books to read and a guitar. That should keep me happy.
- Me too. But I don’t have any other marketable skills, so I don’t know.

I won't participate. You shouldn't, either.

Real question, just trying to understand what other folks are planning when shit hits the fan.
What do you mean you won’t participate? No internet? Or just won’t use the sites that require the age Ver?
With things like this, not even VPNs are safe from my understanding.

Looks like fake IDs are back on the menu, boys!

Whole internet?

That's like the ISP, which doesn't make a lot of sense as you need to basically give all your information to the ISP anyway.

And to be frank, the way the Internet works, we'll just circumvent most of this anyway. We've literally been figuring out how to circumvent these things since elementary school.

Sure, a lot of people will be restricted because they aren't technoanarchists. But that also might have a huge benefit. that's just me being nostalgic, of course.

Yeah, when they tell Lemmy to age verify, Lemmy won’t respond.

And will be treated with the same seriousness as:

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idontcareaboutages

...radical edward, to the rescue...