Shouldn't surprise absolutely nobody, once you become the gatekeeper of the Internet, you're going to gatekeep.
Now it's torrent sites and next it's going to be other things the party in charge doesn't like.
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Now it's torrent sites and next it's going to be other things the party in charge doesn't like.
Nowadays... I actually think it might be a lesser evil. Picture such an ID, if there were a standard for it, enrolled into your computer.
If it were properly built, your computer could provide proof of age, identity, or other verified attributes on approval. The ID could also have micro-transaction support, for allowing convenient pay-as-you-go 10 cents per article instead of paywalls, advertising, and subscriptions everywhere. Websites could just block all non-human traffic; awfully convenient in this era of growing spam, malware, AI slop, revenge porn, etc. Website operators, such as those of small forums, would have far less moderation and abuse prevention overhead.
Theoretically, it would also massively improve cybersecurity, if websites didn't actually need your credit card number and unique identity anymore. Theoretically, if it was tied to your ID, it's like Privacy.com but for every website; much lower transaction friction but much higher security.
I think that's the future at this rate. The only question is who decides how it is implemented.
no, fuck this idea so hard. if this is inevitable, our duty is to build technology that defeats it
this is supposed to be HACKER news, not fucking bootlicker news
There are real problems that haven't been fixed; the driver's license concept correctly implemented might be better than continuing down this path. I view it as we can make a good standard; or let a bad standard be dictated.
mourn the loss of the internet we knew and be ready to sacrifice ease of use to return to lower-tech/still-underground options.
That doesn't stop cloudflares marketshare takeover. It doesn't stop CAPTCHA which will filter out bots using these ids. It provides an easy method for hackers to use. It filters out the curious kids.
In the end it solves nothing and creates more problems.
Someone steals your id creds and uses them as you is the simplest. The methods will range from stealing ids to breaking into auth servers to mitm attacks or fake ids and rogue auth servers. Everything works so well with video game protection methods now.. no one will be able to crack anything?
The answer, therefore, is not bitching on the internet about all the wet blankets who only see negative outcomes, but acknowledging that everything we know needs to end eventually including ourselves, and balancing optimism for the short term with cynicism for the long term. And thus discovering that a healthy cynicism for the future predictions is probably appropriate, unless you truly want to live forever and have infinite energy for everything. But that's a god.
From my perspective, negative expectations do have a higher chance of turning out real, but because negative expectations most often are just code for human misalignment. We have some philosophical, instinctual, or aesthetic (etc.) preferences, but then reality is always going to be broader than that. So you're bound to hit things that are in misalignment. It takes active effort to cultivate the world to be whatever particular way. But this is also why I find simple pleas to cynicism particularly hollow. It comes off as resignation, exactly where the opposite is what would be most required.
Second, if a porn website, social media, video game or whatever other thing regulators want to discourage people visiting kicks you off into an age verification takes requires you to some system/site, even an independent one, that requires you upload your ID, a fair number of people will simply refuse simply due to lack of understanding in how it works and trust that it actually is anonymous.
Third, every implementation I've seen doesn't work for some/all non-citizens/tourists.
And finally and more importantly, the ease at bypassing those systems means it's unlikely to stop anyone underage and ultimately is no better than existing parental control software, so all one is doing is restricting speech for adults.
Clicking through some captchas and installing an adblocker just isn't the hard life you're trying to claim it is.
- [2025-04-29] https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
- [2025-07-03] https://blog.google/technology/safety-security/opening-up-ze...
- [2025-06-11] https://zeroknowledge.fm/podcast/363/
In an internet driver's license system, remember that your computer would have to be locked down, and only able to access government-approved websites using government-approved clients - something like they have in China, or like using an iPhone but worse.
Once the ability for any site to verify your identity was set up, all sites would have to verify your identity, or lose their own verification, under one of many standard excuses like protecting the children.
Naive implementations are easy and cheap. And, if these tools and their entire software tree is not open-source, we cannot verify it's security.
We just have to trust that the developers are good at what they're doing. When every company under the sun has had multiple data breeches, I'm not too keen to do that.
Open-source the entire stack, show me a few white papers proving it's cryptographically sound, then I'll consider it. Until then, we should do with these tools what they deserve: being shoved up the government's ass.