Discussion
A safer internet starts with smarter age checks.
Today, we're rolling out our first prototype of an age verification app to protect minors:
📱 Online platforms will be able to use it to protect our children from harmful and illegal content.
🚸Young people will be able to verify their age without revealing any other info, such as their identity.
🌍 The pilot phase kicks off with 🇩🇰🇫🇷🇬🇷🇮🇹🇪🇸
Making sure our children and young people are safe online is our duty.
God bless VPN services...
So what does the European Union do?
Exactly, copy the Anglo-Saxon world.
So again: it’s the responsibility of the parents.
Nufsaid.
A browser extension that:
• Stores or imports an age credential file (e.g., JSON, JWT, or cryptographic blob)
• Automatically detects when a site requests age verification
• Intercepts the request and auto-injects a valid credential (e.g., over-18 proof)
• Silently passes the check without user interaction
The protocol description mentions that the first version is going to use batching and after that going to move to a ZK proof but... Wouldn't this particular case work well with a single batch for everyone?
For example, you would authenticate in an app/website and get the current global "adult PIN" (rotating every 10 minutes or something). Kind of like TOTP, but not really (as it's not one time and is shared by everyone).
I'm sure I'm missing something, but what would be the limitations of this vs the proposed solution?
I can think of code sharing, but if the refresh window is small, is that so much different than sharing the content itself?
Even if a website decided to start distributing the codes openly, wouldn't that just be the same as if someone setup an adult proxy or a site without an age gate?
Every app, every device and every streaming service has excellent parental controls. It’s the parents that are responsible for what their children see and don’t see. There’s even within the European Union a huge cultural difference in what is seen as appropriate per age group.
So stop messing around and start doing serious stuff or your risk repeating the cookie drama.
So over here in the USA the largest sources of child abuse are parents, close relatives, and churches.
A big push to put restrictions on kids access to the internet comes from the christian nationalists who want to keep kids away from information about LGBT people and America's history of slavery.
From the same people who want to scan all your online communications, including encrypted ones. (#ChatControl and #ProtectEU)
Just trust them bro. This powerful system will definitely not be used to control which sites and services you may use on the Internet in the future. /s
And, illegal material is still illegal, even though kids pass a certain age test!
On a more serious note: adding a speed bump for accessing gambling, gacha, or other content designed to induce addiction might make sense. But how can we know furry artists won't get thrown into the same basket?
Online solutions are easily bypassed and extremely privacy invasive, this is clearly the wrong approach
At least it's open-source, gotta give credit when due.
Improve education standards instead.
There are alternatives, which do respect privacy…
You want to be China? This is how you become China.
For anyone interested, here seems to be the more technical documentation:
https://ageverification.dev/
and at a super lazy skim-through it seems the implementation should be FOSS too.
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