this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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[โ€“] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Yeah as far as i am aware, there is no such thing as zero-knowledge proof in practice for this kind of thing. If there are "bad actors" in other words "the police" with access to both the government database and (through a warrant or backdoor) the websites data, then the whole anonymization is gone. Its a sandcastle concept and an attempt to trick the population by making it sound fancy when its not at all.

[โ€“] General_Effort@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

ZKP has a specific meaning in cryptography. In fairness, it does a little here. But yes, it is basically a marketing term. Like "blockchain" or whatever.

Eventually, the idea here is to divide the population into 2 classes, one of which is to be denied access to certain information or services. If privacy is the only potential problem one sees with that, then... well...

[โ€“] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Well yeah the inherent absurdity of age verification itself is a whole separate topic, but i think that battle is already kind of lost sadly. Our societies are so overobsessed with safety, there is no way they will not fall for the whole protect the children shtick.

From what I can tell from the ZKP spec and the research paper linked there, it seems like it should work correctly. In other words, even if the government and the website collaborate, it can't actually determine it's you. That requires that it's implemented right and that it's always used though, which is not the case since it's an "experimental feature."