Europe

This is absolutely insane. Creating a surveillance dystopia "for the children". What about that even sounds like a good idea?

Cool now the pedophile class can track everyone. What could go wrong?

I would be more interested in EU-wide firewall that blocks all advertisements from outside. Just a little quality of life.

Greetings from germany to my fellow germans who had a light chuckle seeing Censorsula announcing a zero knowledge app.

Here are 2 things that you should know:

1. This requires websites, apps, other services to comply. Many won't feel bound by EU laws, shun the cost, or may even be ideologically opposed. EG 4chan. See the beef between it and the UK: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c624330lg1ko

For this to work, you must block a lot of non-EU websites. There will be a lot of pressure to do just that, not just from ideologues but also the copyright industry, and maybe even parts of Big Tech. The copyright industry wants to block pirate sites. Actually, anything that suppresses competition is good. See for example how piracy shield works in Italy.

2. This is supposed to help against "cyberbullying" and "grooming", according to von der Leyen. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_26_817

That means, that all online activities by minors must be carefully monitored. "Private" messages from or to minors must be scanned for suspicious content and possibly handed over to authorities. That implies that offering encryption to minors must be outlawed.

Especially cyberbullying is very complex and deeply personal phenomenon. It may include spreading rumors, or excluding someone from a group. Somehow Big Tech is supposed to find a way to solve this. We take all the grievances against Big Tech, and this is the conclusion?

But maybe it's okay, because our governments will be instructing Big Tech on what do. Is that really how much you trust your government?

I find it unlikely that this infrastructure would only be used against minors, once it exists. EG the government servers that indicate your age could also indicate that you are under investigation, and that all your activities should be recorded for the police.

Where are the photos of the document processed though? And if not on the phone itself, is the server backend open source as well? Can I self-host it? And is the data which is used to generate certificates deleted immediately or stored in the backend? I have questions.

This is basically the cover story to the EU caving to US tech companies because if you can't tell a person from a bot, your advertising model is dead. I'd wager VDL will make massive bank when she drops out of the commission. I'll never forgive Germany and Macron for putting her in that position.

“Online platforms can easily rely on our age verification app so there are no more excuses. We will have zero tolerance for companies that do not respect our children’s rights.”

Not being able to access a website is not a right. Being able to browse the web without being exposed to disturbing material without consent can be seen as a right, but it doesn't require age verification beyond a simple "are you over 18 years old?".

Being forced to provide an image of yourself or your ID to a website that you can't trust if you want to access a website or service, if there's also the option to do it with a zero-knowledge proof, could maybe be seen as a violation of one's privacy rights (non-functionally-necessary data must be opt-in, AFAIK). But these rights are not limited to children, and it doesn't apply to under-age them as they won't be able to access the service anyways.

Zero-knowledge proofs are cool, the german id card has such a feature, afaik. It just certifies that the user is >18 years old, and doesn't leak the actual age, your name, or other identifiable information, afaik. (I've never used it.) I can't judge what they implemented, or if one can trust that they implement what they specify, or what metadata might be involved.

Being able to access the 18+ side of the web without having to worry about privacy is an important right. It weights more than protecting children from the consequences of their own free decisions in this case, imo.

Powers that be do not want an anonymous internet that helps illegal actions (illegal is large, from organizing slavery to organizing a protest that could endanger the established organization).

The rest is just posturing, seizing opportunities, and moving gradually. It's just allowing government intelligence to do their job for the powers that be.

If we want to change this, we need more democracy. Like much more. And properly teaching basics of political science / sociology / macroeconomic so voters know where the tradeoffs are, because there are always tradeoffs.

I'm kind of starting to think the whole Internet thing was a bad idea and we actually should get rid of it. Well, maybe not all of it. Let's go back to silly blogs and personal websites that are updated once a month.

That's a lot of very misdirected effort, with a lot of bad and not-at-all-necessary consequences.

I could not imagine myself in this timeline.

Turns out it's not. It has security issue where you can just delete configs to verify yourself as the owner of the device.

Edit: After on-boarding and setting a pin, fingerprint etc.

Is the app actually old enough?