My problema isn’t the age verification, but the privacy. But how to solve it the age without leaking data to third party servers?
this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2026
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The problem is that the services are asking for age verification, but to do that, you need to supply them personal information, and the way the information is handled is opaque. You're handing highly sensitive information to a private company that, more often than not, cannot be trusted to handle that information responsibly for the singular purpose they're tasked with.
One solution would be an official government service which supplies this information and nothing else. We have "strong identification service" in Finland, they supply your identifying information to government services and businesses that need to have the actual information on record, while you see which information gets shared. There's no technical reason this service couldn't just supply "Is this person 18+? Yes/No" and absolutely nothing else, even anything tying this person to any identifier.
Actually, if age verification would become a legal requirement, I'd expect the technical side to be exactly that. I frankly can't believe the UK half-assed this stuff and went "whatever, let private providers use whatever voodoo they can come up with to make age verification happen".
I frankly can’t believe the UK half-assed this stuff and went “whatever, let private providers use whatever voodoo they can come up with to make age verification happen”.
Do you not have corruption in Finland?
Belgium's user verification app was built by a consortium of local banks and ISPs, most of which have politicians or ex-politicians on their boards.
The answer is actually fairly simple and easier to implement than ID collection.
My family for example, is all on apple products. So my kids are all under my family as kids in iCloud. With that information any web browser has more than enough information to just send a header saying "No porn or non-age suitable things to this device, please" as a header
It mostly respects privacy while putting the onus of not serving non age appropriate things to the service provider that can serve the non age appropriate thing.
Instead we are going for collecting IDs because some idiots want to strip anonymity and even bigger idiots don't know how to setup devices for their children
I don’t want that either. I’d like to be the one determining what’s age-suitable. If I haven’t denied access for my 14 year old to access worldofwarcraft.com, then some legislator shouldn’t be able to say “adults use chat so block them in case someone says the word shit”.
I’m not even sure if this is a problem with “idiots” not knowing how to set up devices for their children as much as it is the same old moral panic. “I don’t like how some people are parenting their children! Certain words are bad and should be blocked! LGBT content is adults only! Kids shouldn’t be aware of what’s going on in Gaza!”
Thats great, the design of that still gives you the parent the ability to decide that. You just have to take responsibility.
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What is stopping me from paying a homeless dude to help me set up my computer by using their face?
His priors.
That’s why you’ve got to find a fresh one. /s
i need old thinkpad
Well that’s one way to increase people using cash.