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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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[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

No. I'm asking how you'd make the child mode a truly one-way thing.

And you've essentially just admitted that you aren't actually suggesting that at all.

Physically blowing a fuse in a CPU to achieve an equivalent result to a text file containing a date, is a little silly.

If you're gonna fall back on legal assurances anyway, simply make it a software thing. Not being able to just unlock your devices when you're old enough is a recipe for e-waste, anyway.

In this system, no adults would have to age verify. No adult identity would be sent anywhere. All devices are "adult" by default.

That makes no sense. A single bit isn't significant unless read and enforced by software. And if you're suggesting "burning" or "purging" some kind of token thats to be authenticated to show a device is in one or the other... Then you've just added a new kind of hardware id.