It ends with "The platforms need you far more than you need them".
And I think this is the misconception. No, they don't. The amount of people who will sign this, is a fraction of a fraction of a "platform"'s users. They will not care if they lose 50,000 users out of 2 Billion. A drop in the ocean. Not the target audience anyway.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
munk-a 31 minutes ago [-]
You are correct that your data isn't particularly impactful for these platforms - but you're also overestimating the value that many of these services have. A fair few of them have competitors with better features and privacy offerings so the only reason you need them is purely for the network effect of everyone else using them.
wwweston 4 minutes ago [-]
And increasingly, everyone isn’t using them, even if they’re on them.
I’m on Insta and WhatsApp and I use them a few times per year. I’m on Messenger and have seen a dramatic dropoff in messages. I’m on FB frequently and notice only a small fraction of my friends bother anymore and it’s become an interest platform to make up the lack, so I’m trending toward less time there. I’m on Twitter/X but check in maybe once a month.
I may not be a typical user, but I’m probably not unique either.
throw1234567891 2 minutes ago [-]
The competitors will be also regulated. It’s a slippery slope.
harel 11 minutes ago [-]
If there is a substitute and I am not time constrained 100% i'm switching. But I've been in a situation already where a platform I'm using required me to face-up. I can't even remember which to be honest but I had no alternative or recourse to refuse. In addition, in the UK company directors are legaly required to face-up to Companies House and confirm their identity, so they have my face too. Ah, and so is every single CCTV camera around London. I don't know how to fight this particular battle.
soperj 11 seconds ago [-]
Move from London, you have all of Europe to... nevermind.
ekall 23 minutes ago [-]
I think this kind of comment where you share the sentiment that you will ultimately admit defeat emboldens the factions that are hoping for people to be like you. I also think these kinds of comments may also bring doubt to people considering resisting these kinds of concessions.
In other words I think the people pushing these kinds of "identification" methods would love you for spreading their silent message of this being unavoidable knowingly or unknowingly.
Even if what you say is correct let's not make it easier for people wanting to enshittify the future, yeah?
MobiusHorizons 1 minutes ago [-]
Are you really advocating for suppressing rational assessments for the likelihood of success because you think the analysis is too discouraging?
If you already agree the resistance will ultimately lead nowhere, why not focus that energy on something with a better chance of success? Best guess would be partnering with someone like the EFF for a solution through lobbying And the courts.
harel 4 minutes ago [-]
If I have no choice, and no alternative, what can I do? I will never use an OS that require it on the OS level, and nobody can mandate it, not to a Linux user as myself - there will always be "another distro". But as a company director I have a legal requirement to verify my identity with my face. That's one. Every CCTV camera I pass by London, I assume is likely to have some soft of potential face recognition. Every transfer type transaction I do with my bank app requires me to face-up. So fine, I will skip Facebook or Instagram, but where will I get my cat-video dopamine fix?
I don't see myself as admitting defeat here. I'm choosing my battles. The gov here will drive this through as we're stuck with them until 2029.
I'm considering (with a heavy heart) to leave the UK and this is just one nail in a coffin full of nails.
I find it strange for these people to accept such a defeatist attitude because I'm the opposite.
I mean I will just not use the service and I'll seek out alternatives that are open source or create my own. I'll do anything possible until I'm the last one standing if that's what it comes down too.
I tried to sign up to Telnyx and they had the same crap from an unreliable data-breach and being-litigated persona identifier. I passed on that.
I've already been going down this road as I've abandoned Google and some of the big cloud providers in favor of smaller companies who aren't pushing these policies.
It isn't hard to click cancel. It's just people favor convenience over their own freedom because they have never experienced not having freedom like our founder's did 250 years ago. The problem is once freedom is gone, getting it back requires blood spilled and political reforms and revolutions based on what history teaches us.
idiotsecant 9 minutes ago [-]
I think the kind of comment you're making here is wishful thinking. Raging into the void and then getting mad when everyone doesn't do the same is not an effective way to force change. It's just an effective way to make you feel good.
shevy-java 12 minutes ago [-]
It has never been about those platforms though. I could not care less if CIAbook or Instaspam or any of these other anti-social slop sites exist.
They want to force all operating systems to require age sniffing. That's the main angle right now. I am curiously watching how systemd will add more implementation details to this; probably as a first step only for commercial linux distributions.
ForceBru 1 minutes ago [-]
So does this mean that, say, Apple actually doesn't have access to our FaceID data? Otherwise there'd be no need for no laws: just force Apple, Google, etc to share face information with "the government". Well, I guess technically "they" would probably need some kind of law to do this anyway. I feel like tons of people use various kinds of FaceID-type technologies for unlocking their phones, laptops, etc. So it would make sense if "they" already had all of our faces.
I personally don't use FaceID because I'm not thrilled about having my face scanned with utmost precision. BTW, I'm looking at my phone typing this and I know my phone has its face-scanning device pointed right at me. Is it sending "them" my face data all the time? Or sometimes? I can't tell. What if I'm showing something on my phone to another person? Is it going to scan their face too? Maybe, maybe not.
fl4regun 40 minutes ago [-]
This is a little bit of a tangent compared to the post, but can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries (USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and probably others that I am not aware of) all looking at age verification for a technology (the internet and all the things it lets you access) has existed for over 2 decades, and has been mature for at least 10 years? You could buy illicit drugs and watch porn on the internet since the 2000s, but it's NOW that we're legislating things (in incomprehensibly stupid and hopelessly unenforceable ways)?
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
onetimeusename 44 seconds ago [-]
Honestly? I think it's because Elon Musk pissed a bunch of bureaucrats off by buying X and being more permissive about what was allowed. Then came claims that AI porn or something was on X which is a vague claim. People say it was Meta lobbying but that's not it. Meta lobbied to have ID done at the operating system. The lobby for ID was already effective and on its way before that. The actual lobby doesn't seem to be popular at all. It's just some NGOs no one has heard of that support restrictions for porn. The same language popped up on three continents at once. I just don't think this is a grass roots campaign and I don't think corporations drove it either. Ultimately, I think governments decided that unregulated information is a threat to their power.
Trying to put this all on Meta with a look at their 2025 lobbying spend is missing the point. The “think of the children” panic about the internet pre-dates this by years. Remember the debate around the TikTok ban? The states instituting laws about porn age checks pre-dates all of this too. I think trying to blame Meta is convenient because it’s easy to think there is just one villain coordinating everything, but the debate about children and the internet has been a spreading moral panic for years.
cormorant 2 minutes ago [-]
> ...jwz.org...
Holy fuck, man, visiting that with a HN referer serves up a rather NSFW rude image, and evidently sets a cookie to make sure it happens next time too.
It's not only Meta though. People need to stop assuming Meta controls everything via its CIAbook. You see several actors behind that; which one contributes the most is an interesting detail, but ultimately it can be simplified to them planning Evil against The People.
MattDamonSpace 39 minutes ago [-]
Nefarious actors will always attempt to institute these programs via well-meaning stooges
AI coming along is another “great opportunity” to try and force these programs
outime 34 minutes ago [-]
Global meetings (whether secret or not) where select people decide what to do next to minimize potential threats to their power. There isn't much more to it, really.
btilly 28 minutes ago [-]
Not just minimize threats, but often to maximize their power.
Lobbyists do not just try to convince a politician that X is a good idea. Lobbyists give the politician money to introduce already drafted legislation, and then give other politicians money to support it. And if they can get the legislation passed in one place, they'll try it again.
The result is that suspiciously similar legislation appears in many places close in time, due to it being pushed by particular interests.
outime 18 minutes ago [-]
I'm not convinced this is about money as much as it is about blackmail, given how centralized data collection has become and how many intelligence agencies appear to have access to numerous 0-days for routinely gathering additional information. It could be both things as well.
What bothers me most isn't their corruption, but their apparent belief that it won't eventually affect them or their families - perhaps sooner than they think.
thisoneworks 28 minutes ago [-]
Imo it definitely has to do with politicians and governments trying to appear strong on the topic of protecting kids from the harms of social media. I also believe a lot of it is well intentioned, albeit poorly executed
neponeko 36 minutes ago [-]
Rich people are panicking because they’ve seen a capital-poor country win a war with cheap drones and want to lock down as many technologies as they can, lest the ruled realize they can actually do something about their rulers.
andrewla 15 minutes ago [-]
I'm maybe a bit of an outlier here in that I do think that this is a genuine grassroots good faith effort to "protect the children" that does not have sinister ulterior motives. I know plenty of parents who have expressed enthusiasm for the idea of age-restricting websites.
"Why now" I think is pretty obvious -- the age limitations that exist currently are easily circumvented, but have given enough of a plausible deniability aspect that politicians have been able to skate by. There has been increasing research and media dedicated to the idea that there are aspects of the internet which we should be shielding children from. While many of this research is dubious, there's a rising moral panic around it.
The core of the problem is that there is no possible implementation of age verification that does not also require identity verification. In this I am in strong agreement with the article, but the use of paranoid and dramatic language as in this article only alienates people who find the conspiratorial tone to be reverse polarizing.
thechao 11 minutes ago [-]
I've been able to age restrict websites with my childrens' devices for years? Privately, on the device. The website side is pure moatism.
trevithick 3 minutes ago [-]
Yes but your approach requires parenting, which is unacceptable to many people with children.
idiotsecant 3 minutes ago [-]
The <meta name="rating"> html tag has existed since like the 90s. If you legitimately just want to 'protect the children' just enact legislation saying that adult content is responsible for setting this tag. Then parents can decide what their children can and can't see via browser settings. No giant biometric database, no invasive user mapping, no leaks, no creeping techno-feudalist state.
Collecting user biometric data and trying it to a nominally anonymous user identity is not required here.
This is 100% 'won't someone please think of the children' pearl clutching to hide what's actually going on - furthering control of the online exchange of ideas.
intended 3 minutes ago [-]
Because
- it’s been building for a while,
- governments are happy to step in and gain power for themselves while also making voters feel good.
- and (in my opinion) because it’s not a major traffic generating topic on builder focused sites like HN.
The most proximate domino was the Australian social media ban. Australia was already a country known to experiment with ways to deal with social media - see the news fee they imposed on platforms.
Behind that was the build up of negative outcomes from social media for kids, and adults.
The harms are not something I tend to find actively discussed on HN; I assume because more people are interested in building the next thing, not digging into the trust and safety details.
Customer safety and support are also not going to get anyone promoted in tech. These are cost centers and will often stand in the way of addictive design.
Meta executives were nailed precisely for greenlighting designs their own teams told them were harmful for teens.
At the same time, there is lobbying going on by these firms, to push the burden of verification to someone else.
Hell - it’s actually impressive that it took so long for this to precipitate.
froidpink 20 minutes ago [-]
It's because of Jonathan Haidt's book
pc86 3 minutes ago [-]
By all means don't provide any additional information on what you mean, what book, what it's about, what it has to do with this, or anything else.
bflesch 17 minutes ago [-]
Crowd-based analysis of "the files" nearly went out of control, and they noticed how hard it is to identify social media users.
Only trust fund nepo kids from old money are allowed to have vanity social security numbers, multiple identities and scrubbed Wikipedia articles. The plebeians shall have only a single ID and use it to authenticate with every website.
I really want to know who else has a SSN starting with 1337.
jerf 20 minutes ago [-]
Do not for a split second operate under the assumption that there aren't coordinating forces working on this. I know this trips the "conspiracy theories!!1!" flag in most people, but you can literally come up with organizations dedicated to things like this in mere seconds of googling. Here's a comment about US state-level coordination I made earlier, with a challenge to produce some examples that I then produced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47065492
It happens at the national level too. I just did a simple Google search for "united nations committee to harmonize" [1] (no quotes in my search itself) and I count 5 or 6 committees explicitly dedicated to "harmonization" in the first ten results. And that's just the committees, you can count on each of them to have factions within (because politics, politics never changes) and outside forces competing and vying to get the "harmonizations" to favor them and disfavor their competitors. And as politics, politics never changes, paging Ron Perlman, these harmonization committees are unlikely to flinch away from "harmonizing" entirely new rules into existence... which, again, with not all that much searching you can easily find examples of them stating outright.
And the forces trying to influence those committees, are not all just sitting out in the public with some .org website with their true mission stated clearly above the fold. And I just use these UN committees, which are themselves literally the result of one search and a few seconds scrolling through the search page and anything but a complete list, as plain and obvious public examples operating in public for at least nominally good purposes. Nothing stops anyone from buying politicians in multiple countries at a time to push through something like age verification directly, without being open about who they are.
I personally don't think there are many people left yelling "conspiracy" when you say that globalized decisions are being pushed, especially if you've been alive for the last 10 years. Nowadays it's more about who is actually making these decisions and that discussion gets muddy quickly.
One would think that after the Burma genocide the millionaires at Meta would have learned a lesson and keep their fingers out of politics.
14 minutes ago [-]
testing22321 31 minutes ago [-]
Social media was unleashed onto the world with no harm studies or thought for the long term impact.
Now we’re catching up and realizing how bad it is.
For a similar case, see tasers in Canada after a handcuffed immigrant was killed by one. The question came up “how were tasers certified safe for humans?”.
The answer was “they weren’t. A private company just started selling them to police forces who just started using them.”
bethekidyouwant 12 minutes ago [-]
Tasers are bad is your example? cops should go back to clubbing people over the head I suppose?
- Remember all metaphors are bad.
shevy-java 10 minutes ago [-]
> can someone explain to me why it's NOW that we have multiple countries
Because there are actors pushing for this. And they let money flow, so the
lobbyists work.
These lobbyists were dumb. You can be certain that some lobbyists are so efficient that detecting them reliably is very difficult. Even more so when private media is controlled by a few billionaires who are "in" on the system.
9dev 42 minutes ago [-]
Can't we even write a short text like this without LLMs anymore, not even when it's really important, when it's about humans against the inhumane?
josmar 19 minutes ago [-]
I hear you — and the problem is real
Jasp3r 36 minutes ago [-]
Here is the trick:
bklosky 25 minutes ago [-]
it's wild to me how many AI written articles get front page on HN
lezojeda 23 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
jupr 44 minutes ago [-]
Im sure a lot of people know about tor on this site...but let me remind everyone.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
inigyou 41 minutes ago [-]
I'm using Tor right now! Everyone should. It's too bad that many websites block it, but most of those websites are slop anyway.
jupr 35 minutes ago [-]
Everyone should study the basics on a server backend and full stack web.
If you can master what it takes to design and run your site on localhost....you are literally one step away from sharing it with anyone on the planet who has internet access for zero dollars because of the power of tor, and the global network that supports it.
The reality is, there is no gate there, just the knowledge of how to do it.
Tor is first and foremost a router.
Sites that block tor IP's do happen, this is because of the dual use nature of the technology. Its also well suited for abuse.
esseph 37 minutes ago [-]
Tor is very much for US overseas intelligence operatives, among other things.
btilly 23 minutes ago [-]
That is who it was created for.
jupr 14 minutes ago [-]
Yet the same technology that protects them, protects the everyday Joe.
The binaries do not discriminate.
btilly 23 minutes ago [-]
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me.
No. Tor is for the CIA. It won't work for them unless we use it as well. Criminals also find it useful.
It's easy to verify this. Tor was originally written by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag. While all three were working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
jupr 16 minutes ago [-]
These are the origins of Tor yes. The same technology that protects the spy, protects the journalist, or the citizen whose government blocked them, or placed a wall of ID verification checks.
Nah, those people use plaintext Gmail as Epstein demonstrated.
RankingMember 55 minutes ago [-]
I agree 100% with the message and think we should strive to reject this kind of gathering wherever possible, but it feels like the horse is already out of the barn insofar as each and every one of our faces being out there. Hell, we have entire states where people can't watch porn without uploading their ID. The inertia is such that (I'm in the U.S.) we really need a constitutional amendment at this point to stop this.
greentea23 2 minutes ago [-]
New people are born every day whose faces necessarily are not out there.
jkestner 16 minutes ago [-]
New privacy legislation is about 20 years overdue. Between age verification, privately owned national camera networks, and above all else, data brokers, citizens need to reassert their right to anonymity.
In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
Duanemclemore 36 minutes ago [-]
Who runs this site? There doesn't appear to be any information on this. A whois search returns nothing illuminating.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
21 minutes ago [-]
codedokode 14 minutes ago [-]
There is actually a way to prove the age anonymously. Yubikey-like devices support attestation - they can have a private key proving authenticity of a device.
So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device.
Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
vlucas 17 minutes ago [-]
The phrase "people will not just [...]" comes to mind here.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
I just have obs with a video of mkbhd downloaded playing in a loop, whenever I am asked for age verification I just start the virtual camera, select it at the age verification website and it immediately passes it (most of the time). MKBHD was just the first person that I could come up with that records extremely high res video.
idk, youtube worked a lot better than any avatar. I tried avatars at first with little success.
and you don't need any guide it's dead simple:
add video source
path: path/to/your/video
loop video checkmark: yes
Start Virtual Camera
then just select it when prompted in browser.
The left/right movements are sort of a meme for most checkers and just pass randomly, the ones that need you to open your mouth get bypassed by them talking in the video.
heroku 41 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
inigyou 1 hours ago [-]
Age assurance is the law in California and age verification is illegal in California. We should push more jurisdictions to adopt this model. While many age verification laws are malicious mass surveillance, some are because politicians didn't see a better option.
reactordev 44 minutes ago [-]
Here in the US, there’s a giant database of faces the government uses to ID people with an app. In the UK, they want this same level of invasive policing. Technology will always be used nefariously by police agencies until someone stops them, which no one will. No one, politically, wants to come out and “restrain policing” but that’s how the rich will position it so they can sell more flock cameras, more app platforms, more tech to the ever bottomless pockets of government. We are in a Thiel world.
lbotos 36 minutes ago [-]
I.....
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
Those face scans are matching to the biometrics you’ve already provided to your own government when you obtained your modern passport.
My passport currently has a broken chip and I’ve been traveling extensively, so I need to go into the border guard queue every time I enter. It’s very annoying. And they take the face scan each time and their computer compares it to past images of my entry.
aftbit 30 minutes ago [-]
Same in the USA I believe.
radium3d 8 minutes ago [-]
They already have your face.
Synaesthesia 27 minutes ago [-]
A while back I opened a bank account for my daughter. All that I needed was to scan my face, then the bank got everything from the department of home affairs (South Africa)
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
jh00ker 38 minutes ago [-]
At Disneyland, there are separate park entrance lanes that don't use facial recognition software. I like that I can opt-out passively there.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
tejohnso 36 minutes ago [-]
Yup. Most people are going to say "I have nothing to hide" and go with the flow. The ones who don't are signalling that perhaps they do have something to hide.
triceratops 29 minutes ago [-]
I don't see the point of opting out at an airport, of all places. They already know (or should know) the real names of everyone who's flying. Fully agree that facial recognition at an amusement park, or any private business, is egregious.
Benanov 28 minutes ago [-]
Last time I opted out at the (edit: TSA) scan, a number of people behind me followed suit.
I enjoyed that. I will remember to opt out again.
rylando 48 minutes ago [-]
Is there even an option at the airport to refuse face scanning? I assume that signs you up for a one way trip to a cavity search.
TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.
beachwood23 47 minutes ago [-]
There is a small sign in front of the facial scanner that says "Photo verification not required."
You can always say "I decline the photo verification", and they will check your license like back in the old days. This is what I have been doing for years now.
jandrese 43 minutes ago [-]
Things may not be quite so simple if your skin color is on the darker side, especially with the current administration. Doubly so if your passport shows you come from a country who's name ends in -stan.
the_doctah 25 minutes ago [-]
Pure conjecture, Reddit-coded, seal-clapping bait.
gosub100 39 minutes ago [-]
All the previous administrations have extended the patriot act and other laws that enable warrantless spying and collecting data in the name of "security".
CalRobert 46 minutes ago [-]
So far I’ve been fine politely declining. Haven’t been back to the US in a while though.
giacomoforte 47 minutes ago [-]
I completely agree with this, but my banking apps, my broker, my health insurance, my simcard provider all already require my face for identification.
inigyou 40 minutes ago [-]
Perhaps we should distinguish between institutions that require strong identity (phone networks shouldn't be in this list but are, which is a separate argument) and institutions that really shouldn't, like random websites.
yunwal 43 minutes ago [-]
FYI the processing for FaceID on iPhones is entirely offline. I think the Samsung androids have offline face id as well.
notabotiswear 34 minutes ago [-]
I hate that banks do that, right after that asinine Apple/Google monopoly proliferation. But “giving my face” to an institute where I was, since forever, required to submit a photo ID to join is a far cry from handing it over to earn the privilege of being exposed to whatever brainrotting garbage infests antisocial media these days…
neither_color 46 minutes ago [-]
If we're going to have self-censorship due to everything we say online tied to our real identity can we at least get some shiny buildings and high speed trains out of the deal too? I've been online since early 2000s internet and for all the soapboxing about freedom of speech over the years it seems a foregone conclusion that we'll get the same surveillance state as those other "less free" countries else without anything to show for it.
inigyou 40 minutes ago [-]
You can have all that if you immigrate to China.
speedgoose 34 minutes ago [-]
Who is the author?
norskeld 28 minutes ago [-]
Either Claude van Code or Chad McGpt.
volkk 10 minutes ago [-]
Wow both of these guys are prolific writers. I see them everywhere
shevy-java 13 minutes ago [-]
> It is not age verification. It is identity verification.
Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack.
It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that;
"age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look
which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of
corruption money following these actors pushing for it.
It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies
fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory
everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right
now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with
other technology too ...
13 minutes ago [-]
chatmasta 33 minutes ago [-]
I verified my age with Apple by clicking one button and Apple said it assumed I was 18 based on the age of my Apple account (2011).
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
taosu_la 30 minutes ago [-]
sry but at first, I thought it was about Anthropic's authentication.
shinobi-apps 31 minutes ago [-]
Yea u, me and few others, when they say it is must everyone will follow and give them even kids faces. cos majority of ppl are sheeps that are waiting for orders same as they did with covid vaccines. During covid at some point i had feeling that my cousins will tied me up and drag to hospital to get vaccine if authorities said yes, go, hunt unvaccinated
tsukikage 48 minutes ago [-]
I particularly like the form at the bottom for collecting your email address and adding it to a big list.
EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.
blahblaher 44 minutes ago [-]
Don't be fucking stupid equating these 2 things together
Nevermark 37 minutes ago [-]
A nicer way to say that is: "I can't decide whether to up vote or down vote you!"
There is real irony that we still use non-unique-to-purpose addressing to sign up for no-need-for-our-identity newsletters. In this case, in particular.
tsukikage 31 minutes ago [-]
I would personally be much happier sharing that link with others if it did not have the information-collecting form.
Nevermark 8 minutes ago [-]
That makes perfect sense to me. I am sure the site's motives are fine, and yet the tech we still use is ridiculously aged and unsecure. Even on pro-security sites.
greenavocado 39 minutes ago [-]
Has it ever occurred to you that this is intentional?
All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing
Nevermark 54 minutes ago [-]
Democracies building the tools of total autocracy. Real but fringe threats used to create the ultimate centralization of leverage.
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
inigyou 39 minutes ago [-]
You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP. If that's not considered to be a problem, then the California approach of just asking the device owner is much better and you still don't need the ZKP.
Nevermark 34 minutes ago [-]
I am fine with my device vouching for my age, for a session of interaction. Just not any version of that, that can be identified with me or my devices.
> You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP.
Yes, it is trivial to share access, purposely or carelessly.
Can we start a trend of wearing ski masks and other face coverings in public?
goda90 46 minutes ago [-]
Sounds miserable in summer. Let's start a trend of removing cameras from public spaces instead.
M95D 36 minutes ago [-]
Too late. I'm pretty sure it's already not allowed in many countries, including most of Europe.
They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
panny 57 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
RankingMember 53 minutes ago [-]
Especially in the modern era where peoples' attention is particularly stretched thin, trying to get the average person to add another thing to be hyper-vigilant about is going to be a hard sell. People only have so many spoons.
Not sure why you shoehorned some antivax nonsense in there though.
cjs_ac 45 minutes ago [-]
> Sorry. You can refuse the covid vaccine, but that won't stop everyone else from blithly accepting it.
I agree with this part, but then, I personally don't have a problem with everyone else giving up their privacy.
> Then once the critical mass is reached, your ability to buy groceries can just be terminated. The 20% of the population that refuses just isn't important enough to matter.
Wut? Can you provide any information about a supermarket chain (or law affecting supermarket chains) anywhere in the world that prevents (or prevented) people who weren't vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter or buy groceries from those supermarkets?
Taking these age-assurance laws at face value, I don't have a problem with them, because I think algorithmically-personalised social media feeds are an intrinsically bad product and I don't see anything that any society would lose if they went away. My concern about these laws is how far politicians are willing to go to close loopholes like VPNs, because I think that's where the potential is to cause inadvertent collateral damage to systems that really matter.
reinsdyr 50 minutes ago [-]
This analogy doesn't hold up. What does covid have to do with anything?
functionmouse 36 minutes ago [-]
probably a sentiment agent trying to equate being anti-age verification with being an antivaxxer
billyoyo 53 minutes ago [-]
What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance or grocery shopping?
Where I live I simply queued up at the local vaccination centre, got vaccinated, and left. I probably had to show some id or something I guess but no more than accessing any other government services
panny 24 minutes ago [-]
>What does getting the COVID vaccine have to do with surveillance
Google and Apple built contact tracing directly into iOS and Android during Covid. And it's still there. And all they'd need to do to make it opt-out or required is to flash an update with some small print in an EULA.
It is WAY more invasive and you probably already gave your phone your face with features like face unlock too. But hey, we can stop this discussion, because the covid vaccinated have flagged this point down for wrongthink. You see, when you want to fight the surveillance sleepwalkers, they fight back. They really really really want to stay asleep.
inigyou 38 minutes ago [-]
When was the last time someone checked you were vaccinated for COVID?
rafram 54 minutes ago [-]
1. What an odd analogy. Covid vaccination was a clear net positive.
2. When was the last time you needed to show a vaccine card for anything, much less buying groceries?
rylando 47 minutes ago [-]
Honestly I lost mine, I think all I’ve got is a picture in my phone, and I don’t think it includes my booster shot.
I’ve never been asked for it since.
brettermeier 47 minutes ago [-]
I mean the analogy sounds about right, why downvoting?
inigyou 38 minutes ago [-]
How does it
fl4regun 34 minutes ago [-]
it sounds wrong, on the account of I never had my "ability to buy groceries" taken away from me without proving my vaccination status, I've only ever seen it used for travel purposes.
Rendered at 15:17:05 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
And that is the real shame. Because I don't want to have to give my face or do age verification but I know when the time comes, and If I need to use a service now, I will give them whatever they want to get past the hurdle and use the service. It sucks, but I don't think a petition will help. Unless of course you get the 50 million to sign the petition AND stick to it.
I’m on Insta and WhatsApp and I use them a few times per year. I’m on Messenger and have seen a dramatic dropoff in messages. I’m on FB frequently and notice only a small fraction of my friends bother anymore and it’s become an interest platform to make up the lack, so I’m trending toward less time there. I’m on Twitter/X but check in maybe once a month.
I may not be a typical user, but I’m probably not unique either.
In other words I think the people pushing these kinds of "identification" methods would love you for spreading their silent message of this being unavoidable knowingly or unknowingly.
Even if what you say is correct let's not make it easier for people wanting to enshittify the future, yeah?
If you already agree the resistance will ultimately lead nowhere, why not focus that energy on something with a better chance of success? Best guess would be partnering with someone like the EFF for a solution through lobbying And the courts.
I don't see myself as admitting defeat here. I'm choosing my battles. The gov here will drive this through as we're stuck with them until 2029. I'm considering (with a heavy heart) to leave the UK and this is just one nail in a coffin full of nails.
I mean I will just not use the service and I'll seek out alternatives that are open source or create my own. I'll do anything possible until I'm the last one standing if that's what it comes down too.
I tried to sign up to Telnyx and they had the same crap from an unreliable data-breach and being-litigated persona identifier. I passed on that.
I've already been going down this road as I've abandoned Google and some of the big cloud providers in favor of smaller companies who aren't pushing these policies.
It isn't hard to click cancel. It's just people favor convenience over their own freedom because they have never experienced not having freedom like our founder's did 250 years ago. The problem is once freedom is gone, getting it back requires blood spilled and political reforms and revolutions based on what history teaches us.
They want to force all operating systems to require age sniffing. That's the main angle right now. I am curiously watching how systemd will add more implementation details to this; probably as a first step only for commercial linux distributions.
I personally don't use FaceID because I'm not thrilled about having my face scanned with utmost precision. BTW, I'm looking at my phone typing this and I know my phone has its face-scanning device pointed right at me. Is it sending "them" my face data all the time? Or sometimes? I can't tell. What if I'm showing something on my phone to another person? Is it going to scan their face too? Maybe, maybe not.
The worst part is these are all stupid poorly thought out band-aid solutions to "protect the kids" from platforms that are also detrimental to adults.
Holy fuck, man, visiting that with a HN referer serves up a rather NSFW rude image, and evidently sets a cookie to make sure it happens next time too.
replacement link: https://web.archive.org/web/20260401175031/https://www.jwz.o...
AI coming along is another “great opportunity” to try and force these programs
Lobbyists do not just try to convince a politician that X is a good idea. Lobbyists give the politician money to introduce already drafted legislation, and then give other politicians money to support it. And if they can get the legislation passed in one place, they'll try it again.
The result is that suspiciously similar legislation appears in many places close in time, due to it being pushed by particular interests.
What bothers me most isn't their corruption, but their apparent belief that it won't eventually affect them or their families - perhaps sooner than they think.
"Why now" I think is pretty obvious -- the age limitations that exist currently are easily circumvented, but have given enough of a plausible deniability aspect that politicians have been able to skate by. There has been increasing research and media dedicated to the idea that there are aspects of the internet which we should be shielding children from. While many of this research is dubious, there's a rising moral panic around it.
The core of the problem is that there is no possible implementation of age verification that does not also require identity verification. In this I am in strong agreement with the article, but the use of paranoid and dramatic language as in this article only alienates people who find the conspiratorial tone to be reverse polarizing.
Collecting user biometric data and trying it to a nominally anonymous user identity is not required here.
This is 100% 'won't someone please think of the children' pearl clutching to hide what's actually going on - furthering control of the online exchange of ideas.
- it’s been building for a while,
- governments are happy to step in and gain power for themselves while also making voters feel good.
- and (in my opinion) because it’s not a major traffic generating topic on builder focused sites like HN.
The most proximate domino was the Australian social media ban. Australia was already a country known to experiment with ways to deal with social media - see the news fee they imposed on platforms.
Behind that was the build up of negative outcomes from social media for kids, and adults.
The harms are not something I tend to find actively discussed on HN; I assume because more people are interested in building the next thing, not digging into the trust and safety details.
Customer safety and support are also not going to get anyone promoted in tech. These are cost centers and will often stand in the way of addictive design.
Meta executives were nailed precisely for greenlighting designs their own teams told them were harmful for teens.
At the same time, there is lobbying going on by these firms, to push the burden of verification to someone else.
Hell - it’s actually impressive that it took so long for this to precipitate.
Only trust fund nepo kids from old money are allowed to have vanity social security numbers, multiple identities and scrubbed Wikipedia articles. The plebeians shall have only a single ID and use it to authenticate with every website.
I really want to know who else has a SSN starting with 1337.
It happens at the national level too. I just did a simple Google search for "united nations committee to harmonize" [1] (no quotes in my search itself) and I count 5 or 6 committees explicitly dedicated to "harmonization" in the first ten results. And that's just the committees, you can count on each of them to have factions within (because politics, politics never changes) and outside forces competing and vying to get the "harmonizations" to favor them and disfavor their competitors. And as politics, politics never changes, paging Ron Perlman, these harmonization committees are unlikely to flinch away from "harmonizing" entirely new rules into existence... which, again, with not all that much searching you can easily find examples of them stating outright.
And the forces trying to influence those committees, are not all just sitting out in the public with some .org website with their true mission stated clearly above the fold. And I just use these UN committees, which are themselves literally the result of one search and a few seconds scrolling through the search page and anything but a complete list, as plain and obvious public examples operating in public for at least nominally good purposes. Nothing stops anyone from buying politicians in multiple countries at a time to push through something like age verification directly, without being open about who they are.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=united+nations+committ...
Now we’re catching up and realizing how bad it is.
For a similar case, see tasers in Canada after a handcuffed immigrant was killed by one. The question came up “how were tasers certified safe for humans?”. The answer was “they weren’t. A private company just started selling them to police forces who just started using them.”
Because there are actors pushing for this. And they let money flow, so the lobbyists work.
People think lobbyists don't do this? Well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
These lobbyists were dumb. You can be certain that some lobbyists are so efficient that detecting them reliably is very difficult. Even more so when private media is controlled by a few billionaires who are "in" on the system.
Tor is not for criminals. It's for you and me. And happens to be good enough that criminals use it too. This is the two sided nature of technology.
Tor is a networks of peers across the globe volunteering their network bandwidth to support people under oppression by their government.
The amount of privacy that can be gained from tor is proportional to the amount of people using it. The more that people utilize the technology, the more that everyone looks the same, and protects the people that need it the most.
Tor enables me to say no to these things and carry on, without permission.
If you can master what it takes to design and run your site on localhost....you are literally one step away from sharing it with anyone on the planet who has internet access for zero dollars because of the power of tor, and the global network that supports it.
The reality is, there is no gate there, just the knowledge of how to do it.
Tor is first and foremost a router.
Sites that block tor IP's do happen, this is because of the dual use nature of the technology. Its also well suited for abuse.
The binaries do not discriminate.
No. Tor is for the CIA. It won't work for them unless we use it as well. Criminals also find it useful.
It's easy to verify this. Tor was originally written by Paul Syverson, Michael G. Reed, and David Goldschlag. While all three were working at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
I encourage everyone to learn about the origins. Even study these people and what they have said in the past. Don't for get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Mathewson.
In the face of government hostility, at least we here can make more tools like Signal or at least choose not to feed customer data to the beast.
So... is it part of the parable they're trying to tell that they're seeing who will go against the exact sort of advice they're giving? Or does this -just happen to be- the kind of shady data gathering that they're warning against?
to quote the site itself, "We spent a generation teaching people the first rule of the internet: never give out your real identity to strangers."
So some organization could release Yubikeys with a certain private key and distribute them in stores that allow only adult customers - like liquor stores or sex shops. Owning a key proves that one is adult without disclosing identity. Keys support USB and bluetooth and can be easily supported on any device.
Also, OS developers should implement simple parent mode - such that parents only need to flip a switch and set a password, and do not have to whitelist apps or websites - the OS should use government-provided lists. You might not like the government, but 99% of parents do not want to bother compiling white lists manually.
The amount of people that let the TSA take a scan of their face when going through airport security - even when the signage clearly says you can opt out - proves that this effort, while noble, will fail.
I (and the family members I am with) always opt-out, but every time I look around, I am the only one doing it. If I had to guess, I'd put a compliance figure somewhere around 98%+.
Here is a good article on it: https://medium.com/womenintechnology/you-can-and-should-opt-...
and you don't need any guide it's dead simple:
then just select it when prompted in browser.The left/right movements are sort of a meme for most checkers and just pass randomly, the ones that need you to open your mouth get bypassed by them talking in the video.
love the idea, but if you aren't from a Shengen country you can't get into Shengen countries without a fingerprint scan and a face photo at the airport:
https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/data-held-by-ees
No way to opt out of the scan.
My passport currently has a broken chip and I’ve been traveling extensively, so I need to go into the border guard queue every time I enter. It’s very annoying. And they take the face scan each time and their computer compares it to past images of my entry.
That means my goverment already has my face, with all my details associated with it. Bit Orwellian but there we are.
At TSA checkpoints at the airport, you have to actively ask to opt-out.
I'm always worried that actively opting-out puts you on a government list and there could be later, much larger ramifications, so I passively opt-in to blend in with the masses.
I enjoyed that. I will remember to opt out again.
TSA does it, Customs does it when entering the USA after a trip too.
You can always say "I decline the photo verification", and they will check your license like back in the old days. This is what I have been doing for years now.
Very true. They are currently orchestrating the attack.
It is also why I call age sniffing age sniffing like that; "age verification" is the propaganda term. We need to look which actors are behind this push. I smell a trail of corruption money following these actors pushing for it. It is also fascinating to see how quickly democracies fall victim to this. Soon age sniffing will be mandatory everywhere. The free world wide web will be gone. Right now people think this is hyperpole. Well, we saw that with other technology too ...
I guess I’m lucky to be in the cohort that avoids the face scans, and I feel a bit dirty about enabling this, but so far — even living in the UK — the privacy concerns have not manifested for me as I thought they might.
To me, the most disingenuous framing of the “protect the children” narrative is not “children can’t access the stuff,” but “adults can access the stuff, once they provide their biometrics.” The default is to deny access.
EDIT: looks like it's gone now. Gonna count that as a win.
There is real irony that we still use non-unique-to-purpose addressing to sign up for no-need-for-our-identity newsletters. In this case, in particular.
All those Bilderberg and WEF forums and Peter Thiel's Dialog Club are not for nothing
Can we actually think of the children? All the children? Their future?
When democracies forget that government is the greatest natural threat to freedom, they forget and undermine the reason we have democracies.
Technical solutions to zero-knowledge proofs of age-of-adulthood without loss of anonymity are recent but available now. The strongest argument for these is to take the wind out of alternatives.
Strangely, promoters of surveillance avoid these solutions.
Even stranger: the bizarre but prevalent counter argument that anonymity protecting solutions won't work, because the surreptitious goal of other solutions is precisely to strip anonymity. We apparently shouldn't do that, because the abusers won't like the wind being taken out of their "front" problems, with real but freedom-preserving solutions!
> You can just lie by using someone else's ZKP.
Yes, it is trivial to share access, purposely or carelessly.
That isn't an argument for reduced anonymity.
Were you making a different point?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-knowledge_proof>
They wanted to ban hijab/burka, but that would be discrimination, so they banned all face covers: ski masks, balaclavas, "V" plastic masks, motorcycle helmets when not driving one, everything.
Not sure why you shoehorned some antivax nonsense in there though.
I agree with this part, but then, I personally don't have a problem with everyone else giving up their privacy.
> Then once the critical mass is reached, your ability to buy groceries can just be terminated. The 20% of the population that refuses just isn't important enough to matter.
Wut? Can you provide any information about a supermarket chain (or law affecting supermarket chains) anywhere in the world that prevents (or prevented) people who weren't vaccinated against COVID-19 to enter or buy groceries from those supermarkets?
Taking these age-assurance laws at face value, I don't have a problem with them, because I think algorithmically-personalised social media feeds are an intrinsically bad product and I don't see anything that any society would lose if they went away. My concern about these laws is how far politicians are willing to go to close loopholes like VPNs, because I think that's where the potential is to cause inadvertent collateral damage to systems that really matter.
Where I live I simply queued up at the local vaccination centre, got vaccinated, and left. I probably had to show some id or something I guess but no more than accessing any other government services
Google and Apple built contact tracing directly into iOS and Android during Covid. And it's still there. And all they'd need to do to make it opt-out or required is to flash an update with some small print in an EULA.
It is WAY more invasive and you probably already gave your phone your face with features like face unlock too. But hey, we can stop this discussion, because the covid vaccinated have flagged this point down for wrongthink. You see, when you want to fight the surveillance sleepwalkers, they fight back. They really really really want to stay asleep.
2. When was the last time you needed to show a vaccine card for anything, much less buying groceries?
I’ve never been asked for it since.