New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.
My idea is already in place. When you log into your ISP to pay bills or manage your plan you can already toggle on or off parental control. Its just changing it so its enabled by default since so many parents seem clueless it even exists.
Log in and turn it off and its just the way it already is now.
Your new additional system puts trust that those who wrote the system will not end up exposing which tokens were used for your accounts by your ID that is linked to it. Either because the program was written for the government or corporations to do so, or eventual incompetence leading to an exploit that exposes it. And is based on an idealized view of government and corporations to even be willing to trust the program created by them or a third party the government chooses to approve as being truly be anonymous. Because you definitely aren’t going to be the one writing it.
Only proposal I’ve liked is being able to buy tokens at a store without any ID being logged and buying new ones when it expires. Similar to how you can buy physical mullvad VPN gift cards.
Anyways, we aren’t getting either. These verification systems are to kill off internet anonymity, so governments don’t have to request subpoenas like the US did of reddit to try to figure out the people behind accounts that were being critical of ICE. So what’s the point of even proposing or arguing possible solutions that secure anonymity.
Yes, and by turning it on you are opting in to allowing your ISP to decide what information you get access to. Making that the default is a TERRIBLE idea.
There is nothing linking your account to you IRL. This is what I’m having a really hard time getting through to people. That situation cannot happen. “The people who wrote the system” don’t at any stage get access to information that could expose you. Your data never leaves your sphere of influence. That’s what makes the system so great.
Yes! What I’m trying to describe is that process, but in a digital space. Swap the store with a LOCAL app (ie: one that doesn’t phone home, and can generate the tokens on your device), and swap the ID with the cert file, and you’ve got the same process in the digital space, with all the same benefits
So turn it off.
I dont trust the digital space version because you’d have to trust the code and to be an approved system would require the government to sign off on it. Third party doesn’t exist in a independent space for something like this when government oversight is required.
But, it doesn’t matter. Like I said before. The goal isn’t verification to protect people. It’s surveillance. That’s why I remain so skeptical of people who despite the current world keep insisting and arguing for verification, because the ideal government doesn’t exist. And even if it does governments change like Hungary.
No! That’s the great part, because it’s just fancy crypto maths, there’s no reason it couldn’t be a FOSS app. Estonia has several 3rd party providers, and they do get certified, but that’s not a necessity
Tell that to the people in China. Seriously, if you get a chance, read the article I linked. It’ll do a much better job than I ever could at explaining why what you’re describing is just about the worst possible solution to this problem imaginable.