Governments (and a few companies) really want this.

- Governments benefit from easier monitoring and enforcement.

- The advertising industry prefers verified identities for better targeting.

- Social media companies gain more reliable data and engagement.

- Online shopping companies can reduce fraud and increase tracking.

- Many SaaS companies would also welcome stronger identity verification.

In short, anonymity is not very profitable, and governments often favor identification because it increases oversight and control.

Of course, this leads to political debate. Some point out that voting often does not require ID, while accessing online services does. The usual argument is that voting is a constitutional right. However, one could argue that access to the internet has become a fundamental part of modern life as well. It may not be explicitly written into the Constitution, but in practice it functions as an essential right in today’s society.

So we should probably get ahead of this debate and push for good ways to do part-of-identity-checks. Because I don't see any good way to avoid them.

We could potentially do ID checks that only show exactly what the receiver needs to know and nothing else.

Realizing that much of the internet is totally toxic to children now and should have a means of keeping them out is distinct from agreeing to upload ID to everything.

A better implementation would be to have a device/login level parental control setting that passed age restriction signals via browsers and App Stores. This is both a simpler design and privacy friendly.

That being said, this is a 1 bit information, adult in current legislation yes/no.

Do you think strip clubs and bars should stop IDing people at the door? I don't. Why should porn sites be any different?

I think a lot of the younger generation supports it, actually. They didn't really grow up with a culture of internet anonymity and some degree of privacy.

Actually, yes, it seems to have shifted quite a bit. As far as I can tell, it seems correlated with the amount of mis/disinformation on the web, and acceptance of more fringe views, that seems to make one group more vocal about wanting to ensure only "real people" share what they think on the internet, and a sub-section of that group wanting to enforce this "real name" policy too.

It in itself used to be fringe, but really been catching on in mainstream circles, where people tend to ask themselves "But I don't have anything to hide, and I already use my real name, why cannot everyone do so too?"

HN has largely shifted away from tech literacy and towards business literacy in recent years.

Needless to say that an internet where every user's real identity is easily verifiable at all times is very beneficial for most businesses, so it's natural to see that stance here.

Yes. Or more honestly, there was always an undercurrent of paternalistic thought and tech regulation from the Columbine Massacre days [0] to today.

Also for those of us who are younger (below 35) we grew up in an era where anonymized cyberbullying was normalized.

[0] - https://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/02/weekinreview/the-nation-a...

It's never fucking safety, or protecting children, or preventing fraud, or preventing terrorism, or preventing drugs or money laundering or gang activities. It's always, 100% of the time, inevitably, without exception, a tool used by petty bureaucrats and power hungry politicians to exert power and control over the citizens they are supposed to represent.

They might use it on a couple of token examples for propaganda purposes, but if you look throughout the world where laws like this are implemented, authoritarian countries and western "democracies" alike, these laws are used to control locals. It's almost refreshingly straightforward and honest when a country just does the authoritarian things, instead of doing all the weaselly mental gymnastics to justify their power grabs.

People who support this are ignorant or ideologically aligned with authoritarianism. There's no middle ground; anonymity and privacy are liberty and freedom. If you can't have the former you won't have the latter.

These are not the same people from 30 years ago. The new generation has come to love big brother. All it took to sell their soul was karma points.

I dont think they want to figure it out. They think the internet should be stagnant unchanging and eternal as it currently exists because it makes the most money. If you disagree you're either a normie or need to parent harder or something. There is nothing you can do don't dare try to change it.

The short version is that voters want government to bring tech to heel.

From what I see, people are tired of tech, social media, and enshittified apps. AI hype, talk of the singularity, and fears about job loss have pushed things well past grim.

Recent social media bans indicate how far voter tolerance for control and regulation has shifted.

This is problematic because government is also looking for reasons to do so. Partly because big tech is simply dominant, and partly because governments are trending toward authoritarianism.

The solution would have been research that helped create targeted and effective policy. Unfortunately, tech (especially social media) is naturally hostile to research that may paint its work as unhealthy or harmful.

Tech firms are burned by exposés, user apathy, and a desire to keep getting paid.

The lack of open research and access to data blocks the creation of knowledge and empirical evidence, which are the cornerstones of nuanced, narrowly tailored policy.

The only things left on the table are blunt instruments, such as age verification.

This conflicts with my concerns about government crackdowns and the importance of anonymity when discussing topics that cover people who have a monopoly on violence and a tendency to use it.

So it's not entirely a black/white discussion to me.

Tons of data also showing higher suicide rates, depression rates, eating disorders etc. so it's not as if there is no good side to this.

When you’re older and have children—especially preteens and teenagers—you want those barriers up, because you’ve seen just how fucked up some children can get after overexposure to unhealthy materials and people who want to exploit or harm them.

It’s a matter of perspective and experience. As adults age, their natural curiosity evolves into a desire to protect their children from harm.

I think either is better than the staus quo. In the first case the parent is waiving away the protections, and in the second the kid is.

Even if a kid buys alcohol, I think it's healthier that they do it by breaking rules and faking ids and knowing that they are doing something wrong, than just doing it and having no way to know it's wrong (except a popup that we have been trained by UX to close without reading (fuck cookie legislation))

Of course no personal details should be provided to the site that requests age confirmation. Just "barer of this token" is an adult.

Ridiculous take.

Any parent can be reckless and give their children all kinds of things - poison, weapons, pornographic magazines ... at some point the device has enough protective features and it is the parents responsibility.

SOME parents give their children access to their ID. That is NOT the same as ALL parents, and therefore is not a reason not to give those parents a helping hand.

Even just informing children that they're entering an adult space has some value, and if they then have to go ask their parents to borrow their wallet, that's good enough for me.

A service provider of adult content now cannot serve a child, regardless of the involvement or lack thereof of a parent.

In china there are places to scan you device and get coupons. usually at elevators in residential buildings so they can track also if you're arriving or leaving easily.

In the US every store tracks and report to ad networks your Bluetooth ids. and we know what happens to ad networks.

US now requires cars to report data, which was optional before (e.g. onstar) and china joined on this since the ev boom.

the public id space is booming.

Identification fixes nothing here, you log with your account, plug in the AI.

The problems with social media have nothing to do with ID and everything to do with godawful incentives, the argument seems to be that it's a large price to pay but that it's worth it. Worth it for what? The end result is absolutely terrible either way

Look at the facebook real name policy.

Like everything else in society, there are tradeoffs here, I'm much more concerned with the damage done to children's developing brains than I am to violations of data privacy, so I'm okay with age verification, however draconian it may be.

No we do not.

>I don’t want to live in a world where the average person unknowingly interacts with bots more than other individuals and where black market actors can sway public opinion with armies of bots.

That is not the argument for identification on many places on the internet. It's not even the argument that the gov reps pushing it typically make. And why would it be. The companies that go along with all this don't want to get rid of all bots and public opinion campaigns. They make money off of many of those.

2) Your point is valid. I too want to know whether I am engaging with a bot or a person. This is impossible now and it will be impossible once ID check becomes ubiquitous.

3) I will be happy to see (or not) a blue checkmark by the profile name. Just like in Twitter. That's enough.

At any point they can tell a real human what they can and can't say, and if they go against their masters, their "real human" status is revoked, because you trust the platform and not the person.

If we want to go full conspiritard, we could accuse those of wanting to control speech to be the financial backers of those flooding social media with AI slop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gGLvg0n-uY -- this fictional video thematically marries Metal Gear Solid 2's plot with current events: "perfect AI speech, audio and video synthesis will drown out reality [...] That is when we will present our solution: mandatory digital identity verification for all humans at all times"

Why don't we have PKI built in to our birth certificates and drivers licenses? Why hasn't a group of engineers and experts formed a consortium to try and solve this problem in the least draconian and most privacy friendly way possible?

Plus what you're asking would require international id verification for everyone, which would first mostly make those IDs a lot cheaper. But there's a second negative effect. The organizations issuing those IDs, governments, are the ones making the bot armies. Just try to discuss anything about Russia, or how bad some specific decision of the Chinese CCP is. Or, if you're so inclined: think about how having this in the US would mean Trump would be authorizing bot armies.

This exists within China, by the way, and I guarantee you: it did not result in honest online discussion about goods, services or politics. Anonymity is required.

like most proposed solutions, this just seems overcomplicated. we don't need "accessible cryptographic infrastructure for human identity". society has had age-restricted products forever. just piggy-back on that infrastructure.

1) government makes a database of valid "over 18" unique identifiers (UUIDs)

2) government provides tokens with a unique identifier on it to various stores that already sell age-restricted products (e.g. gas stations, liquor stores)

3) people buy a token from the store, only having to show their ID to the store clerk that they already show their ID to for smokes (no peter thiel required)

4) website accepts the token and queries the government database and sees "yep, over 18"

easy. all the laws are in place already. all the infrastructure is in place. no need for fancy zero-knowledge proofs or on-device whatevers.

Your crypto nerd dream is vulnerable to the fact that someone under 18 can just ask someone over 18 to make an account for them. All age verification is broken in this way.

There is a similar problem for people using apps like Ubereats to work illegally by buying an account from someone else. However much verification you put in, you don't know who is pressing the buttons on the screen unless you make the process very invasive.

They don't care whether you are 14 or not. They want your biometrics and identification. "Think of the children" is just a pretense.

The reason you don’t see it in policy discussion from the officials pushing these laws is because removal of anonymity is the point. It’s nit about protecting kids, it never was. It’s about surveillance and a chilling effect on speech.

(This is a genuine question) please could you describe the underlying problem that age verification is attempting to solve?

Another example where this plays a role are voter registration and ID requirements for voting in the US. It is entirely bizarre to me how these discussions just accept it as a law of nature that it's expensive and a lot of effort to get an ID. This is something that could be changed.

If that happened in the US, Republicans would then:

1. Insist that non-white children carry ID at all times

2. Operationalize DHS and ICE to deport non-white children to foreign concentration camps.

There are options that don't involve any ID uploads whatsoever.

You could buy 19 gallons of milk for that money (80 liters).

1) Person signs up with discord with fake name and fake email.

2) Discord asks (state system) for an age validation.

3) In pop up window, state validates the persons age with ID matching with face recognition.

3) State system sends token to discord with yes or no with zero data retention in the state records.

4) Discord takes action on the account.

What is so hard about this?

I'm not for these draconian age verification nonsense, but this isn't a valid argument.

Is it bypassable by a sufficiently determined child? Yes, but so it is the current age verification nonsense.

No, that's not the case.

We should focus on teaching parents how to educate their children properly, and teach children how to safely browse the internet and how to avoid common scams and pitfalls.

I played Roblox when I was a teenager and all the time my aunt told me to be careful of who I talked to online, as they could be a pedo. Even though there wasn't a constant monitoring from my parents or family, her words were repeated many times that I actually thought 5 times before sharing any kind of personal information online, back then.

I don't think a bulletproof age verification system can be implemented on the server side without serious privacy implications. It would be quite easy to build it on the client side (child mode) but the ones pushing for these systems (usually politicians) don't seem to care about that.