Comment by luke727
10 days ago
Unfortunately many more people than you might think are in full support of this type of thing. The UK in particular is a very nanny state and this is sold as protecting children. You're not against protecting children, are you?
It is a rhetorical appeal to emotion, which is used to override rational debate, discourage criticism, and create false dichotomies, e.g. "you're either with the children, or you're with criminals".
This "think of the children" rhetoric targets encryption, anonimity, decentralized platforms, and private communication channels like messaging apps, VPNs, Tor, etc. It is nasty. Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming. Most of the pedophiles are on Discord and Roblox anyways.
In any case, there are ways to prove someone is over 18 without revealing identity, but that is not that goal, is it? There are cryptographic schemes just for that, such as zk-SNARK, etc. ZKPs in general.
> Keep in mind that it does not actually prevent child exploitation and grooming.
While true, I'd avoid making that argument since it implies these restrictions might be worth implementing if they actually did prevent child harm. There is no scenario in which it is acceptable for the government to mandate encryption backdoors, for example.