upvote
I'm not even saying your conclusion is wrong. But choosing Netherlands about how information control is safe in the hands of the government is a bit of an own goal.

Like if I was the boss of a train company I would probably not put up a photo of Mussolini as a motivational poster. Well… maybe I would, but only ironically.

> How is, of all things, an age verification app going to make that worse?

What are you arguing for, here? If everything were perfectly anonymous, maybe. But NOT ONCE in history has governments decided to not abuse power. It'd be so easy to just put a tracker in there or something.

All these "think of the children" arguments are ALWAYS red herrings. Literally any action, any freedom denied, can be justified in the fight against CSAM. And so they get rushed through and abused.

The EU DNS filter (CSAADF) was literally IMMEDIATELY abused to block other things too.

"It's just age verification". Is it, though? How do you verify age without verifying identity? How do you verify its use, without tracking. Provably without tracking. Provably without what's called "turnkey tyranny"?

I think if your argument, which is an extremely common argument, is "I just want to block children's access to bad stuff on the Internet", then you cannot possibly have been paying attention to this debate that's been going on since at least the mid 1990s. Were you even born when this was being discussed? If that's your argument then you have about 30 years of catching up to do before you should speak.

[1] yes, I know Mussolini did not in fact make the trains run on time.

reply
>how do you verify age without verifying identity

zero-knowledge proofs

reply
Then you only know that someone is over 18. You don't know who is over 18. In particular, you don't know it's the person who's accessing your website.
reply
that's the same situation as children putting in their parents details/scanning their face/whatever, you're not going to solve this technically

the point is non-govt entities shouldn't get any information about you during age verification other than that you're over 18 and that's what ZKP can give you

reply
Your comment sounds like a politician who has just heard a magic technical incantation that solves everything.

I'm sorry, you can't just drop "quantum computer", or "zero knowledge proof", or "flux capacitor", and think that you have solved the problem.

Just dropping "zero-knowledge proof" as if it's a mic drop moment is like when Turnbull said "the laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia".

The devil in all this is in the details. Just saying "zero-knowledge proof" is just barely more productive than saying "won't someone please think of the children?".

If you don't have a complete solution, then you're "not even wrong".

In addition to that, you have misunderstood how zero-knowledge even addresses the main problems. Not the technical problems, and DEFINITELY not the meatspace problems.

reply
literally 0 substance in a 5 paragraph comment, I'm starting to think this might be a not-exactly-human poster
reply
First: That was six paragraphs, not five.

Second: There was some substance. Maybe not six paragraphs worth, but there was some. Here it is: You, when you said "zero-knowledge proofs", did not give much substance. How, specifically, is that going to work?

It's a bit rich for you to be complaining that knorker didn't have any substance, when the problem is that you didn't give any.

reply