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A comment on The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines everyone's data protection. Parent comment

Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by giancarlostoro on Monday February 23, 2026 @10:39AM (#47123733)
I don't support ID for internet use, only for adult content specifically. There's things on Discord that would shock you to your core if you saw some of it, I don't think children should be blindly exposed to any of it. Specifically porn. Tumblr almost got kicked out of the app store over porn, they went the route of banning it and killing what to me felt like a dying social media platform as things stood.

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

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by cjs_ac on Monday February 23, 2026 @10:43AM (#47123796)
The difference is that at the strip club, you show your ID to the bouncer, who makes sure its valid and that the photo matches your face, and then forgets all about it. Online, that data is stored forever.

The principle of online ID checks is completely sound; the implementation is not.

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by ibejoeb on Monday February 23, 2026 @11:38AM (#47124694)
That's pretty much over, too. PatronScan and others collect and share data as a first-class feature, e.g., to broadly 86 people.

https://www.sacbee.com/food-drink/article231580393.html

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by delusional on Monday February 23, 2026 @10:49AM (#47123919)
The implementation is sound. Instead of getting an ID, the bouncer gets a serial number from you, he calls his government contact who tells him you are of age. The serial number is meaningless to him.

This would be impractical in meatspace, but works perfectly fine on the internet.

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by debugnik on Monday February 23, 2026 @12:10PM (#47125195)
Where in your metaphor are the club next door using Persona instead of that implementation, and the EU's reference implementation requiring a Google Play integrity check to acquire a serial number in the first place?
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by fluoridation on Monday February 23, 2026 @11:08AM (#47124250)
You're proposing that every porn site on the planet pings a user's government's API to see if they're adult or not? In other words, that any random site is able to contact hundreds of APIs.
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by 9dev on Monday February 23, 2026 @11:48AM (#47124842)
Absolutely, yes. They don’t ping to see that you are of age, but that the random challenge generated by your ID checks out.
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by Gracana on Monday February 23, 2026 @10:58AM (#47124106)
Where is it implemented that way?
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by delusional on Monday February 23, 2026 @11:09AM (#47124259)
In the proposal from the European Union, and in the implementation in Denmark.
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by Gracana on Monday February 23, 2026 @11:34AM (#47124640)
Huh, interesting. Do you know if the government sees the identity of the company and the person being verified?

[edit] I did a little reading and it sounds like the company does not query the government with your ID. You get the cryptographic ID from the government, and present it to a company who is able to verify its validity directly. My source is mostly this: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/age-verification-europ...

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by delusional on Monday February 23, 2026 @01:59PM (#47127003)
If you're technically inclined I suggest you look at the Technical documentation for the implementation we're rolling out in denmark (It's in english): https://digst.dk/media/5gybwsaq/implementing-age-verificatio...
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by Gracana on Tuesday February 24, 2026 @07:54AM (#47136494)
Awesome, thanks for the link.
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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by subscribed on Monday February 23, 2026 @02:04PM (#47127076)
Instead of checking your ID, the bouncer sends you over to the shady broker, who takes a video of your face, photograph of your ID, checks you in the various databases (who knows, maybe you've been a bad boy previously), and only then gives you the permission slip to enter the club.

The data stays with them[1].

I think you grossly underplay the current practices.

[1] there's no hard, irrefutable proof companies like Persona (intimately connected with known law abusers, ie US government) keep their promises or obey the law.

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Re:The Age Verification Trap: Verifying age undermines every... by EmbarrassedHelp on Monday February 23, 2026 @01:57PM (#47126958)
Until sex, sexuality, and sexual fantasies no longer have any potential stigma associated with them, any sort of verification to view mature content is unacceptable.

That sort information can permanently destroy peoples lives.

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