There is a surprising amount of engineers who don’t understand what’s happening. So they deal with it as if it’s a funny thing… yeah if two police officers come knocking your door with hard data, you will just explain… and yeah, I mean kids, can bypass it… right? Wrong. This is not 1995. They can make very harsh laws and they can make it borderline impossible to bypass should some authority choose to do so.
The danger here is control: total and absolute control of who will be able to see what, at any given time. Once upon a time this was a hard problem, not anymore.
The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather positive impression of how search warrants are executed in Germany.
By all means, if you have an adversarial relationship with the state, fight every expansion of its power tooth and nail. But conversely, if you think that everything is going basically fine and the police are reasonable folks overall, then giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.
> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.
This only makes sense if you have no concept of "future", wherein different, less reasonable people can gain power. This should be especially obvious in Germany, where an adversarial relationship with the state can easily be had by merely criticizing it.
Would you think the same thing if you happened not to be there, came home half an hour later to find your apartment ransacked with the door smashed in, and had to wait a few months for compensation for the repairs?
Unfortunately, reasonable men, perhaps virtually all reasonable men, can and will become more corrupted by expansive power. The fact that they were not corrupted when they had less leverage on the populace doesn't mean they will behave differently than other historical German (/human) apparats when they have a bit more of the intoxicating liquor.
>r warrant was for a different address and they left.
I am sorry but this is not something that I find "reasonable" or "positive impression" unless small children are the instigators or low stakes events are involved. If armed men are barging into sacred spaces they need to be able to triple, quadruple check they are performing what the warrant says and if not then nothing else they are doing shall be trusted either. Invading a home uninvited is a life and death matter and there is no room for policeman who make such glaring mistakes even if the natural untrained or undisciplined random person naturally might.
You want a proposal? Make a kids-only set of sites. And then make hardware/software that can access only those sites. Make sure existing and future "non-kid" hardware can't access those kids-only sites. You can allow companies to register that they are one of these kid friendly sites with the additional regulation that would entail. Then make a kid having hardware that can access the normal Internet like having a beer in the US. Now perhaps you can find a hole in this, but it can be patched with technology and the right regulation.
That we aren't doing something like this gives the game away. How the EU is going about this means the point of all of this has nothing to do with children and everything to do with controlling political speech.
PS Yea, I know its a very vague suggestion, it can still be implemented
You have to stop thinking like an engineer and start thinking like a public health official.
'Something impossible for kids to bypass' is not the goal. It's akin to evaluating a flu vaccine on the standard of zero breakthrough cases. Such a standard has no relevance on the efficacy of the vaccine.
Likewise for underage internet access. Proponents would be happily satisfied with 90% compliance. They really don't care that coverage isn't complete or circumvention is complete. Once you realize that, you can start constructing counterarguments that dismantle the claim that digital IDs would solve the problems they're supposed to.
There is discussion about LLMs, models, CSAM, undressing people with AI, and posting those images to places.
No handy wavy stuff, makes this problem go away due to filtering at creation. That's because, open models are a thing. So you either ban all open models, or maybe make it a crime to publish uncensored models, or you punish what individuals do on the internet.
Slander and libel and defamation are a thing, and have been a thing forever, millennia. Suddenly, on the open and free internet, for barely an eyeblink, anyone could say anything with zero liability and responsibility.
Then, 2010s came. Then, doxing of people we didn't like, or didn't agree with, became OK. So suddenly, it was OK to "out" a person, but not to just force everyone to be de-anonymoized. In other words, unpopular opinions? Yeah, that's OK to remove the cloak.
And with AI, everyone and their dog will be able to render images of anyone they want naked. CSAM. Political lies, made up videos, slander, libel, literal wors in people's mouths, on and on.
What's my point?
Well, just as 2000 brought a new world to people, 2025 is doing the same.
This is only going to get worse. And I fully agree, the dangers for "control" are going to exist. But the dangers of people posting all of this stuff, has hit the point where a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. And if you think Grok creating CSAM is bad, then you must think anyone creating CSAM is bad. Or anything. So how to you prevent the harm?
Well really, you either heavily restrict software. Open LLMs, or?
You make people posting this stuff liable.
The world is at a fork. Everything will change. Because banning software requires immense control over hosting software, but so does deanonymizing the internet. And really, this is inline with how the political and societal landscape changes.
It's only been 20 years since a lot of people were on the Internet, and only 10 years since I'd label it 'mainstream'. As in, even grandma uses it. And so, now the laws are coming, as legislation and law and change takes time for politicians, and political bodies.
We're here. Right now. This is the moment.
So I 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will stop the path to liability for slander, libel, and more that is coming. Nothing. Whatever it takes, you can be sure it will happen.
So how will it happen?
Well, by knowing who to sue.
Like it or not, that's the truth. And no, I don't like it myself.
I want the right to not be identified.
I also want the right to SELF identify.
I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify. The cost of running LLM botnets is going down. I cannot imagine how the next cycle of elections is going to be like on all countries. I understand the right to remain anonymous, that should remain, but that state should not be the default on these massively big platforms. Our brains and political systems are not designed for this.
And no, "get people to get rid of their smartphone voluntarily" like I see on the comments is not going to happen.
> I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability.
It is trivial to demonstrate that this is incorrect (despite sounding plausible). There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.
Among other considerations it's worth noting that most of the usual social feedback mechanisms are missing from typical online interactions.
> The cost of running LLM botnets is going down.
Agreed that this is an existential threat to anonymous discourse as it is typically implemented.
>I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify.
You can do that already, Facebook is pretty close to exactly what you're talking about. They do a lot of work to identify real people and de-prioritize spam/bots. You can configure your account to only be able to interact with real people if you want. Many people like anonymity though, it's important for speaking truth to power and discussing topics which are outside the Overton window.
There's a good reason that many of the United States' founding fathers used pseudonyms when writing. Anonymity and real freedom of speech are foundational to democracy. If you can put someone in jail for saying something that the government doesn't like, then the government will be able to steer discourse towards outcomes it deems acceptable, even if those outcomes subvert the will of the people.
There's no real need to have the government force all websites to always authenticate all humans. The only real argument for such a system is to move us toward dystopian authoritarianism.
The physical world has age checks when kids attempt to enter a premises with dangerous or unsuitable content - eg bars, casinos, strip joints. These seem largely accepted as a good thing. Why do so many seem to feel that the same protections are so outrageous when applied in the virtual world? Honest question, I can see both sides.
It's just a different game. A web site is much easier to instrument than a physical place.
Say I go to a bar, I show my ID to the bouncer. My identity isn't recorded (unless they scan it with a device that records the scan data). Maybe they have cameras, my image isn't immediately associated with my identity, somebody would have to do a bit of work to connect the two. Maybe I pay with a credit card, now my name is stored in the point-of-sale system.
But I can still go to a bar with no scanner, no cameras, and pay in cash, and it's not a problem. Not suspicious at all. None of the above record-keeping is required, nor should it be.
Now, if a web site says I need to be provably 18+ to view their content, that's fine. I can take it or leave it. I have a choice.
When the law tries to mandate the software that can or must be run on my device, or tries to limit how I can communicate with my friends and family, now I have a problem. I consider my rights to personal computation and personal communication to be sacred. And I also believe in my right to privacy in these matters. I never needed an ID to send a personal letter, and my right to privacy regarding such communication is protected by law.
Finally, I see gathering of access data by a central authority (which I assume would eventually happen if social media sites started requiring validated ID) to be a concentration of power, and a dangerous one.
When you are age-checked in real life, the bouncer glances at your ID, checks the date of birth, checks the photo and lets you through, having not remembered a shred of that information. You are just one in a crowd of a thousand. If you're old enough, they may even wave you through without looking at any real data.
When you're age-checked on the internet, a scan of your ID goes on the website, then is likely forwarded to a helpful third party business. It extracts every bit of data, analyzes your picture, then carefully saves and catalogues everything, and returns True to the website, which may have also stored their own copy of this data, depending on how the process is implemented. This data is now in their hands forever. If, at any point in the future, you access another age-gated website that uses the same third party business, now there's nothing stopping them from correlating that private browsing data. How juicy. Adtech will love that. As you keep handing out your ID left and right, every single bit you divulge is recorded somewhere, forever. And at the end of the day, this is just moving data around, so there's nothing preventing your government, or the host's government, or all governments from passing a law that asks for that data to be shared with them - just in case, you know. Now there's many copies of your exact identity floating around, just one data leak or legal request away from revealing everything you've ever done tied in a neat little package. Real life ID is limited by constraints of practicality and our physical world, digital ID is limited by nothing.
And this is the best-case scenario I'm describing here. Imagine if they ask us to show our identities publicly, not just to the corporate all-seeing-eyes. Everyone would become doxxable by default, their whole life exposed and searchable, the mere idea of having secrets would be wiped away, communities made for marginalized or at-risk people would all fall silent.
Yes, there are ideas about zero-knowledge proofs and legislation about data privacy and whatever else. But these don't benefit either corporations or governments, and the average Joe doesn't care about putting his real name on everything, so we can pretty safely assume that this won't happen.
We don't talk about age verification like in a bar. We talk about age verification like in the internet, where every of your step generates data. So you don't verify your age, you verify your identity.
It's like you step in a bar and someone writes down every word you say, every drink you order and every person or place you look at. And then he places your complete name and address on it and stores it in his closet to pull it out when he needs it.
Would you really enter a bar, casino or strip club when it would look like this?
We don't talk about children, we talk about everyone here.
Don't forget that the dossier about your visit is then photocopied and mailed to several other places in addition to being in the bar's closet. Each one of those places is staffed 24/7 by workers that organize incoming data, as well as people who tirelessly look at the growing personal file of every person that has ever done anything, and make accurate deductions based on what they see. Who you know, what you like, where you were, what you were doing, what you bought, who you speak to, what you're hiding, what you think. Everything. Those people then distill all of this into a scarily accurate report that is copied and sold or given to god knows who.
This initiative has the ID "ECI(2026)000011". If I understand this correctly, that means there have only been eleven citizen initiatives this year? Is that system working as designed, because that's a shockingly low number.
Edit: the initiatives themselves also have shockingly low numbers of signatures. A few thousand. A million are required for the EC to take notice. This system seems a bit shitty. But maybe I'm misunderstanding it.
I don't think that's too surprising, as even if you get 1 million of signatures the only thing you will get is "response from Commission". So they can reply with legalese for "get bent" and there goes your million signatures.
I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity, and that could solve problems like bots, socketpuppets, etc along with reasonable age-gating. It could be an ideal internet if it's properly applied. The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia. And sites could use it in inappropriate ways resulting in discrimination.
So if i can not circumvent the surveilance- can i pack my wanted unsurveiled stuff into harmless data and send them- basically use the surveiled Internet as a UDP layer - over which my hidden unsurveiled internet goes via TCP?
I think the scenario posited here is the worse possible one where we are still chronically online but on a dead internet while being fully and relentless surveilled.
The internet of the future is an IQ test. Are you smart enough to get in, do your work in a focused manner, and get out so that you live your life? Many, many people will fail this test.
When people say things like this, they mean the good parts of the internet, e.g. real people who are able to be honest because a pseudonym allows them to say things they would be punished by evildoers for saying if the evildoers could identify them. Taking that away doesn't get you out of the engagement-optimized ad funnel, it just makes that be the only thing left.
The Internet is fine and the bad parts will heal or remove themselves if we remove the actual bad thing: smart phones. The Internet is not supposed to follow you around hence the term "In Real Life" or "meatspace". If you want to be "terminally online" you need to sit your ass down in front of a computer for hours.
> if we remove the actual bad thing: smart phones.
That's a tall order, although there are plenty of reports of younger people switching to "dumb phones." I've switched to one myself. But how could you possibly stop it? They are terrible -- now that I don't have one anymore it's insane how many people are constantly staring at their phones, walking on the sidewalk, crossing the street, etc. It's really depressing.
But ya, at this point I don't care if parts of the internet are fine and if I had the power to burn it all down, I would.
I have a hard time figuring out whether most of the comments are genuine or not.
Are you guys really in favor of giving governments and police corps more control and more power so that you are observed, monitored, restricted because "the internet is dead", "think of the children" and "you need to know who to sue"?
You need to first provide a passport image + 5 angled selfies + bank statement + proof of employment to the Peoples Democratic European Union before you can sign.
The internet's (at least as we knew it) days were numbered as soon as the dot com bubble happened. It changed from a thing to share info to a thing to make money. It's irrecoverably corrupted and this blatant overreach for everyone's PII is just a symptom.
I think it's a missed opportunity to not have called it "Stop spying on every EU citizen online". It would make for great headlines and might finally wake people up when they see that the EU has rejected a proposal called that.
"Stop killing the internet" unfortunately means nothing at all to the layman, they will still be using it pretty much exactly as they were before, and governments will just claim "See, internet is still working".
You may be overthinking this. It is privacy that means little to the regular joe. The internet they use every day and it being changed beyond recognition is much more tangible than privacy being curtailed just a little bit more.
And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.
The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.
These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.
I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".
Yes, absolutely...people drastically underestimate how much political propaganda on social media is from targeted foreign operations. Getting children and those propaganda operations off "adult"/anonymous social media would be so beneficial to all of society. The EU is actively doing something else though...I doubt the propaganda operations would even be slowed down by the EU's efforts.
Great point. Reminds me of Biden’s constant whisper-scream “the future of democracy is at stake!”
Like, yeah, it was an accurate statement, but total shit if your goal is to get people up off the couch and into voting booth. Way too abstract and high-minded
We can talk, talk, and governments will still move forward. Or we can build an alternative that shows it's possible to get age verification while maintaining privacy.
There is a real way out of it -- the governments can have their cake and eat it too. I published several academic papers to prove it, and I'm open to building and deploying it. Would anyone want to work on this together:
>The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age
NO. It really shouldn't. I will not comply. Porn sites can require this shit, but not the rest of the internet. Social media, dating websites, that's up to the users. If kids are on there, that's on the parents. Do your job, be the parent. I'm not going to let lazy good for nothing parents ruin the internet for everyone else.
I'm reasonably confident that in the relatively near future, the Internet will be so overrun with bots and other worthless "content" that people will flock to platforms that confirm IRL identity.
Think what that would mean for your average person in a country that didn't like their government...for instance in Russia. You clearly haven't thought through the consequences of your suggestion.
You don't need IRL identity. You just need invite-only. Discord is great for this. I've run so many fandom events over Discord, and we never have a problem with bots, and it's very fun creating fanfiction, fanart, calendars, zines, and talking about the other aspects of our lives every day.
You don’t need IRL identity, you just need persistent reputation. That reputation can be attached to a pseudonymous identity or an IRL one. But the design of most modern social media is to detach the “content” from the context of the author. The feeds you subscribe to are funnels that channel atomized bits of content to you. Some of it may be authored by them, but it’s the platform that intermediates your relationship to that content more than the creator. The creator is subordinated to it.
A different design logic, and the logic of the blogosphere that preceded it, much more tightly prioritized following a blogger or poster and interpreting everything you see in light of who was posting it. The trust is placed in the account you follow.
We've moved "identity" to a few large monopolists. Who lack all incentive to properly "enforce" it. And whose interest are perpendicular to people owning their identities (being able to take them elsewhere).
"Persistent" reputation won't change that. Because on the internet nothing is persistent, without a central party enforcing it to be so. And as said above, the ones in charge of it now, don't want to enforce it really. You don't own your domain, you don't own your IP, you don't own your feeds, "content" etc. The infrastructure that routes people to your correct "reputation", isn't yours, it's controlled and owned by Big Tech, governments, and some smaller companies. Your feed can be taken offline or away from you in a whim. Access to your blog isn't yours. Not even if you host it on a rasberry-pi in your cupboard.
Aside from maybe some blockchain shenanigans, that is. Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum are the only decentralized "pseudonymous" identity providers that could step into this, but both are ridiculously costly and complex. And wholly unsuited to route content. Systems designed for this, like Tor, aren't really up to the task either. Just look at how insanely hard it is for "Content" that governments oppose, to remain online (e.g. on the tor network). Possible, but so complex, so fragile, that it's not a practical system to use en masse. Yet it's the only working system that comes closest to really owning content in the broad sense.
So it makes perfect sense to turn to the systems that have done this "persistent reputation", aka "identity" for centuries now: Governments.
Compared to Big Tech, they're more decentralized - there are far more governments worldwide "doing identities" than there are FAANG corporations. Hell, even within the US or within my country alone, there are more.
Compared with all other systems, we can control them, push them into a direction we want them to go - democracy. Far from perfect. Bad even. But the least worst way to have some "persistent identity" we can get. Unfortunately.
IMO that is the problem that botspams and focus on IRL identity aims to "solve". Money can't buy competency, therefore popularity, and that undermines economic influence one may have, which is problematic to some.
I think you make a good point and it is well taken. You could be right.
But I still believe that people will care about connecting with an actual person in meatspace. I just can't picture any other result except for complete and total burnout with the fakeness of the web.
I haven't considered this before with SKG, but if this progresses, it means the EU parliament may choose to take action based on an initiative that potentially only a vocal minority supports [0], while coming across as if they were simply following the will of the people.
Not sure how I feel about that, sounds kind of problematic in retrospect. Especially since there's no mechanism for triggering EU-wide referendums to help this AFAIK.
[0] population of the EU: 452 million, unique signatures required for this: 1 million
A few things you can legally do online without ID or age verification in the US
1) buy cigars and pipe tobacco (but not cigarettes!)
2) Buy "CBD" by the pound
3) Buy ammunition, a barrel and the rest of gun parts for a glock, except a frame/receiver that can be 3d printed in a few hours to complete it.
4) Order and have delivered wine
But there are people arguing to skip all that and go to straight to ID for social media. It isn't about the children. It's about keeping tabs on who says what.
#1 isn't entirely true. It's a soft-gate but you are legally required to verify age on your site before completing the purchase (I run a boutique cigar brand [1]).
Of course not. But literally any excuse that comes to hand will be deployed if it helps the tech industry continue to avoid meaningful consequences. The same handful of companies that have engineered a global surveillance suite that rivals the most tyrannical sovereign governments wildest dreams (and can trivially detect the approximate age of a user) will without a shred of irony deploy legions of paid influencers and other astroturf to decry age verification as an assault on privacy.
As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money. What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things? All of my ideas would be very low traction but there are clever people here on HN that I am sure could come up with a few better ideas.
One of my (probably dumb) ideas is:
- Create a legal presence in a country that does not require being dystopian, relaxed business laws, less regulation, lower taxes, move most of the corporate side of the business there. Take the tax revenue with you. It does not have to be all at once. Make the move a slow boil so they don't see it until it's too late.
Which countries, provinces, regions, states have the least regulation, least dystopian behavior and the least taxes? There has to be a incentive for business leaders and board members to move things around. Bonus if the saved money pays for a Gulfstream G650 ER or two.
> What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things?
Right now the most important thing to inhibiting a dystopia is to break the lock Apple and Google have on approval of mobile code, because it gets used as a fulcrum by authoritarians. Want to ban VPNs? Make the app stores do it. Censor social media? Have them ban every social media app that doesn't censor. Want to track everyone everywhere? Make the phone provide sites and apps with a persistent cross-service tracking ID.
Whereas if ordinary people had devices that worked like PCs traditionally have, banning a VPN from the Microsoft store doesn't prevent you from installing one directly from the developer etc.
And getting this to be possible could be done by any sufficiently large market. If a sufficiently large market e.g. bans attestation and enforces antitrust, it allows an open platform to develop in that country by starting with compatibility with the apps of existing platforms, and then that platform can expand into other markets. Or you can get an iPhone there that you can install a VPN on and Apple can't prevent it, and then those iPhones can be exported into authoritarian countries.
And if you want a financial incentive for this, how about every country outside the US not wanting their local businesses paying the 30% tax to a foreign monopolist?
> As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money.
You are incorrect. The NIMBY movement has been extraordinarily successful despite severe opposition from moneyed interests. Bloomberg lost embarrassingly despite setting records for campaign spending. There are countless similar examples.
The NIMBY movement is moneyed interests. The owners of existing real estate zoned for high density don't want more of it because increased supply lowers prices. The people in an affluent suburb don't want affordable condos anywhere in their school district. This comes at the expense of the poor who then pay higher rents.
I would rather not incite violence on this platform. That just gets a bunch of people put in a cage limiting their career options and potentially "justifies" even greater dystopian actions.
Even for a "Citizens' Initiative", this stuff is remarkably tone-deaf. "No Digital ID" ignores the very-real need for people to prove their identity to government(-ish) entities online, and to do so in a reliable, cheap and convenient way. Sure, you do not want that ID to become mandatory for publishing or existing on the Internet in general, but that's a separate discussion: demand sufficient protection for anonymous/pseudonymous posts instead, which is absolutely something that needs to be codified as part of basic human rights.
"No age verification" is even deader-on-arrival. Parents are literally screaming at politicians to protect "the children" (as always), but pretty much everything that has been tried so far to silence those screams has failed (remember PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection: that was the last serious contender, and it has been dead for, like, 20 years). Again: demand a way to implement this securely and anonymously, don't take an untenable abolitionist stance or resort to hand-waving in the vague general direction of "parental responsibility": that has been tried, and it's not working anymore.
And, please, stop vilifying the EU in these matters. The UK left the EU, ostensibly so they could make "more sensible laws" in, specifically, respects like these, and they're now leading the assault on basic freedoms with even more fervor. And no, that's not just big-bad-Starmer's fault: it's a preview of what you have to argue against and propose a compromise for instead.
not all parents are screaming this. Only the parents who refuse to parent their children, and conveniently scapegoat society for their parental failings
We cannot possibly expect all parents to take proper care of their kids. This has never been the case and never will. That's why we have schools and other institutions that oversee our growth within society.
You could make same exact argument regarding kids health, alcohol abuse, nicotine abuse, all types of addictions, age of consent, and so on.
You can't just have all the safeguards dropped because you think you're doing a good job. Or, even worse, you have no kids and it's your virtues merely projecting.
There are also fascists screaming at the government to do other wildly illegal stuff. The lousy parents begging the government to "tread on me" would get wildly better results by spending less time trying to create an authoritarian state and more time with their kids they claim to care so much about.
They're children. They have the internet access you give them. This isn't some unsolveable problem that needs government intervention, my parents were setting up filters so long ago that they're grandparents now.
I suggest that you don't make the filters to hard to bypass (I would do DNS in both a DNS server and /etc/hosts, along with a browser extension), to encourage them to learn about technology. (although that might stop working due to Ai chatbots)
They don’t seem to oppose any of that if you read the intro
> We call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that digital identity and age-assurance systems used to access online services in the Union remain voluntary, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory. Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure, open-source implementation, independent security audits, prohibition of cross-service tracking by relying parties, and equivalent alternatives for citizens who do not use a digital wallet.
It has been quite a slippery slope. Services that used to allow password auth have retired them in favour of bank detail login. I can kind of get it, since it's offloading support to the banks, but it's also annoying since the bank logins themselves are a pain to setup, maintain and use (mobile app only).
It would be nice to have some good standard that is less invasive.
The intro indeed doesn't sound too bad, but if you read into the underlying demands, the title is actually quite representative of what's going on here.
Specifically, the requirement to provide non-digital alternatives as well as control over relying parties (i.e. consumers of the 'digital ID' and/or 'age verification' APIs) makes all of this a non-starter.
I mean: non-digital alternatives to digital IDs? I guess that means that nobody should be forced to get a digital ID for access to essential government(-ish) services (like banking), and that's a valid point, but in the context of "stop killing the Internet" just obfuscates things.
And control over RPs beyond GDPR is just pushing it, again, quite on purpose.
Even EU institutions use cookie banners. Also, if it was just malicious compliance, there would have been years of time to fix the regulations so that such shenaigans would not fly.
I think the problem is that GDPR focuses on consent more than would be prudent. Regulation is usually introduced when some actions are not appropriate even when there was consent. For example, one is not allowed to sell spoiled food, no matter how clear warnings they gave to the customers.
There is a surprising amount of engineers who don’t understand what’s happening. So they deal with it as if it’s a funny thing… yeah if two police officers come knocking your door with hard data, you will just explain… and yeah, I mean kids, can bypass it… right? Wrong. This is not 1995. They can make very harsh laws and they can make it borderline impossible to bypass should some authority choose to do so.
The danger here is control: total and absolute control of who will be able to see what, at any given time. Once upon a time this was a hard problem, not anymore.
The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather positive impression of how search warrants are executed in Germany.
By all means, if you have an adversarial relationship with the state, fight every expansion of its power tooth and nail. But conversely, if you think that everything is going basically fine and the police are reasonable folks overall, then giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.
> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.
This only makes sense if you have no concept of "future", wherein different, less reasonable people can gain power. This should be especially obvious in Germany, where an adversarial relationship with the state can easily be had by merely criticizing it.
Serious question - looking around, do you really think "everything is going basically fine"?
Would you think the same thing if you happened not to be there, came home half an hour later to find your apartment ransacked with the door smashed in, and had to wait a few months for compensation for the repairs?
> giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.
Are you seriously saying that with a straight face while (apparently) living in Germany of all places?
May I suggest picking up a history book or two?
Unfortunately, reasonable men, perhaps virtually all reasonable men, can and will become more corrupted by expansive power. The fact that they were not corrupted when they had less leverage on the populace doesn't mean they will behave differently than other historical German (/human) apparats when they have a bit more of the intoxicating liquor.
>r warrant was for a different address and they left.
I am sorry but this is not something that I find "reasonable" or "positive impression" unless small children are the instigators or low stakes events are involved. If armed men are barging into sacred spaces they need to be able to triple, quadruple check they are performing what the warrant says and if not then nothing else they are doing shall be trusted either. Invading a home uninvited is a life and death matter and there is no room for policeman who make such glaring mistakes even if the natural untrained or undisciplined random person naturally might.
what's the current solution that's impossible for kids to bypass with a borrowed or stolen id, say?
I don't see any proposals yet that will actually work for what they say they'll do.
You want a proposal? Make a kids-only set of sites. And then make hardware/software that can access only those sites. Make sure existing and future "non-kid" hardware can't access those kids-only sites. You can allow companies to register that they are one of these kid friendly sites with the additional regulation that would entail. Then make a kid having hardware that can access the normal Internet like having a beer in the US. Now perhaps you can find a hole in this, but it can be patched with technology and the right regulation.
That we aren't doing something like this gives the game away. How the EU is going about this means the point of all of this has nothing to do with children and everything to do with controlling political speech.
PS Yea, I know its a very vague suggestion, it can still be implemented
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You have to stop thinking like an engineer and start thinking like a public health official.
'Something impossible for kids to bypass' is not the goal. It's akin to evaluating a flu vaccine on the standard of zero breakthrough cases. Such a standard has no relevance on the efficacy of the vaccine.
Likewise for underage internet access. Proponents would be happily satisfied with 90% compliance. They really don't care that coverage isn't complete or circumvention is complete. Once you realize that, you can start constructing counterarguments that dismantle the claim that digital IDs would solve the problems they're supposed to.
Here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080929
There is discussion about LLMs, models, CSAM, undressing people with AI, and posting those images to places.
No handy wavy stuff, makes this problem go away due to filtering at creation. That's because, open models are a thing. So you either ban all open models, or maybe make it a crime to publish uncensored models, or you punish what individuals do on the internet.
Slander and libel and defamation are a thing, and have been a thing forever, millennia. Suddenly, on the open and free internet, for barely an eyeblink, anyone could say anything with zero liability and responsibility.
Then, 2010s came. Then, doxing of people we didn't like, or didn't agree with, became OK. So suddenly, it was OK to "out" a person, but not to just force everyone to be de-anonymoized. In other words, unpopular opinions? Yeah, that's OK to remove the cloak.
And with AI, everyone and their dog will be able to render images of anyone they want naked. CSAM. Political lies, made up videos, slander, libel, literal wors in people's mouths, on and on.
What's my point?
Well, just as 2000 brought a new world to people, 2025 is doing the same.
This is only going to get worse. And I fully agree, the dangers for "control" are going to exist. But the dangers of people posting all of this stuff, has hit the point where a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. And if you think Grok creating CSAM is bad, then you must think anyone creating CSAM is bad. Or anything. So how to you prevent the harm?
Well really, you either heavily restrict software. Open LLMs, or?
You make people posting this stuff liable.
The world is at a fork. Everything will change. Because banning software requires immense control over hosting software, but so does deanonymizing the internet. And really, this is inline with how the political and societal landscape changes.
It's only been 20 years since a lot of people were on the Internet, and only 10 years since I'd label it 'mainstream'. As in, even grandma uses it. And so, now the laws are coming, as legislation and law and change takes time for politicians, and political bodies.
We're here. Right now. This is the moment.
So I 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will stop the path to liability for slander, libel, and more that is coming. Nothing. Whatever it takes, you can be sure it will happen.
So how will it happen?
Well, by knowing who to sue.
Like it or not, that's the truth. And no, I don't like it myself.
They're just protecting the kids, at least to start with.
From what?
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I want the right to not be identified. I also want the right to SELF identify. I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify. The cost of running LLM botnets is going down. I cannot imagine how the next cycle of elections is going to be like on all countries. I understand the right to remain anonymous, that should remain, but that state should not be the default on these massively big platforms. Our brains and political systems are not designed for this. And no, "get people to get rid of their smartphone voluntarily" like I see on the comments is not going to happen.
> I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability.
It is trivial to demonstrate that this is incorrect (despite sounding plausible). There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.
Among other considerations it's worth noting that most of the usual social feedback mechanisms are missing from typical online interactions.
> The cost of running LLM botnets is going down.
Agreed that this is an existential threat to anonymous discourse as it is typically implemented.
> There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.
But is it comparable to the amount of toxic behavior on 4chan?
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>I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify.
You can do that already, Facebook is pretty close to exactly what you're talking about. They do a lot of work to identify real people and de-prioritize spam/bots. You can configure your account to only be able to interact with real people if you want. Many people like anonymity though, it's important for speaking truth to power and discussing topics which are outside the Overton window.
There's a good reason that many of the United States' founding fathers used pseudonyms when writing. Anonymity and real freedom of speech are foundational to democracy. If you can put someone in jail for saying something that the government doesn't like, then the government will be able to steer discourse towards outcomes it deems acceptable, even if those outcomes subvert the will of the people.
There's no real need to have the government force all websites to always authenticate all humans. The only real argument for such a system is to move us toward dystopian authoritarianism.
Things are far more enjoyable as a teen when it s forbidden, remember the golden age of p2p!
Teens who want to see porn will be able to see porns, but they will learn somethings along the way to do so
This is caricatural of course, but it s just so dumb as law as enforcing age verification "anonymously" is just like a don quichotte battle at AI era
I often joke that every technical measure that prevents teens from watching porn is a way to make teens more tech-savvy.
Kids these days have it too easy, we need stronger protections or the next generation will make pathetic hackers.
> the next generation will make pathetic hackers.
"Hey ChatGPT Hacker Core Rizz Edition, can you hack this website for me?"
The physical world has age checks when kids attempt to enter a premises with dangerous or unsuitable content - eg bars, casinos, strip joints. These seem largely accepted as a good thing. Why do so many seem to feel that the same protections are so outrageous when applied in the virtual world? Honest question, I can see both sides.
It's just a different game. A web site is much easier to instrument than a physical place.
Say I go to a bar, I show my ID to the bouncer. My identity isn't recorded (unless they scan it with a device that records the scan data). Maybe they have cameras, my image isn't immediately associated with my identity, somebody would have to do a bit of work to connect the two. Maybe I pay with a credit card, now my name is stored in the point-of-sale system.
But I can still go to a bar with no scanner, no cameras, and pay in cash, and it's not a problem. Not suspicious at all. None of the above record-keeping is required, nor should it be.
Now, if a web site says I need to be provably 18+ to view their content, that's fine. I can take it or leave it. I have a choice.
When the law tries to mandate the software that can or must be run on my device, or tries to limit how I can communicate with my friends and family, now I have a problem. I consider my rights to personal computation and personal communication to be sacred. And I also believe in my right to privacy in these matters. I never needed an ID to send a personal letter, and my right to privacy regarding such communication is protected by law.
Finally, I see gathering of access data by a central authority (which I assume would eventually happen if social media sites started requiring validated ID) to be a concentration of power, and a dangerous one.
When you are age-checked in real life, the bouncer glances at your ID, checks the date of birth, checks the photo and lets you through, having not remembered a shred of that information. You are just one in a crowd of a thousand. If you're old enough, they may even wave you through without looking at any real data.
When you're age-checked on the internet, a scan of your ID goes on the website, then is likely forwarded to a helpful third party business. It extracts every bit of data, analyzes your picture, then carefully saves and catalogues everything, and returns True to the website, which may have also stored their own copy of this data, depending on how the process is implemented. This data is now in their hands forever. If, at any point in the future, you access another age-gated website that uses the same third party business, now there's nothing stopping them from correlating that private browsing data. How juicy. Adtech will love that. As you keep handing out your ID left and right, every single bit you divulge is recorded somewhere, forever. And at the end of the day, this is just moving data around, so there's nothing preventing your government, or the host's government, or all governments from passing a law that asks for that data to be shared with them - just in case, you know. Now there's many copies of your exact identity floating around, just one data leak or legal request away from revealing everything you've ever done tied in a neat little package. Real life ID is limited by constraints of practicality and our physical world, digital ID is limited by nothing.
And this is the best-case scenario I'm describing here. Imagine if they ask us to show our identities publicly, not just to the corporate all-seeing-eyes. Everyone would become doxxable by default, their whole life exposed and searchable, the mere idea of having secrets would be wiped away, communities made for marginalized or at-risk people would all fall silent.
Yes, there are ideas about zero-knowledge proofs and legislation about data privacy and whatever else. But these don't benefit either corporations or governments, and the average Joe doesn't care about putting his real name on everything, so we can pretty safely assume that this won't happen.
We don't talk about age verification like in a bar. We talk about age verification like in the internet, where every of your step generates data. So you don't verify your age, you verify your identity. It's like you step in a bar and someone writes down every word you say, every drink you order and every person or place you look at. And then he places your complete name and address on it and stores it in his closet to pull it out when he needs it.
Would you really enter a bar, casino or strip club when it would look like this?
We don't talk about children, we talk about everyone here.
Don't forget that the dossier about your visit is then photocopied and mailed to several other places in addition to being in the bar's closet. Each one of those places is staffed 24/7 by workers that organize incoming data, as well as people who tirelessly look at the growing personal file of every person that has ever done anything, and make accurate deductions based on what they see. Who you know, what you like, where you were, what you were doing, what you bought, who you speak to, what you're hiding, what you think. Everything. Those people then distill all of this into a scarily accurate report that is copied and sold or given to god knows who.
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This initiative has the ID "ECI(2026)000011". If I understand this correctly, that means there have only been eleven citizen initiatives this year? Is that system working as designed, because that's a shockingly low number.
Edit: the initiatives themselves also have shockingly low numbers of signatures. A few thousand. A million are required for the EC to take notice. This system seems a bit shitty. But maybe I'm misunderstanding it.
I don't think that's too surprising, as even if you get 1 million of signatures the only thing you will get is "response from Commission". So they can reply with legalese for "get bent" and there goes your million signatures.
I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity, and that could solve problems like bots, socketpuppets, etc along with reasonable age-gating. It could be an ideal internet if it's properly applied. The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia. And sites could use it in inappropriate ways resulting in discrimination.
Hopefully this fares better than Stop Killing Games.
SKG has fared pretty well, what do you mean?
They just had a pretty major setback in court.
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So if i can not circumvent the surveilance- can i pack my wanted unsurveiled stuff into harmless data and send them- basically use the surveiled Internet as a UDP layer - over which my hidden unsurveiled internet goes via TCP?
You mean a VPN?
am i alone in wanting the internet to be killed? we’d all be better off if everyone wasn’t terminally online
I think the scenario posited here is the worse possible one where we are still chronically online but on a dead internet while being fully and relentless surveilled.
The internet of the future is an IQ test. Are you smart enough to get in, do your work in a focused manner, and get out so that you live your life? Many, many people will fail this test.
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I hope they kill the internet. Mandatory ID scans might be the last push I need to stop wasting my time on Reddit.
I'd rather have the internet healed
Social media in it's current form is already dying to the explosion in synthetic interaction but the internet could survive and reshape itself.
When people say things like this, they mean the good parts of the internet, e.g. real people who are able to be honest because a pseudonym allows them to say things they would be punished by evildoers for saying if the evildoers could identify them. Taking that away doesn't get you out of the engagement-optimized ad funnel, it just makes that be the only thing left.
Having a digital ID does not obviate that (in principle), thanks to zero-knowledge schemes.
To my understanding then, the issue is that the EU's implementation only has a ZK-based solution in the plans so far.
But then this initiative says "No Digital ID", not "No Auto-Deanonymizable Digital ID", so...
Ironic that you can't make a point without communicating in meaningless buzzwords and memes.
Are you old enough to remember the time where the internet doesn't existed? Sounds like not.
You are not.
The Internet is fine and the bad parts will heal or remove themselves if we remove the actual bad thing: smart phones. The Internet is not supposed to follow you around hence the term "In Real Life" or "meatspace". If you want to be "terminally online" you need to sit your ass down in front of a computer for hours.
> if we remove the actual bad thing: smart phones.
That's a tall order, although there are plenty of reports of younger people switching to "dumb phones." I've switched to one myself. But how could you possibly stop it? They are terrible -- now that I don't have one anymore it's insane how many people are constantly staring at their phones, walking on the sidewalk, crossing the street, etc. It's really depressing.
But ya, at this point I don't care if parts of the internet are fine and if I had the power to burn it all down, I would.
I have a hard time figuring out whether most of the comments are genuine or not.
Are you guys really in favor of giving governments and police corps more control and more power so that you are observed, monitored, restricted because "the internet is dead", "think of the children" and "you need to know who to sue"?
You guys are joking, right? Right?
So if i understand correctly, there's no webpage to sign this initiative yet?
Apparently it can take 2 months (or sometimes 4) before the initative is registered
You need to first provide a passport image + 5 angled selfies + bank statement + proof of employment to the Peoples Democratic European Union before you can sign.
The name could also be:
"Stop overcontrolling and overregulating every aspect of our lives!"
Stop letting regular people know they are engaging with bots
Only massive data gatherers should be able to track and know everything about people
Wanna be rich? Make a social media company that somehow only allows real people to post. You crack that one, fame and fortune await you...
The internet's (at least as we knew it) days were numbered as soon as the dot com bubble happened. It changed from a thing to share info to a thing to make money. It's irrecoverably corrupted and this blatant overreach for everyone's PII is just a symptom.
I think it's a missed opportunity to not have called it "Stop spying on every EU citizen online". It would make for great headlines and might finally wake people up when they see that the EU has rejected a proposal called that.
"Stop killing the internet" unfortunately means nothing at all to the layman, they will still be using it pretty much exactly as they were before, and governments will just claim "See, internet is still working".
You may be overthinking this. It is privacy that means little to the regular joe. The internet they use every day and it being changed beyond recognition is much more tangible than privacy being curtailed just a little bit more.
And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.
The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.
These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.
Agreed.
I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".
Yes, absolutely...people drastically underestimate how much political propaganda on social media is from targeted foreign operations. Getting children and those propaganda operations off "adult"/anonymous social media would be so beneficial to all of society. The EU is actively doing something else though...I doubt the propaganda operations would even be slowed down by the EU's efforts.
"Stop enabling pedophiles in government"
And keep pushing this until it passes. Keep repeating like they do chat control.
Great point. Reminds me of Biden’s constant whisper-scream “the future of democracy is at stake!”
Like, yeah, it was an accurate statement, but total shit if your goal is to get people up off the couch and into voting booth. Way too abstract and high-minded
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How are we on the tech and protocols side of having a truly distributed worldwide mesh-net?
i.e. drone swarms replacing ISPs?
It's been working for decades. But nobody uses it except child pornographers. Freenet.
We can talk, talk, and governments will still move forward. Or we can build an alternative that shows it's possible to get age verification while maintaining privacy.
There is a real way out of it -- the governments can have their cake and eat it too. I published several academic papers to prove it, and I'm open to building and deploying it. Would anyone want to work on this together:
https://magarshak.com/papers.html
>The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age
NO. It really shouldn't. I will not comply. Porn sites can require this shit, but not the rest of the internet. Social media, dating websites, that's up to the users. If kids are on there, that's on the parents. Do your job, be the parent. I'm not going to let lazy good for nothing parents ruin the internet for everyone else.
The Internet is already dead.
I'm reasonably confident that in the relatively near future, the Internet will be so overrun with bots and other worthless "content" that people will flock to platforms that confirm IRL identity.
Yeah I've been wanting ID for years. Because i neighbor Russia and their propaganda game is top notch. One person one account.
Think what that would mean for your average person in a country that didn't like their government...for instance in Russia. You clearly haven't thought through the consequences of your suggestion.
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You don't need IRL identity. You just need invite-only. Discord is great for this. I've run so many fandom events over Discord, and we never have a problem with bots, and it's very fun creating fanfiction, fanart, calendars, zines, and talking about the other aspects of our lives every day.
You don’t need IRL identity, you just need persistent reputation. That reputation can be attached to a pseudonymous identity or an IRL one. But the design of most modern social media is to detach the “content” from the context of the author. The feeds you subscribe to are funnels that channel atomized bits of content to you. Some of it may be authored by them, but it’s the platform that intermediates your relationship to that content more than the creator. The creator is subordinated to it.
A different design logic, and the logic of the blogosphere that preceded it, much more tightly prioritized following a blogger or poster and interpreting everything you see in light of who was posting it. The trust is placed in the account you follow.
We've moved "identity" to a few large monopolists. Who lack all incentive to properly "enforce" it. And whose interest are perpendicular to people owning their identities (being able to take them elsewhere).
"Persistent" reputation won't change that. Because on the internet nothing is persistent, without a central party enforcing it to be so. And as said above, the ones in charge of it now, don't want to enforce it really. You don't own your domain, you don't own your IP, you don't own your feeds, "content" etc. The infrastructure that routes people to your correct "reputation", isn't yours, it's controlled and owned by Big Tech, governments, and some smaller companies. Your feed can be taken offline or away from you in a whim. Access to your blog isn't yours. Not even if you host it on a rasberry-pi in your cupboard.
Aside from maybe some blockchain shenanigans, that is. Bitcoin and maybe Ethereum are the only decentralized "pseudonymous" identity providers that could step into this, but both are ridiculously costly and complex. And wholly unsuited to route content. Systems designed for this, like Tor, aren't really up to the task either. Just look at how insanely hard it is for "Content" that governments oppose, to remain online (e.g. on the tor network). Possible, but so complex, so fragile, that it's not a practical system to use en masse. Yet it's the only working system that comes closest to really owning content in the broad sense.
So it makes perfect sense to turn to the systems that have done this "persistent reputation", aka "identity" for centuries now: Governments. Compared to Big Tech, they're more decentralized - there are far more governments worldwide "doing identities" than there are FAANG corporations. Hell, even within the US or within my country alone, there are more. Compared with all other systems, we can control them, push them into a direction we want them to go - democracy. Far from perfect. Bad even. But the least worst way to have some "persistent identity" we can get. Unfortunately.
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IMO that is the problem that botspams and focus on IRL identity aims to "solve". Money can't buy competency, therefore popularity, and that undermines economic influence one may have, which is problematic to some.
I think you make a good point and it is well taken. You could be right.
But I still believe that people will care about connecting with an actual person in meatspace. I just can't picture any other result except for complete and total burnout with the fakeness of the web.
I haven't considered this before with SKG, but if this progresses, it means the EU parliament may choose to take action based on an initiative that potentially only a vocal minority supports [0], while coming across as if they were simply following the will of the people.
Not sure how I feel about that, sounds kind of problematic in retrospect. Especially since there's no mechanism for triggering EU-wide referendums to help this AFAIK.
[0] population of the EU: 452 million, unique signatures required for this: 1 million
It would be nice to have a digital referendum on this topic. I could think of some tech that makes it happen, something like a digital ID maybe?
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I think if it we want to stop killing the internet, the lack of regulation of AI/bot companies is the biggest problem right now.
A few things you can legally do online without ID or age verification in the US
1) buy cigars and pipe tobacco (but not cigarettes!)
2) Buy "CBD" by the pound
3) Buy ammunition, a barrel and the rest of gun parts for a glock, except a frame/receiver that can be 3d printed in a few hours to complete it.
4) Order and have delivered wine
But there are people arguing to skip all that and go to straight to ID for social media. It isn't about the children. It's about keeping tabs on who says what.
Usually the delivery person asks for ID when delivering the wine?
They absolutely don't. They ask for your date of birth to fill it on their app and that's it.
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For the purpose of the argument, they don't.
#1 isn't entirely true. It's a soft-gate but you are legally required to verify age on your site before completing the purchase (I run a boutique cigar brand [1]).
[1] https://philosophercigars.com
Is teens ordering wine a big issue in the US? Bigger than social media?
Of course not. But literally any excuse that comes to hand will be deployed if it helps the tech industry continue to avoid meaningful consequences. The same handful of companies that have engineered a global surveillance suite that rivals the most tyrannical sovereign governments wildest dreams (and can trivially detect the approximate age of a user) will without a shred of irony deploy legions of paid influencers and other astroturf to decry age verification as an assault on privacy.
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As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money. What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things? All of my ideas would be very low traction but there are clever people here on HN that I am sure could come up with a few better ideas.
One of my (probably dumb) ideas is:
- Create a legal presence in a country that does not require being dystopian, relaxed business laws, less regulation, lower taxes, move most of the corporate side of the business there. Take the tax revenue with you. It does not have to be all at once. Make the move a slow boil so they don't see it until it's too late.
Which countries, provinces, regions, states have the least regulation, least dystopian behavior and the least taxes? There has to be a incentive for business leaders and board members to move things around. Bonus if the saved money pays for a Gulfstream G650 ER or two.
> What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things?
Right now the most important thing to inhibiting a dystopia is to break the lock Apple and Google have on approval of mobile code, because it gets used as a fulcrum by authoritarians. Want to ban VPNs? Make the app stores do it. Censor social media? Have them ban every social media app that doesn't censor. Want to track everyone everywhere? Make the phone provide sites and apps with a persistent cross-service tracking ID.
Whereas if ordinary people had devices that worked like PCs traditionally have, banning a VPN from the Microsoft store doesn't prevent you from installing one directly from the developer etc.
And getting this to be possible could be done by any sufficiently large market. If a sufficiently large market e.g. bans attestation and enforces antitrust, it allows an open platform to develop in that country by starting with compatibility with the apps of existing platforms, and then that platform can expand into other markets. Or you can get an iPhone there that you can install a VPN on and Apple can't prevent it, and then those iPhones can be exported into authoritarian countries.
And if you want a financial incentive for this, how about every country outside the US not wanting their local businesses paying the 30% tax to a foreign monopolist?
> As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money.
You are incorrect. The NIMBY movement has been extraordinarily successful despite severe opposition from moneyed interests. Bloomberg lost embarrassingly despite setting records for campaign spending. There are countless similar examples.
The NIMBY movement is moneyed interests. The owners of existing real estate zoned for high density don't want more of it because increased supply lowers prices. The people in an affluent suburb don't want affordable condos anywhere in their school district. This comes at the expense of the poor who then pay higher rents.
They control the last mile of the Internet so it would require satellite networking run by another country to cut them out like this.
"I Remember Babylon" by Arthur C. Clarke.
Written in 1960, but very prescient.
If only there was some free speech absolutist who had their very own satellite Internet company. I must be forgetting someone...
PS The dishes are hard (but not impossible) to hide.
Another thing that influences change reliably is a good old (threat of) violence.
I would rather not incite violence on this platform. That just gets a bunch of people put in a cage limiting their career options and potentially "justifies" even greater dystopian actions.
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Who are we threatening today?
Even for a "Citizens' Initiative", this stuff is remarkably tone-deaf. "No Digital ID" ignores the very-real need for people to prove their identity to government(-ish) entities online, and to do so in a reliable, cheap and convenient way. Sure, you do not want that ID to become mandatory for publishing or existing on the Internet in general, but that's a separate discussion: demand sufficient protection for anonymous/pseudonymous posts instead, which is absolutely something that needs to be codified as part of basic human rights.
"No age verification" is even deader-on-arrival. Parents are literally screaming at politicians to protect "the children" (as always), but pretty much everything that has been tried so far to silence those screams has failed (remember PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection: that was the last serious contender, and it has been dead for, like, 20 years). Again: demand a way to implement this securely and anonymously, don't take an untenable abolitionist stance or resort to hand-waving in the vague general direction of "parental responsibility": that has been tried, and it's not working anymore.
And, please, stop vilifying the EU in these matters. The UK left the EU, ostensibly so they could make "more sensible laws" in, specifically, respects like these, and they're now leading the assault on basic freedoms with even more fervor. And no, that's not just big-bad-Starmer's fault: it's a preview of what you have to argue against and propose a compromise for instead.
not all parents are screaming this. Only the parents who refuse to parent their children, and conveniently scapegoat society for their parental failings
We cannot possibly expect all parents to take proper care of their kids. This has never been the case and never will. That's why we have schools and other institutions that oversee our growth within society.
You could make same exact argument regarding kids health, alcohol abuse, nicotine abuse, all types of addictions, age of consent, and so on.
You can't just have all the safeguards dropped because you think you're doing a good job. Or, even worse, you have no kids and it's your virtues merely projecting.
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I'm a parent and would rather ban age verification. So it's certainly not everyone...
Right. Care for your children includes the responsibility to keep the society they're eventually going to participate in, free and open.
Loving your children means fighting censorship, not promoting it.
There are also fascists screaming at the government to do other wildly illegal stuff. The lousy parents begging the government to "tread on me" would get wildly better results by spending less time trying to create an authoritarian state and more time with their kids they claim to care so much about.
They're children. They have the internet access you give them. This isn't some unsolveable problem that needs government intervention, my parents were setting up filters so long ago that they're grandparents now.
I suggest that you don't make the filters to hard to bypass (I would do DNS in both a DNS server and /etc/hosts, along with a browser extension), to encourage them to learn about technology. (although that might stop working due to Ai chatbots)
> my parents were setting up filters
Ah, OK, so you admit a problem exists. That's step one...
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>securely and anonymously
Not possible. Why do advocates of age verification bring this argument up again and again? It is not possible.
They don’t seem to oppose any of that if you read the intro
> We call on the European Commission to propose legislation ensuring that digital identity and age-assurance systems used to access online services in the Union remain voluntary, privacy-preserving and non-discriminatory. Citizens must not be forced to identify themselves to access lawful online content or services unless strictly necessary, proportionate and provided by law. The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age, data minimisation, selective disclosure, open-source implementation, independent security audits, prohibition of cross-service tracking by relying parties, and equivalent alternatives for citizens who do not use a digital wallet.
It has been quite a slippery slope. Services that used to allow password auth have retired them in favour of bank detail login. I can kind of get it, since it's offloading support to the banks, but it's also annoying since the bank logins themselves are a pain to setup, maintain and use (mobile app only).
It would be nice to have some good standard that is less invasive.
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Are you seriously asking to read more than the title from an account created less than 30 minutes ago?
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The intro indeed doesn't sound too bad, but if you read into the underlying demands, the title is actually quite representative of what's going on here.
Specifically, the requirement to provide non-digital alternatives as well as control over relying parties (i.e. consumers of the 'digital ID' and/or 'age verification' APIs) makes all of this a non-starter.
I mean: non-digital alternatives to digital IDs? I guess that means that nobody should be forced to get a digital ID for access to essential government(-ish) services (like banking), and that's a valid point, but in the context of "stop killing the Internet" just obfuscates things.
And control over RPs beyond GDPR is just pushing it, again, quite on purpose.
UA spies on Europeans, and vice versa. Then they share, it's not spying on your citizens, it's called 'intelligence sharing'.
This is bad but it's no reason to adapt a defeatist attitude.
What is UA?
Perhaps they meant United Artists, an evil syndicate hell bent on world domination and film distribution.
United America?
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This is funny coming from the EU who brought us cookie banners.
The EU didn't bring us cookie banners, tech companies performing malicious compliance with the EU mandates did
Even EU institutions use cookie banners. Also, if it was just malicious compliance, there would have been years of time to fix the regulations so that such shenaigans would not fly.
I think the problem is that GDPR focuses on consent more than would be prudent. Regulation is usually introduced when some actions are not appropriate even when there was consent. For example, one is not allowed to sell spoiled food, no matter how clear warnings they gave to the customers.