this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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Online age-verification tools spread across U.S. for child safety, but adults are being surveilled (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by throws_lemy@lemmy.nz to c/technology@lemmy.world
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New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.

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[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dont see how the second cert that goes to the site is useful if it isnt still associated with the first, but I also wouldnt trust the state to abide by an untraceable standard to begin with because identifying individuals by their accounts is in their interest.

I get where the enthusiasm for cryptography is coming from, but I think it's misplaced.

[–] Kraiden@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

Oh 100% I do not trust the current govt. to do this properly! Like I've said elsewhere today, I just want people to know that it IS possible, and the idea that you HAVE to give up privacy to keep kids safe online is a false dilemma.

As for the second certs usefulness, it's got enough information in it to prove that the parent cert was issued by a trusted issuer. It's like a stamp of approval. A really bad analogy is if I take an official birth certificate, and cut it up in such a way that the official seal and the year are still connected by a thread of paper. You can tell that it was an official document issued to someone born in 1990 for example, but nothing else. Again, that's a really bad analogy because it's not a new cert, and contains the birth year, so it's not the same.

This is all based on something called Zero Knowledge Proofs, that I don't even pretend to completely understand, but it's a whole field of study, meant to solve exactly this kind of problem. Currently watching this myself