Discussed a few days ago, 554 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47362528

(But it's a big enough story that I'm glad to see it on front page again.)

Here's some more technical details of the Swiss new official way (yet to be implemented) of doing age verification and more: https://www.liip.ch/en/blog/swiss-eid-from-a-developer-persp...

>"Here’s where the lobbying gets surgical. The proposed laws hammer Apple’s App Store and Google Play with compliance requirements but reportedly spare social media platforms—Meta’s core busines

Because social media already has the age info exactly?

I think an OS and a web platform with accounts are different product categories. Not even sure what an interpretation of the bill that would affect meta would be.

> organizations like the Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA)

The article makes one mistake: praising Europe for having a better approach. Governments here are pushing hard to force ID requirements. Sure, they start by pretending it's "for the children" and they "only want age verification". They also claim that e-IDs will be voluntary. Camel. Nose. Tent.

These are the same governments that file criminal charges when you compare lying leader to Pinocchio (Germany). The UK records something like 30 arrests per day for social media posts. Just imagine how much better they could do, if you were not pseudo-anonymous in the Internet!

I know most of this affects only the US, but I'm wondering where this will go in the EU if the Age Verification Tech goes ahead in America. There's been lots of efforts to increase surveillance disguised as protection for kids in the EU and UK.

The Swiss implementation of eID may be hint that governments may/will take the responsibility to implement and maintain the tech, but the multiple intrusions and lobbying by Palantir and friends in the EU gives me the ick.

Why "lobbying" is not treated as corruption? This kind of corporate influence should be illegal.

It's an important story, and I'm glad it's getting exposure, but this "article" is some really blatant AI slop. Go and read the original Reddit thread by the human being who did the work instead of this lazy regurgitated shit.

Even steelmaning the case for age verification, does anyone really think the state is going to re-institute the innocence of childhood by filtering content and services? Of course not. There is no steelman. If you can do age, you can do identity, and the purpose of identity is recourse for authorities against truth and humor.

Doing ID or this fake age verification with anything other than a physical secure element is a dumb regulation that going to create its own regulatory arbitrages and spawn very powerful and profitable black and grey markets. Poor laws create criminal economic opportunity, and digital id is just creating a massive one.

Between Meta being behind a digital id initiative under the pretext of alleged "age verification" and the Debian project leads pivoting to political objectives, it appears gen Z now has a cause to build tech against and fight for. These are dying organizations that cannot innovate and they've attracted a pestilence that is pivoting them to the easier problem of political maneuvering. as it's easier to militate for what nobody wants than to make something anyone actually wants.

The upside is that people get to be hackers again. Tools to cleanse our networks and systems of Meta and other surveillance companies and the influence of these compromised organizations are an OS install and a vibecoding weekend away.