Comment by shakna
18 hours ago
Age verification obliviates anonymity on the internet. If everything you do, _can_ be tracked by the government, it _will_ be.
Allowing for more effective propaganda, electrol control, and lights a fire on the concept of a government _representing_ anyone.
> Age verification obliviates anonymity on the internet.
How so?
Please explain in detail, because there are already schemes such as "verifiable credentials" which allow people to prove they are of age without handing over ID to online services.
Last time my government tried that, they failed. [0]
You need to 100% trust those verification services. And considering their success rate [1], you shouldn't.
[0] https://thinkingcybersecurity.com/DigitalID/
[1] https://discord.com/press-releases/update-on-security-incide...
> You need to 100% trust those verification services.
First link - mitigation: use a well supported standard like OIDC, not a home-cooked scheme. Duh.
Second link - this is part of the problem such schemes as verifiable credentials are designed to address, random third parties collecting ID they don't need.
Yes, any system needs to be executed well. Neither of these really display that.
7 replies →
because most implementations are not going to be like that.
In the context of "Age verification should be banned" though, we're already talking about legislative intervention. If there's no particular problem with schemes that are like that then we don't necessarily need a blanket ban on age verification.
Perhaps what we're really saying is "Ban age verification that collects lots of personal information".
Or perhaps we could distil it down further to "Ban unnecessary collection and storage of PII". In which case, Congrats! You've arrived back at the GDPR :)
Which I think is a good thing, and should be strengthened further.
(Also the other response to "because most implementations are not going to be like that" is "why not?". People are already building such ecosystems.)
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Ok, and? Presenting your ID at a number of IRL estamblishments also heavily reduces anonymity
The difference is that IRL establishments don't sell off that data to anyone else, nor do they have the ability to collate that data with data from other establishments to make a profile of you.
(at least not yet)
If you think the nightclub that scans your driver's license magstripe isn't selling your data off, when they could be making money off of it? Between PatronScan,Intellicheck, Scantek, and TokenWorks, yeah a dingy bar where it's a dude visually checking isn't it, but a nightclub and quick swipe totally is.
But to get that ID from the bottleo, you need to hold them at gunpoint.
To get it from Discord you need to sneeze.
The internet has scale and availability, that physical locations do not.