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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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[–] litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

This is the precise question that Soatok discussed here: https://soatok.blog/2025/07/31/age-verification-doesnt-need-to-be-a-privacy-footgun/

Google recently published an open source library that proves a user’s age in a way that preserves privacy. This library is undergoing two independent security reviews, but should be production-ready in the near future.

If we’re going to force websites to implement some kind of age verification for adult content, we should demand the governments that pass these laws provide the zero-knowledge proof technologies to satisfy the law.