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Gee. I totally not saw that coming.
These people who push for it are fascists, and the only way to deal with fascists is to kill them before they murder you.
I have a solution to the age verification problem. There is a way to affirmatively prove someone is a real human adult without invasions of privacy. We can use the same ID verification system we've been using for centuries: public notaries.
Governments could hand anonymous cryptographic tokens to notaries. These contain no information on the individual. They're simply a unique cryptographic token. You can go to a notary, pay a nominal fee, show your ID, and grab one of the tokens (possibly just a code printed on a card) from a large bin of them. You can then use this token to register for any number of sites. The notary themselves does not need to note which cryptographic token you grab. The notary doesn't even know what token you received. The goal is merely to prove you're an adult human, not to create a cryptographic key tied to your specific identity.
I would then let people do this as many times as they want. You can get a hundred such IDs. They wouldn't cost much, a few dollar or Euros. This would be no barrier to individuals accessing the net, but it would make them unsuitable for mass spamming.
Maybe I missed something, but with your proposed solution, what would stop someone from just handing the adult cryptographic token to a kid? It sounds like it would be a similar situation to or even easier to do than fake ID cards or adults buying alcohol for underage people.
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It's a legit idea, and there's a thing like that, called Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKP).
IMO it's possible in theory. Like set up and managed in good faith, it can work mathematically, and you can prove it does.
My worry tho is that it wouldn't be in good faith. It'll be corrupted somehow. Or it turns out that enough other signals leak that it isn't very effective. Like fingerprinting and stylometry and w/e allow ID'ing despite the ZKP layer.
These kinds of laws will not succeed. People will choose to ignore them, like they ignore other laws, like they litter, jaywalk, drive 10 over the limit, run stop signs, etc. It will succeed in driving up prices on products from those companies who choose to comply, because they will be forced to hire in a lot more lawyers and compliance staff. These laws create lots of full time jobs in tech companies that few realize even exist. They have meetings every week, attend conferences, constantly send letters back and forth to each other. Then people wonder why their Gamepass fees went up $10 (its not actually the games)
How I see it, ocurres when the laws are made by ancients which confuse an remote control with an smartphone.
The solution lets users prove they are over a certain age without revealing their name, exact birth date, or full identity document. To prevent credentials from being copied, cloned, or reused by modified clients, the project relies on keys stored in protected hardware like Android TEE, StrongBox, or Apple’s Secure Enclave.
The project’s technical specification requires age verification apps to use native cryptographic hardware when available. However, stricter checks like root detection, Google Play Integrity, and Apple App Attest are not universally mandated by the reference implementation and may be left to individual deployers.
So there's a chance that GrapheneOS will be supported. I mean, we can still decompile the app, modify it and then repackage it. Or someone will make a patcher app.
I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think it's likely. Why would a government voluntarily spend money on making the app work for a minority of people running a privacy OS that politicians associate with criminals and gangsters?
Also, it's not like the wallet app will actually be open source in the traditional sense where you can fork and compile it yourself, so I think getting any decent version of it seems like a long shot
Graphene will likely ignore the EU, as will most Linux distros having no EU connections. Graphene's very picky about hardware, which is why they stick with the Pixel, but anyone with the cash can pay an OEM to make a phone to their specs and install whatever Android or Linux mobile variant they want, then make 1000 or 10,000 of them to sell.
I would expect it must be open source, so I don't known why you'd decompile it
Unfortunately not, the wallet app must have source code available except for parts deemed too sensitive, which are exempt
Because some member states argue that their implementation is better when proprietary. Also if you'll want to build the app yourself, you'll need the required certs.
I think the when available part is key.
so bye anything that isn't microsoft, apple or google? really tech independent of europe.
Can't wait for EU to ban general purpose computing. At some point ,everybody is just going to get a locked down Windows tablet where only EU approved software runs.
I fear that is the inevitable whimpered ending of the personal computing era. Cory Doctorow called it back in 2011.
Honestly, it's something where I wonder if we're doomed to end up there anyway.
I think that the AI companies vastly overstate the usefulness and danger represented by AI models. But the technology is only getting better, and the resources required to run models will decrease over time.
A common scenario brought up are AIs teaching people how to make biological weapons. Can existing LLMs actually do that? I really don't know. I for one don't feel like asking copilot, "please give me step-by-step instructions for obtaining and weaponizing anthrax, in steps simple enough someone with only a general science and engineering background can do." I'm curious what copilot would say. But I won't be asking copilot that, not because I'm incurious, but because I don't feel like getting my house raided by the FBI.
But imagine a world where that actually is possible. Forget the claims of Sam Altman. Let's look 50 years ahead in the future. Imagine being able to ask that question to an open-weight/model LLM, something you can run unmonitored on a home desktop, and actually getting a correct response. Imagine being able to ask endless follow-up questions. A good enough LLM could conceivably walk someone with only a high school education through all the steps needed to create weaponized anthrax from scratch.
Anthrax is something we actually can't control the spread of. It occurs naturally in the soil and water in some specific locations and conditions. A sufficiently skilled biochemist could go out, collect it, and culture it. And having an LLM capable of giving you step-by-step instructions, dumbed down to whatever your skill level is? Able to coach you through it, perhaps even watch you do it and offer real-time feedback? If you just have to act as the hands of the LLM? Suddenly anyone can weaponize anthrax.
I don't think existing LLMs are there yet. But what do we actually do if we reach a point where open-source LLMs are? What are we supposed to do when the knowledge to produce weapons of mass destruction becomes cheap and accessible?
A general trend in technology over time is that it has magnified the potential destructive power of a single individual. How can a society survive when anybody has the ability to kill everybody? I just don't see how you keep society going except by locking down the tech. Maybe require a license for any computer over a certain power. And such computers are heavily surveilled. So you can have a free and private computer, but only if that computer does not make you a danger to everyone around you.
I just don't know how else a civilization can survive the democratization of weapons of mass destruction.
As much as I'm a privacy guy, those are legit concerns IMO. IDK where the future goes, but I see reasons to worry.
TBH I'm more worried about the overall infopocalypse that's already in progress. But I also can't rule out an AI teaching somebody unhinged how to make a devastating biological weapon. Something only accessible in the past to very highly trained ppl, who were not gonna do that.
But I also want my privacy! And I believe privacy is essential to a functional democracy. Feels like every choice is a bad choice.
Yeah, that's why in an ideal case, I could see a two-tier model developing. Similar to how we handle weapons today. At least in the US, handguns and rifles are pretty obtainable. But anything more than that is heavily restricted. Even 2nd Amendment folks don't advocate for the private ownership of heavy artillery, FPV suicide drones, armed tanks, etc. We allow anyone to own the things that, while still dangerous, don't give you the power to kill absurd numbers of people. Even with an AR-15, you're only taking out so many people before you're taken down. You're not a danger to civilization by owning an AR-15.
Computers could work the same way. As AI technology improves, we'll get a better understanding of the minimum level of compute needed to be dangerous. You then set a limit for unlicensed computing below that level. Unlicensed? Have all the privacy you want. This lets you play games and create text, video, and most any form of expression you want. If your creative medium is as an artist of fully immersive 4K virtual reality worlds, you might have some trouble. But pretty much anything you currently use a computer for would fall under the unlicensed compute threshold.
Above this threshold? Everything is locked down. Everything is logged. Everything is scanned. You're using a tool that is as dangerous as a pile of plutonium, and we treat it with an appropriate level of respect. Dealing with this privacy violation is just a price you have to pay if you want to use these tools.
IDK, I'm less sold on your proposed solution, than on your proposed problem existing. :)
Indeed
Can't wait to become a shady dealer who sells pre 2026 computers with highly illegal software running on it (such as debian)
There's gonna be a whole black market for smuggling open computing platforms from China 🤣
They're gonna ban abacuss next, and then comes mental math, and suddenly 2+2=fish
The whole thing is wrongheaded in the first place; any child wanting to access adult-only content will use an adult’s account to do so; any adult attempting to access adult-only content is likewise going to use an adult’s account.
So unless they’re tying this to biometrics that are actually secure against an adverserial child, all the system really does is creates a registry of adults. And we already have those.
Wasn't there something about the effectiveness of the Australian law to restrict minors on social media? Ah...
Four in five under-16s in Australia using social media despite ban, study shows
Experts say law not enough to stop children accessing harmful content online and more ‘convincing strategy is required’ . More than 80% of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after legislation banning them from it came into force, research shows.
It’s like any controlled substance ban — unless there’s a really invasive crack-down it just shifts the problem to a less safe black market.
Making things easy and safe to access with controls that are adjustable is always more effective than an outright ban that shifts the access fully into unregulated territory.
Creating a registry of adults and what content they access is exactly the point of these laws. Always has been. "Protecting children" is just the easiest excuse to make it seem more urgent to violate people's rights. Just like removing trans healthcare started with children and is now targeting adults.
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Disgusting
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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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