• linule@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Why is there no privacy respecting solution for age verification? Like the government giving you some sort of token that says you’re over 18 and that’s it?

    • sunbeam60@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      What if I told you that by regulation, the EU age verification system has to be anonymous and that it’s only the AUKUS countries that are moving forward in a way where anonymity is “a nice to have”.

      Denmark’s system, which is a front-runner implementation in the EU, is going to be fully ZKP.

      And yes it’s basically built with tokens.

      You identify with a government system in an app. The services issues you signed tokens that are anonymous. You hand these anonymous tokens over to the sites that demand proof of age.

      • linule@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        That sounds great. I don’t follow the topic closely (probably I should), so wasn’t aware of these developments. This should be brought up in all discussions about age verification, so everyone knows there are better options.

        Some people will feel that it’s not ideal, as you still have to trust the government, opposed to full anonymity, but that is a bit of a separate problem.

        • sunbeam60@feddit.uk
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          2 months ago

          Ultimately someone has to vouch for “yes, this person is 18+”. People can’t self-attest, except through crappy biometric, so at some point a government ID has to be involved.

          I’d trust my government over a credit reference agency that literally makes revenue from selling access to your private data.

          • linule@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Yes, and governments, at least democratic ones, represent the interests of their people, so at least on paper this is the correct way to structure things. Then you use the channels to government to ensure it’s regulated properly. If this is not possible or there’s no trust, there’s a larger problem.

    • odelik@lemmy.today
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      2 months ago

      There is.

      It’s called Parental Controls.

      It also does a fairly good job at preventing stuff from getting through.

      One of the big issues right now is that there’s a lot of sexualized content on social media right now that’s bypassing parental controls because the social media services are doing a poor job of limiting that content when encountering a parental controlled device.

    • Jimmytea@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      There is!, one of the officially recognised and approved ways is credit card verification, however afaik only steam is doing that.

      • linule@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I mean a dedicated, government issued age verification token that doesn’t reveal any data to the third party other than you are allowed access age wise.

      • JenitalJouster@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        i’ve seen screenshots of ios users being verified due to having their credit cards as payment methods tied to their name, which is a hell of a lot better than an ID