Article sucks - the "interactive map" link just takes you to an ad to buy proton
Here's the actual map
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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Damn, that's a lot more than I thought ๐
Forget it, that map compares apples and oranges. Like France is "must verify age to watch porn" and Finland is "must go through aporoved service and be age verified to do bets".
You could add colors to see where each country stands on the path of full surveillance, bu t each of these is a foot in the door. From there, it will only expand, because "Look! We're already doing it for [porn|gambling|whatever] and lo one took the street. This is just a small step further."
It took me to an interactive map. I saw no ad.
This is the link I get embedded / attached to (what's the right term ?) the pic in the article
Which then resolves out to / drops you at
Well they did warn you:
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.
But thanks for saving the rest of us from it
It's funny; Switzerland doesn't have the age verification laws, but it's the only place I know of that is developing a government-run privacy-preserving age verification system.
Though if I had to guess, that's something Estonia already has.
Isnt their personal cars a zero knowledge login?
While these laws continue to provoke criticism from scientists, tech experts, and digital rights advocates, Proton aims to ensure that the public remains properly informed by providing timely updates as new legislation advances.
Clicking on any country reveals information about the progress of legislative proposals in that region, with the tool offering a detailed overview of the different approaches adopted by governments regarding age verification legislation.
In Europe, for example, 18 countries have already implemented or proposed age verification requirements targeting adult content. Fifteen of these have already introduced measures specifically aimed at social media platforms.
He is not alone in holding these views. Many privacy advocates and digital rights organizations argue that current age verification methods encourage the growth of surveillance while compromising users' privacy.
Critics also point to past failures in ensuring the security of sensitive data. Breaches involving Discord's third-party age verification service affecting over 70,000 users or the EUโs age verification app, allegedly hacked in two minutes, are just a few examples of the scale of the problem.
The picture looks even bleaker when one considers that many experts from youth organizations and childrenโs charities seem to agree that such methods could have harmful effects on young people browsing the Internet.
As opposition continues to grow โ from scientists calling for the suspension of mandatory age verification to gaming groups and digital rights activists joining forces to prevent the erosion of Internet freedom โ Yen argues that alternatives are possible.
Mullvad co-owner donates to a fascist party then Proton launches this great service
Oh yeah forgot about that for a sec, I never got a reply to my request for a refund.
Proton uses the death of privacy to sell more security theatre. Got to love capitalism. Maybe people should throw some more money at the problem!
Ok, so a question i keep on having about this. It seems like there is two flavours: this is awesome because it will protect children or this is terrible because we will have to give out our data to untrustworthy parties all the time. I can very easily see how this is a bad thing that should be prevented. What i cannot see is if there is any possible middle-ground. Are there places where this is implemented reasonably well / could there be a way to have the best of both worlds? I am personally not a fan of being against something in it's entirety, whish there was like a reasonable compromise on this.
It won't protect children because it still allows unidentified adults access to children.
It does however threaten people's privacy as you now need to identify yourself to access certain sites, sites that pinkie promise not to use your personal data but actually can only operate by selling said data. Now tied to your ID. Name, photo, everything.
I understand, didn't mean to imply their argument is valid. Just thinking that if there was a reasonable form of identification the unreasonable options are instantly less attractive.
Don't be so easily misled.
The bad options are INTENTIONALLY pushed by corporate backing.
How does it protect children?
You can't verify age without exposing identity, so there's no good way to implement it. Any supposed benefits are massively outnumbered by drawbacks.
You can't verify age without exposing identity
Of course you can.
This is exactly the same mechanism required as is used for token authorization.
The entity verifying your identity needs to be trusted to do so, and it gives you a proof of age category (doesn't need to be exact age, so it shouldn't give that), that the service then can validate.
A government service that already knows who you are, can validate your identity and hand out these tokens, which are then used to access said restricted services. Done correctly and neither need to know who accessed what.
But, this isn't done that way. Because, this isn't about protecting children. It's about collecting data and building profiles.
Exactly this.
Doing it this way however prevents Palantir getting their hands on the data and slinging their kickbacks
Any supposed benefits are massively outnumbered by drawbacks.
That seems obvious far yes. The downvotes i'm getting seem to imply i am not getting that.
I suspect the downvotes are from people fed up with sea-lioning by bots. You seem genuine but there's a lot who aren't
What i cannot see is if there is any possible middle-ground.
Almost every campaign, or anti-loss of privacy article or site that is fighting against this sort of thing, shows examples of much better options that allow for protection of online shit for kids and other alike, while maintaining other users privacy. This is all about data, nothing else. Do not kid yourself otherwise.
Excellent choice, Donald Trump! The Democrats used to push for child protection laws but somewhere along the line the parties switched . . .
Yeah, yeah, Iโm going