Comment by Nursie
15 hours ago
Yep, there are all sorts of technically interesting ways in which age can be proven without identity being compromised, this link has a good exploration of anonymous credentials, for a start - https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...
And there are all sorts of reasons governments want to do this, up to and including the stated-on-the-surface reasons they give; a lot of people don't want their kids exposed to internet harms, be that extreme material or addictive services and doom-scrolling, and don't have the technical know-how to effect that themselves.
The insistence by so many in tech that there is no honest intent and that there is no way to practically provide age verification in a thoughtful, anonymous way is frustrating.
It's frustrating to see so many people engaged in effective conspiratorial thinking and it's frustrating because there are many good arguments to be had here, but they won't land if the 'anti' side doesn't address the real concerns that real people have about the safety and mental health of their kids.
> The insistence by so many in tech that there is no honest intent...
If there were honest intent, then the regs would be beefing up the "Parental Controls" mechanisms present in every major OS and commanding that there be fines for not respecting those settings. Not only does this mechanism require zero involvement of an unrelated third party, it allows a guardian to protect both a child too ignorant of the dangers of the world to be trusted to competently handle them and an adult whose mind has been so damaged by age and/or disease that they can no longer handle those same dangers.
Instead, the systems that we're getting are ones in which computer users are -when it's not mandatory- very, very strongly encouraged to present photo ID to a third party. While all the US regs I can find currently "only" require adding mechanisms for punching in a birth date, it's all but certain that continued evidence of minors lying about their age will cause those laws to be "upgraded" to require a photo ID.
> If there were honest intent, then the regs would be beefing up the "Parental Controls" mechanisms present in every major OS
Not everyone knows they exist, and there's a huge install base of older and/or cheaper devices that may not be getting updates that could be strengthened like this.
> Not only does this mechanism require zero involvement of an unrelated third party
But what if we do want to regulate the behaviour of those third parties? We know they've been cognisant of the harms and addictive behaviours their stuff promotes (see internal Meta research), and in fact seem to have designed for that. If the controls are only at the consumer side, are we not likely to see an arms race where they continue to try to addict kids around the controls?
You're also assuming a level of technical sophistication on the part of parents, voters and politicians that would necessarily lead them to come to the same conclusions as yourself about solutions. This may simply not be present.
This is what I mean by "good arguments that won't land". We can talk about how solutions should work, whether solutions can possibly work, and even make strong arguments that regulation in this area is wrong in and of itself. Jumping straight to "they're all liars and only want to spy on me" makes the entire thing look like a group of fringe nutters unable to take onboard how people (particularly non-tech people) feel.
> Not everyone knows they exist...
"Oddly", the laws that demand you enter your birthday (and will eventually demand you scan your ID) seem to require OS producers to make it so that users will not be ignorant of these new features. [0] I wonder if it's possible to do the same thing for Parental Controls...?
> ...there's a huge install base of older and/or cheaper devices that may not be getting updates that could be strengthened like this.
They're not going to be getting updated to be compliant with any of the new state (or Federal) user-identification regs, so I don't see what good-faith reason you could have for bringing them up.
> But what if we do want to regulate the behaviour of those third parties?
You use law and regulation? You mention nothing in your subsequent paragraphs that a "Papers, Please!" mechanism will prevent that a "Beefed-up and difficult-to-bypass Parent Controls" mechanism will not.
[0] For example, AB1043 says (among other things)
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