If you are an EU citizen, please consider signing this citizen initiative:
Stop Killing The Internet: No Digital ID & No Age Verification
https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/initiatives/details/2026/000011_en
This is no stupid change(.)org petition.
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Replying to @mars@squirrel.pub
@mars
The title is rather misleading, but I feel that this is asking for a reasonable compromise. No *mandatory* age verification locking children out of learning how to deal with the internet, while asking that the framework the EU ends up creating for *voluntary* checks to defang private sector garbage like kID be as private as possible and not leave out people who do not use a phone.
Right now there's a perverse incentive for companies to push for age verification because current solutions give them a lot of data about everyone. "We have to do this to Save the Children, but woe is us, we have to look at all this juicy PII to make it happen. Sorry~"
If there is a voluntary (and I stress again, voluntary) system in place that doesn't give them more information than "is above x age threshold" and gets that information from places that already know it, then they can't use child safety to ask for everyone's identity documents and this incentive to implement age verification disappears.
Replying to @ariarhythmic@ohai.social
@ariarhythmic
Well, preferably for the communities that for some reason (like not wanting to accidentally ERP with a twelve year old) want to restrict membership. If there is no extra data to gain, companies will only force this if they really have to because it directly impacts user numbers.
@mars
Replying to @ariarhythmic@ohai.social
@ariarhythmic
(sorry about the days late reply, something ate the notification on my phone xP)
Why would companies want to do that? They don't get any useful data, just piss users off. And if a company is willing to be that boneheaded, they're not worth interacting with, since if they're stupid enough to do this, what else have they messed up?
As for this being privacy-hostile? The entire reason behind the current EU proposal for an age attestation system is to allow users to remain private minus a single yes/no value that says "is above X age". One time use certificates to prevent tracking between sites, strict data deletion requirements on the part of the attestation providers so not even they can be used to connect the dots, and even more cryptography magic being worked on to close that avenue at the protocol level as well. The only issue that this initiative raises and does need fixing is that as it stands, the certificates have to go through a mobile phone's secure enclave.
Replying to @Karcsesz@equestria.social
@Karcsesz because companies cannot be trusted to act in good faith? Do you not know what a network effect is?
And privacy violations mediated by a government are, in fact, still privacy violations.
Replying to @ariarhythmic@ohai.social
@ariarhythmic
They cannot be trusted to act in good faith, but they can be trusted to act in selfish ways. It feels like your arguments all start from "companies are evil and will always do the worst possible thing", when in reality all the evil crap they do is because it benefits them in some fucked way.
As for network effects, yeah I concede that point. Way too many people are still on Twitter even after all the garbage (that benefits Twitter!) they pulled. There is constant attrition, though. And I feel that if we keep improving the migration paths, keep building bridges, and push for legislation that lowers switching costs, the scale will tilt.
You are going to have to explain how giving someone a single "is over 18: yes/no" value constitutes a privacy violation because you keep insisting that it is without any arguments for why.
And even if it is, I'd rather have this system than give corporations the "muh child safety!" excuse to ask for my ID. Because that benefits them a lot
Replying to @Karcsesz@equestria.social
@Karcsesz Can you please also concede the point that, age verification is oppressive and generally a nasty thing that we do not want to enable in any form?
It does not stop being age discrimination if you make it less privacy-invasive.
Replying to @ariarhythmic@ohai.social
@ariarhythmic The system of "<18 immature, >18 mature" is flawed, yes. A number doesn't define someone's maturity level. And I personally do not belong to any communities that would want to discriminate, because most communities have no reason to check for maturity.
However, there are valid reasons to want to know if someone is an "adult" or a "child" on the internet by legal definition, mostly having to do with NSFW topics. Would you like to get branded because the person you sexted with in an adults only space turned out to be lying about their age in some misguided "to catch a predator" copycat effort?
Or to take another example, there are plenty of "18+ dating" Discord servers where the complicit owners plead "we couldn't have done anything to prevent this" whenever a kid who stumbles upon their space ends up exploited.
In the long term I would love to see a less arbitrary maturity signal be chosen to replace age, but we shouldn't reject better just because it isn't perfect.
Replying to @Karcsesz@equestria.social
@Karcsesz the idea of a "maturity signal" whatever it may be, still aims to legitimize denying human beings their agency.
If surveillance-based easy to abuse discrimination enforcement is "better" than leaving minors alone, we have nothing more to discuss
Replying to @ariarhythmic@ohai.social
@ariarhythmic
This maturity signal I'm talking about is a way to mark that someone is capable of fully understanding what it means to enter sexual relations (be they faux or real) with someone else. Because no matter how much you preach human beings' agency, young people who think they are ready keep getting abused, blackmailed, and otherwise scarred for life even by people who didn't mean them harm.
It's protecting people who don't know better from making decisions that they are going to regret for the rest of their lives, at the expense of not letting them go places where they aren't welcome anyway. This same idea is why we have driver's licenses, extensive permitting around working with hazardous substances, and certifications for dangerous jobs.
Though while those certifications are used to prevent harm both to the person practicing and the people around, this one only protects the individuals who want to make sure they are on even ground.
