@helloyanis @StopKillingGames @EUCommission @privacy I'll say what I said under many other posts. The initiative is NOT against age verification mechanism on the Internet. It only claims to be in the slogan, the annex gives EU government pat on the back on their existing work towards EU ID wallet based verification. In all actuality it might actually do more harm than good.
this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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They want the age verification to be anonymous, no? No personal data other than "yes, I'm 18+". Or did.I miss something?
@illi I do not know who is "they" in your message, but "unlinkability" is a design idea behind Zero Knowledge prrofs. A website communicates with an application, which communicates with government (actual implementation might differ) to ask for cryptographic proof of your trait (such as age).
Government verifies, sends back data to the application which then forwards only signed information about your trait to the website.
The devil is in the details however, as EDRI's Policy Advisor explains (https://youtu.be/euSkCvhzweQ?t=4964). Anonymity is not guaranteed by the European Wallet solution.
This is not to say ZKP's are not a huge improvement in terms of privacy compared to what is being asked from residents of USA or Australia. They are.
I still argue in this discussion however, that even if well designed privacy solution existed, we cannot compromise on it, as the drawbacks of this entire idea are harmful to culture, safety and freedom of all (including children), and this is the real issue with Age Verification laws around the world.
Something somewhere will have to check your actual ID. There are no magical miracles. I certainly don't trust gov IT infrastructure. It's a convoluted patchwork built over the years with varying degrees of incompetence and corruption.
Sadly, I want to sign a "No verification whatsoever, fuck off with your shit, you don't fool me" not a "p-p-p-please atleast pretend to make it less distopian"
Moving this to the replies since it's less important, but I'm the dev of a #firefox add-on to get past age verification on some of these sites so that's great news for me too!