This is, of course, the entire goal of the social media control for "children". And you can safely bet that this will creep from social media to essentially all content. Governments have been looking for a means to destroy the anonymous internet for years, and they're making significant progress lately.
I was under the impression that it was already required for any website in which you can communicate with someone else?
And who's gonna stop them!? They're constantly unpopular, doesn't matter if they're individually voted out when all the party lines follow the same doctrine.
Genuine question, but how does anyone see this all being shut down?
It was never going to stop at just adult sites, and it won't stop with social media. I see s world where the ISP will be required to check your ID and "verify your age" because people were using vpn to circumvent these.
Then it's not a stretch to see the government requiring all good citizens to "check in" with the government every month like someone out on parole.
It would be exactly what they would love and like the frog that slowly boils, I believe they'll get it.
I agree. I think the only reason it hasn't happened yet is they didn't really have away to do anything with the data. But now with AI they can process it into reports pretty easily at scale. That is what all of these data centers going up is really about.
Of course, it'll be possible to circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy. So what this will achieve is it will reduce the number of British muggles on social media, thus bringing us a bit closer to the Good Old Days when only nerds were online. I'm fine with this.
This comment was brought to you by the British Class System: Making Nanny Proud.
> So what this will achieve is it will reduce the number of British muggles on social media, thus bringing us a bit closer to the Good Old Days when only nerds were online. I'm fine with this.
I think you have a skewed and inaccurate understanding.
Why would "British muggles" be so up in arms over an ID check that they swear off social media if they can't "circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy"? It's not like everyone has the same attitudes as your stereotypical computer geek, but with less computer skills.
I think underestimate how suspicious the British people are of carrying ID. You don't have to have your driving licence with you when driving a car. Having to show ID to vote was controversial when introduced, remains controversial, and backfired on the party that introduced it. We don't even have a proper ID system here; you need to use utility bills to provide proof of identity for a surprising number of government services. This is a crowded little archipelago; we're fiercely protective of our privacy, in ways that would surprise someone who hasn't lived here.
I'm in a state that PornHub and most of the other adult sites will block due to age restriction laws. I'm not going to make a login, or give them my ID, and I'm not motivated enough to use a VPN or otherwise work around the restrictions... so I guess the law achieved its goals. I don't think I'd bend over backwards to keep access to social media either. It's really not that important.
Which is why the UK Government is currently discussing restricting VPNs behind real-ID style verification too.
So all of the legit providers will be required to collect ID, and anyone not willing to will be funnelled onto the sketchy providers; which I'm sure won't backfire at all...
I think it's worth mentioning the likes of tor, lokinet, yggdrasil, i2p, freenet and maybe other "esoteric" forms of networking like vless or v2ray. If they really do put significant barriers in the way of nerd-to-nerd communication, other metrics will only grow really.
At the moment, it's network effects that are the biggest deterrent to using these technologies -- at the moment I don't want to browse eepsites or .loki domains at the moment although I think the technology is interesting -- because the use cases are "normal" consensual porn, horrific illegal porn / CSAM, illegal drugs, and organised crime, none of which are me. If they manage to drive even 0.1% of the population towards talking about, say, cat pictures, unreal tournament matches (gamer-to-gamer communication is itself banned under these proposals without age verification!), or something that normal nerds would like, then (a) the popularity of these methods would explode; (b) the ability of law enforcement to surveil them as proxies for genuinely bad stuff would be significantly hampered; and (c) I think the net result is that more people would be exposed tangentially at least to criminality than before.
It's a shockingly short-sighted proposal. I wrote to my MP about it; her response was basically "We have a difference of opinion".
So every VPS provider as well. Thankfully, these restrictive measures only lead to wider adoption of VPN technology among the general population. You end up with people who know how and are willing to use these circumvention tools, which is a very good thing for society in general. In Russia, for example, every slightly tech-oriented teenager knows Amnezia, VLESS, MTProto, etc., which leads to virtually everyone having a working VPN. Aside from turning the Internet completely off, the government has very few options left; it basically can’t restrict anything anymore.
I mean, even in China, Apple users can still use VPN to get around the great firewall. And that's despite the fact that their government already imposed quite a few extra requirements on Apple in terms of iPhones sold in the country + any China-based accounts. I also don't think that any of it really applies to general purpose computers at all there (as opposed to smartphones).
So I don't see VPNs going away with that recent UK requirement. To be clear, I am 100% fully opposed to the ID verification requirement from the UK, for plenty of reasons that were discussed on HN and elsewhere to death by now. My only point is that even if China didn't get to forbid Apple from allowing VPN, I don't see UK succeeding at this either.
P.S. For those curious about what "extra requirements" for Apple look like in China (only listing the directly relevant ones to this discussion, as there are more of them that aren't):
* iCloud is operated by GCBD/AIPO Cloud, a Guizhou-based Chinese cloud operator, rather than directly under Apple’s standard global iCloud entity.
* Apple also moved the relevant iCloud encryption keys into China. This means Chinese authorities can pursue access through Chinese legal procedures without needing to go through US courts or obtain data from US-based servers.
* App Store is much more heavily censored, but that's not really relevant. VPN apps aren't as easily available, but nothing is stopping a person from just connecting to the same VPN providers through the iPhone VPN settings (they just get to type info in a few fields, as opposed to a one-click-app solution).
It’s very difficult to setup a VPN from inside China. I had to use a China specific VPN provider when I visited a few weeks ago as all the main providers are blocked. You can still get an eSIM from Hong Kong that bypasses the firewall
This would only work for anyone foolish enough to attempt to access content and services with their phone. You don't own your phone. It might has well be a company-owned device.
"But everyone uses their phone all the time!" Yes, and everyone will be worse off for making the obviously worse choice.
These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children, destroying their attention, exposing them to online bullying and extortion, and showing them horrific and traumatic content.
Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.
In a trade off between child protection and online freedom child protection will win.
> These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging
My take:
These laws exist because _everyone_ not just kids needs to be tracked by real ID. Make no mistake you won't be exempt from this when you have to prove you are over 16. Sure just don't use social media but that's just the first step. Next step will be games (already exist to some extent in China and South Korea) and then who knows what. Mind you sign your git commits and your emails with real ID?
You are really so naive to think that banning the big public social media sites is going to stop children from seeing bad things on the internet?
I promise you, within a few years there is going to be an underground social media network or sites that are harder to monitor, don't give a shit what the UK government thinks, and definitely don't care about children's safety at all.
We focus on the evils of social media but never the positives and there ARE positives. Also society giving up the keys to privacy is not a solution here, the think of the children crowd would rather the state be the arbiter of morality and society than educate their kids properly.
> 8. How will age verification work?
We know that having a range of methods to prove age is important to ensure online spaces are accessible.
> Ofcom will set out in the coming months different options for effective forms of age assurance for proving whether someone is over 16 that are accurate, robust, reliable, and fair.
The fact sheet doesn't actually specify how age verification will be done so it the title is bit speculative. However, it's concerning that there's nothing in description about preserving privacy.
One thing I saw receive very little attention is that social media seems to be a bit recruitment platform for the various thief gangs in the UK [1]. It suits everyone that kids do this, as they are gullible, cheap to hire, and have a more lenient penal code.
Sure, as with everything, this ban ks circumventable. But more and more I don't see any social utility of these networks at all. It's the cigarettes or our time.
They're not even particularly social any more. Most posting is done by professional influencers and disinformation bots. And criminals, it seems.
What disappointments me even more than the UK having these authoritarian polices, is that so many people seemingly support this.
Anonymity online is of course a double-edged sword, but we've seen the authorities, particularly but not exclusively, in the UK use intimidating tactics against those with unfavorable political views. Even when those views didn't break the law (e.g. no calls for violence).
If you also look at how nearly all the existing "verification" systems work, it is just a giant data drag-net, that is absolutely used to associate your real-ID with their advertising analytics. It isn't subtle. Which is why "big tech" (e.g. Meta, Google, Palantir) aren't far behind many proposals.
The UK gov's approach to internet regulation is absolutely cancerous.
Fully expect pretty much all countries to follow suit though. The "think of the children" angle to force dystopian surveillance is just too neat of a trick to resist. It functionally can't be defeated. No politician is ever going to stand up against it because it risks "oh so you're in favour of harm to children".
"To enforce it, platforms must age-check their users. In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they're over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan."
> likely
It could, of course, use a double-anonymous system like the French one.
Probably not, but I'd rather that they didn't state their guess as fact in the title.
I am so tired of everyone assuming the worst possible implementation of age verification.
Whatever happened to steel manning? It's supposed to be in the fabric of HN. Curious enquiry.
Is it nice children are exposed to dreadful things? No. Could we, with tech, come up with a way to improve things? Probably! Let's discuss and think about how!
If a site creates some opaque token representing the request, and the token is signed by the ID service with no other information disclosure that "The user that presented this is of the appropriate age" that would seem like a reasonable compromise.
Token could be signed out-of-band to obscure the interaction between the parties.
I had to do an age check in the UK recently. There were various options (credit card, face scan, etc). The one that I chose was email address. My email address has been around long enough to vote, so I am that old. It seems like a good heuristic. If your email address is, say, 10 years old, you are likely to be old enough to create an account.
I will get downvoted by people suspicious of handing over a lot of personal data, but we do have GDPR laws, and they're not getting me to install a proctopod (tm). Giving someone my email address to verify my age is not a big deal. They're getting my email address to create an account anyway.
The practicalities of implementing 'good enough' age verification, where the website can prove that they conformed to an acceptable approach, do not require giving up all or significant freedoms. Maybe we get to something similar to DNS verification where you need to create a dummy TXT record in an already verified account.
Children aside, this is just an absurd amount of data to hand over.
At least people will realize that age verification is something everyone will have to do to prove they're >16 - not just something <=16yo's will run into.
This is, of course, the entire goal of the social media control for "children". And you can safely bet that this will creep from social media to essentially all content. Governments have been looking for a means to destroy the anonymous internet for years, and they're making significant progress lately.
I was under the impression that it was already required for any website in which you can communicate with someone else?
And who's gonna stop them!? They're constantly unpopular, doesn't matter if they're individually voted out when all the party lines follow the same doctrine.
Genuine question, but how does anyone see this all being shut down?
Everyone needs to go transparent. Secrets are lies. Sharing is caring. Privacy is theft.
Unless you're a politician, they're exempt.
or use bluesky
It was never going to stop at just adult sites, and it won't stop with social media. I see s world where the ISP will be required to check your ID and "verify your age" because people were using vpn to circumvent these.
Then it's not a stretch to see the government requiring all good citizens to "check in" with the government every month like someone out on parole.
It would be exactly what they would love and like the frog that slowly boils, I believe they'll get it.
I agree. I think the only reason it hasn't happened yet is they didn't really have away to do anything with the data. But now with AI they can process it into reports pretty easily at scale. That is what all of these data centers going up is really about.
Of course, it'll be possible to circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy. So what this will achieve is it will reduce the number of British muggles on social media, thus bringing us a bit closer to the Good Old Days when only nerds were online. I'm fine with this.
This comment was brought to you by the British Class System: Making Nanny Proud.
> So what this will achieve is it will reduce the number of British muggles on social media, thus bringing us a bit closer to the Good Old Days when only nerds were online. I'm fine with this.
I think you have a skewed and inaccurate understanding.
Why would "British muggles" be so up in arms over an ID check that they swear off social media if they can't "circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy"? It's not like everyone has the same attitudes as your stereotypical computer geek, but with less computer skills.
I think underestimate how suspicious the British people are of carrying ID. You don't have to have your driving licence with you when driving a car. Having to show ID to vote was controversial when introduced, remains controversial, and backfired on the party that introduced it. We don't even have a proper ID system here; you need to use utility bills to provide proof of identity for a surprising number of government services. This is a crowded little archipelago; we're fiercely protective of our privacy, in ways that would surprise someone who hasn't lived here.
I'm in a state that PornHub and most of the other adult sites will block due to age restriction laws. I'm not going to make a login, or give them my ID, and I'm not motivated enough to use a VPN or otherwise work around the restrictions... so I guess the law achieved its goals. I don't think I'd bend over backwards to keep access to social media either. It's really not that important.
That includes hackernews right?
Which is why the UK Government is currently discussing restricting VPNs behind real-ID style verification too.
So all of the legit providers will be required to collect ID, and anyone not willing to will be funnelled onto the sketchy providers; which I'm sure won't backfire at all...
I think it's worth mentioning the likes of tor, lokinet, yggdrasil, i2p, freenet and maybe other "esoteric" forms of networking like vless or v2ray. If they really do put significant barriers in the way of nerd-to-nerd communication, other metrics will only grow really.
At the moment, it's network effects that are the biggest deterrent to using these technologies -- at the moment I don't want to browse eepsites or .loki domains at the moment although I think the technology is interesting -- because the use cases are "normal" consensual porn, horrific illegal porn / CSAM, illegal drugs, and organised crime, none of which are me. If they manage to drive even 0.1% of the population towards talking about, say, cat pictures, unreal tournament matches (gamer-to-gamer communication is itself banned under these proposals without age verification!), or something that normal nerds would like, then (a) the popularity of these methods would explode; (b) the ability of law enforcement to surveil them as proxies for genuinely bad stuff would be significantly hampered; and (c) I think the net result is that more people would be exposed tangentially at least to criminality than before.
It's a shockingly short-sighted proposal. I wrote to my MP about it; her response was basically "We have a difference of opinion".
So every VPS provider as well. Thankfully, these restrictive measures only lead to wider adoption of VPN technology among the general population. You end up with people who know how and are willing to use these circumvention tools, which is a very good thing for society in general. In Russia, for example, every slightly tech-oriented teenager knows Amnezia, VLESS, MTProto, etc., which leads to virtually everyone having a working VPN. Aside from turning the Internet completely off, the government has very few options left; it basically can’t restrict anything anymore.
> Of course, it'll be possible to circumvent this with a VPN or a proxy.
Not if they can make Apple forbid this.
You don't need Apple (yet) to access the Internet.
> Not if they can make Apple forbid this.
I mean, even in China, Apple users can still use VPN to get around the great firewall. And that's despite the fact that their government already imposed quite a few extra requirements on Apple in terms of iPhones sold in the country + any China-based accounts. I also don't think that any of it really applies to general purpose computers at all there (as opposed to smartphones).
So I don't see VPNs going away with that recent UK requirement. To be clear, I am 100% fully opposed to the ID verification requirement from the UK, for plenty of reasons that were discussed on HN and elsewhere to death by now. My only point is that even if China didn't get to forbid Apple from allowing VPN, I don't see UK succeeding at this either.
P.S. For those curious about what "extra requirements" for Apple look like in China (only listing the directly relevant ones to this discussion, as there are more of them that aren't):
* iCloud is operated by GCBD/AIPO Cloud, a Guizhou-based Chinese cloud operator, rather than directly under Apple’s standard global iCloud entity.
* Apple also moved the relevant iCloud encryption keys into China. This means Chinese authorities can pursue access through Chinese legal procedures without needing to go through US courts or obtain data from US-based servers.
* App Store is much more heavily censored, but that's not really relevant. VPN apps aren't as easily available, but nothing is stopping a person from just connecting to the same VPN providers through the iPhone VPN settings (they just get to type info in a few fields, as opposed to a one-click-app solution).
It’s very difficult to setup a VPN from inside China. I had to use a China specific VPN provider when I visited a few weeks ago as all the main providers are blocked. You can still get an eSIM from Hong Kong that bypasses the firewall
> I mean, even in China
And Iran?
Apple only dominate the US mobile phone market
If the app on the kid's phone knows that the phone is registered in the UK, how would a VPN circumvent it?
This would only work for anyone foolish enough to attempt to access content and services with their phone. You don't own your phone. It might has well be a company-owned device.
"But everyone uses their phone all the time!" Yes, and everyone will be worse off for making the obviously worse choice.
"But everyone uses their phone all the time!"
Kids do.
Sure if they want to circumvent and go home and use Dad's laptop to cyberbully or send pictures of their wang they probably could ...
Suppose the user isn't using a device that leaks its location to any userland software that asks?
Not it's location.
You know perfectly well what I meant.
Doesn't sound like the kind of device that your average schoolkid has in their pocket?
Are you the Sisyphus of goalposts or something?
These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging to children, destroying their attention, exposing them to online bullying and extortion, and showing them horrific and traumatic content.
Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.
In a trade off between child protection and online freedom child protection will win.
> These laws exist because social media is extremely damaging
My take:
These laws exist because _everyone_ not just kids needs to be tracked by real ID. Make no mistake you won't be exempt from this when you have to prove you are over 16. Sure just don't use social media but that's just the first step. Next step will be games (already exist to some extent in China and South Korea) and then who knows what. Mind you sign your git commits and your emails with real ID?
Most parents will take that over letting HS Tikky Tokky have access to their 14 year old boy.
You are really so naive to think that banning the big public social media sites is going to stop children from seeing bad things on the internet?
I promise you, within a few years there is going to be an underground social media network or sites that are harder to monitor, don't give a shit what the UK government thinks, and definitely don't care about children's safety at all.
They probably already exist.
We focus on the evils of social media but never the positives and there ARE positives. Also society giving up the keys to privacy is not a solution here, the think of the children crowd would rather the state be the arbiter of morality and society than educate their kids properly.
> 8. How will age verification work? We know that having a range of methods to prove age is important to ensure online spaces are accessible.
> Ofcom will set out in the coming months different options for effective forms of age assurance for proving whether someone is over 16 that are accurate, robust, reliable, and fair.
The fact sheet doesn't actually specify how age verification will be done so it the title is bit speculative. However, it's concerning that there's nothing in description about preserving privacy.
For all the noise about "EU consumer protections" this certainly seems quite the opposite.
So, to be clear, I have to tiptoe around cookies but eu-users will simultaneously do this so they can share pictures of their ...
The UK left the EU years ago.
But the entire EU is implementing stuff like this. Gov ID's, backdoors (swiss article 50a), etc.
> But the entire EU is implementing stuff like this. Gov ID's, backdoors (swiss article 50a), etc.
Switzerland isn't in the EU, though.
+ Australia + Canada
UK is no longer in the EU
One thing I saw receive very little attention is that social media seems to be a bit recruitment platform for the various thief gangs in the UK [1]. It suits everyone that kids do this, as they are gullible, cheap to hire, and have a more lenient penal code.
Sure, as with everything, this ban ks circumventable. But more and more I don't see any social utility of these networks at all. It's the cigarettes or our time.
They're not even particularly social any more. Most posting is done by professional influencers and disinformation bots. And criminals, it seems.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-londo...
It is, of course, wild that people are saying "just use a VPN"... in the context of the UK.
What disappointments me even more than the UK having these authoritarian polices, is that so many people seemingly support this.
Anonymity online is of course a double-edged sword, but we've seen the authorities, particularly but not exclusively, in the UK use intimidating tactics against those with unfavorable political views. Even when those views didn't break the law (e.g. no calls for violence).
If you also look at how nearly all the existing "verification" systems work, it is just a giant data drag-net, that is absolutely used to associate your real-ID with their advertising analytics. It isn't subtle. Which is why "big tech" (e.g. Meta, Google, Palantir) aren't far behind many proposals.
The moment this comes to America im deploying nanogram.
https://gitlab.com/here_forawhile/nanogram-pi
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I suspect there will be a leadership challenge to the prime minister before this, and the legislation will be dropped.
Curiously all the opponents are in favour of it, or even think it doesn't go far enough.
The dude making the challenge is just as nuts. I am a Left person and it's astonishing how alienated I feel by Labour.
The UK gov's approach to internet regulation is absolutely cancerous.
Fully expect pretty much all countries to follow suit though. The "think of the children" angle to force dystopian surveillance is just too neat of a trick to resist. It functionally can't be defeated. No politician is ever going to stand up against it because it risks "oh so you're in favour of harm to children".
The strategy is equal parts brilliant and evil
Article is doing a lot of supposing:
"To enforce it, platforms must age-check their users. In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they're over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan."
> likely
It could, of course, use a double-anonymous system like the French one.
Probably not, but I'd rather that they didn't state their guess as fact in the title.
> It could, of course, use a double-anonymous system like the French one.
Which isn't really anonymous or privacy preserving, despite it's funny name : https://broken-by-design.fr/posts/proto-authz-porn/
"like"
It's not beyond the wit of humankind to build a working system.
I am so tired of everyone assuming the worst possible implementation of age verification.
Whatever happened to steel manning? It's supposed to be in the fabric of HN. Curious enquiry.
Is it nice children are exposed to dreadful things? No. Could we, with tech, come up with a way to improve things? Probably! Let's discuss and think about how!
This.
Smart people could apply their skills and build a genuinely useful technology.
But seems they would rather stick their finger in their ears and pretend that it's not happening. And they will be ignored.
WHen did this learned helplessness become so in vogue?
Yeah, I would assume the worst from the UK government on these things.
I hadn't heard of the French double-anonymous system, though. That does sound slightly better.
If a site creates some opaque token representing the request, and the token is signed by the ID service with no other information disclosure that "The user that presented this is of the appropriate age" that would seem like a reasonable compromise.
Token could be signed out-of-band to obscure the interaction between the parties.
Time to build your own platforms I guess.
You mean countries?
World?
Planet?
It's increasingly North Korean here, there is talk of mandatory bad haircuts late 2027 ...
I had to do an age check in the UK recently. There were various options (credit card, face scan, etc). The one that I chose was email address. My email address has been around long enough to vote, so I am that old. It seems like a good heuristic. If your email address is, say, 10 years old, you are likely to be old enough to create an account.
I will get downvoted by people suspicious of handing over a lot of personal data, but we do have GDPR laws, and they're not getting me to install a proctopod (tm). Giving someone my email address to verify my age is not a big deal. They're getting my email address to create an account anyway.
The practicalities of implementing 'good enough' age verification, where the website can prove that they conformed to an acceptable approach, do not require giving up all or significant freedoms. Maybe we get to something similar to DNS verification where you need to create a dummy TXT record in an already verified account.
Children aside, this is just an absurd amount of data to hand over.
At least people will realize that age verification is something everyone will have to do to prove they're >16 - not just something <=16yo's will run into.
1984
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