Something that icks me regarding the online #ageverification discourse that we see today is that everyone seems to assume that giving privacy-intrusive or PII datais the only way to have age verification online. However, we already know how to make age verification where:

  • The government doesn't know on which sites you register or give access to third parties to PII
  • The website to which you register doesn't need to interact with the government or any third party
  • The website doesn't know your age, just that you're over 18
  • No third party is required
  • The two things you need is a digital ID system and zero-knowledge proofs. That's it

    @res260 in theory, yes, but I'm yet to see a solution that looks like something I'd use. Afaik, even the planned EUDI will give the way too much information to the certification agency.

    @paranormal_distribution Yes I agree, all current production implementations of age verification are problematic for the reasons we all know about. This is why we should aknowledge that better solutions exist and require it to be a a non-negociable condition if we are to do any kind of online age verification.

    I don't like age verification and there is a very real risk of censorship with it, but this part is the social problem, we can still improve things for everyone with a sound technological implementation, for those who sadly decide that age verification is the way to go.

    @res260
    There must be another condition for it to not be a total disaster for freedom rights: The solution must not rely on any kind of remote attestation of the user's system.
    The EUDI wallet currently relies on Google Play Integrity and its Apple equivalent and they are not at all open to even seriously discuss this.

    @paranormal_distribution