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Could online age verification be done in a way that protects privacy and autonomy? (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by 58008@lemmy.world to c/ask_experienced_devs@programming.dev

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Apologies if this isn't the right place to ask this, but I thought actual developers with a deep understanding of how technology actually works would be the people to ask!

If you were tasked with setting up a safe and secure way to do this, how would you do it differently than what the UK government is proposing? How could it be done such that I wouldn't have to worry about my privacy and the threat of government suppression? Is it even theoretically possible to accomplish such a task at such a scale?

Cheers!

EDIT: Just to be clear: I'm not in favour of age verification laws. But they're on their way regardless. My question is purely about the implementation and technology of the thing, rather than the ethics or efficacy of it. Can this seemingly-inevitable privacy hellscape be done in a non-hellscapish way?

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[–] JakenVeina@midwest.social 2 points 3 days ago

Yes, that's what the California and Colorado (not sure about the others) implementations accomplish. Bare minimim exposure of data to consumers who want to verify you, without any need to expose additional data to trusted third parties. The burden of trust is placed on the device owner.