points by iamnothere 1 month ago

The problem is not that we aren’t doing age verification, it’s that a group of authoritarians are trying to force mandatory implementation of age verification (and concomitant removal of anonymity). That’s the problem.

Seattle3503 1 month ago

It seems like the solution is to provide an age verification mechanism with robust privacy protections. That way when we offer a solution that works for all of their states concerns, if they disagree with the privacy preserving approach we force them to say outright "I want to keep a record of every website you visit."

  • summm 1 month ago

    Unfortunately not. They will use even the most privacy preserving protocol to push remote attestation of end devices. Which in itself is a stepping stone making their next steps much easier.

    • Seattle3503 1 month ago

      Why would they say that is necessary?

      • summm 1 month ago

        They actually already do in the EUDI wallet reference implementation. There, as this is part of a more general ID system, they probably want to avoid that people duplicate or export IDs. In case of a privacy preserving age check, the fear could be that a copied private key could be enough to generate unlimited age proofs, indistinguishable from the original app instance. In another thread someone gave an even lazier argument: the eudi wallet requires hw backed keys by law regardless, and the laziest implementation would be device attestation...

        • Seattle3503 1 month ago

          Hrm that does seem suboptimal. There have got to be better approaches available to us through cryptography.

  • meowface 1 month ago

    I don't understand how such a thing could be possible. Privacy is inherently gone, even if the third party doesn't learn your real name.

Noaidi 1 month ago

Anonymity is a myth. I am sure by now an LLM can figure out who you are and where you live by your HN posts alone.

  • iamnothere 1 month ago

    Do it then

    • Noaidi 1 month ago

      I nave never, and will never, use AI on my own accord.

    • Noaidi 1 month ago

      Hey, iamnothere, look at this!

      https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.16800

      "We show that large language models can be used to perform at-scale deanonymization. With full Internet access, our agent can re-identify Hacker News users and Anthropic Interviewer participants at high precision, given pseudonymous online profiles and conversations alone, matching what would take hours for a dedicated human investigator. "