this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
511 points (99.6% liked)

Technology

82488 readers
4124 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
511
Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
85 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dont see how the second cert that goes to the site is useful if it isnt still associated with the first, but I also wouldnt trust the state to abide by an untraceable standard to begin with because identifying individuals by their accounts is in their interest.

I get where the enthusiasm for cryptography is coming from, but I think it's misplaced.

[–] Kraiden@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

Oh 100% I do not trust the current govt. to do this properly! Like I've said elsewhere today, I just want people to know that it IS possible, and the idea that you HAVE to give up privacy to keep kids safe online is a false dilemma.

As for the second certs usefulness, it's got enough information in it to prove that the parent cert was issued by a trusted issuer. It's like a stamp of approval. A really bad analogy is if I take an official birth certificate, and cut it up in such a way that the official seal and the year are still connected by a thread of paper. You can tell that it was an official document issued to someone born in 1990 for example, but nothing else. Again, that's a really bad analogy because it's not a new cert, and contains the birth year, so it's not the same.

This is all based on something called Zero Knowledge Proofs, that I don't even pretend to completely understand, but it's a whole field of study, meant to solve exactly this kind of problem. Currently watching this myself