this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Finally it seems the end of Reddit is near.

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[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 24 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Hm, I'm going to need some software engineers to critique an idea I have that could at least partially solve the fears people have about their personal details being tied to their porn habits.

The system will be called the Adult Content Verification System (or Wank Card if you want to be funny). It's a physical card, printed by the government with a unique key printed on it. Those cards are then sold by any shop that has an alcohol license (premises or personal). You go in, show your ID to the clerk, buy the card. That card is proof that you're over 18, but it is not directly tied to you, you just have to be over 18 to buy it. The punishment for selling a Wank Card to someone under the age of 18 is the same as if you sold alcohol to someone under 18.

When you go to the porn site, they check if you're from the UK, they check if you have a key associated with your account. If not, they ask for one, you provide the key to the site, the site does an API call to https://wankcard.gov.uk/api/verify with the site's API key (freely generated, but you could even make the api public if you want) and the key on the card, gets a response saying "Yep! This is a valid key!" and hey presto, free to wank and nobody knows it's you! If you don't have an account, the verification would have to be tied to a cookie or something that disappears after a while for all you anonymous people.

As a result, you can both prove that you're over 18 (because you have the card) and some company over in San Francisco doesn't get your personal data, because you never actually record it anywhere. All you have is keys, and while yes, the government could record "Oh this key was used to verify on this site", they'd have to know which shop the key was bought from, who sold it, and who bought it, which is a lot more difficult to do unless the shopkeeper keeps records of everyone he's ever sold to.

So... Good idea? Bad idea? Better than the current approach anyway, I think.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This would be better than most of the crap being proposed or implemented.

But, since the keys are presumably reusable, they'll presumably get borrowed shared by and among minors almost immediately.

There could be some "Netflix account sharing" style work to deter that, of course.

[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I did consider that people are going to share keys, but people are going to share accounts too so that's always going to happen. The best thing you can do is stick some safeguards on the keys where if a key is found online, it can be deactivated and potentially investigated since you can tell which shop sold the key. If there's a shop out there just giving cards away to minors, well they're in for a world of trouble.

Under the Licensing Act of 2003, it's illegal to sell alcohol to an adult if you reasonably suspect that they will be then giving that alcohol to a minor. You can assume the same will apply to people selling Wank Cards.

[–] tym@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

people are going to share keys,

get ahead of it and sell discounted bukkakeys

you could probably even have a bundle called the "family plan" for the real sickos

I should get into masturbation regulation marketing!

Hungry for Adams Apples? Try our limp biscuits!

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I'm a security dev and this is a good idea!

[–] iii@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How would you solve replay attacks? Like a million people, of age or not, sharing the same key?

[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Maybe you could limit the number of verifications a key can have in a day? Limit it to say 10 verifications per day. So if you're on Pornhub and have an account, you can have the key associated with the account, verified, and so you don't need to re-verify. But if you go on 10 completely different sites and verify for each one, you can't verify after that 10th one within the same 24hr period?

You could maybe also include guidelines for integration where if a key is associated with an account, that key can't be used for any other account. You can include that under some requirement that says you have to make 'best efforts' to ensure that a key is only ever used by one account at a time. That way, if a million people are sharing the same key, you'd have to trust that all one million of them will never associate that key with their account because if they do, it invalidates that key for every use other than through that account on that site.

[–] Bot@sub.community 4 points 6 days ago

Years later, you will find many then teen’s 80yo grandmas’ photos in the leaked database

That said, as someone who has posted stuff like that and had it spread without my consent, screw (very much not literally) consuming that shit without taking the same risks as the people sharing what they get off to.

I do think its gross to require it for the other NSFW stuff. Drug forums are very important resources for harm reduction.

[–] genevieve@sh.itjust.works 374 points 1 week ago (8 children)

“Reddit has stressed that this system is only to verify users' age, and it has no interest in your identity. Lee further stated that Persona won't know what subreddits you visit, and has promised it won't keep users' uploaded images more than seven days.”

Press X to doubt.

[–] dugmeup@lemmy.world 144 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 100 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Under the new UK law, lemmynsfw would also need to have some kind of age verification for UK users.

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 130 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This. Can't believe we're seeing "lol Reddit sucks" when this is a country-wide implementation and has nothing to do with Reddit in particular.

[–] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 54 points 1 week ago (6 children)
[–] Almacca@aussie.zone 1 points 6 days ago

Something similar is coming to Australia as well.

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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 68 points 1 week ago (6 children)

Real talk - or what? If LemmyNSFW isn't based in the UK, what can they do?

Block it? I'd rather have that than deal with processing users face data.

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[–] genevieve@sh.itjust.works 168 points 1 week ago (9 children)

The “won’t somebody please think of the children” rhetorical tactic is always just a pretext for authoritarianism, mass surveillance and data privacy intrusion. Always. It’s the perfect motte-and-bailey: when you attack the actual motives, the motte becomes, “So you don’t care about children?”

[–] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 71 points 1 week ago

UK is full blown authoritarian now. They have been arresting journalists who are covering the genocide in Gaza and designated a direct action protest group as a terrorist organisation.

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 123 points 1 week ago (4 children)

This is a combination of terrible legislation in the UK meets awful social media site.

The Online Safety Act is an abomination, compromising the privacy and freedom of the vast majority of the UK in the name of "protecting children".

I'm of the view parents are responsible for protecting their children. I know it's hard but the Online Safety Act is not a solution.

All it will.do is compromise the privacy and security of law abiding adults while kids will still access porn and all the other really bad stuff on the Internet will actually be unaffected. The dark illegal shit on the Internet is not happening on Pornhub or Reddit.

The UK is gradually sliding further and further into censorship, and authoritarianism and all the in the name of do gooders. It's scary to watch.

[–] SippyCup@feddit.nl 61 points 1 week ago

The online safety act isn't actually about protecting children. That's a smoke screen for a surveillance bill. They want to eliminate anonymity online.

[–] ToastedRavioli@midwest.social 50 points 1 week ago (18 children)

The solution to all of this “think of the children” stuff is that devices owned/used by children should have to be registered as a child’s device, which would enable certain content blockers.

Forcing adults to verify their identity, rather than simply activating some broad based restrictions on devices being purchased for child use, is a waste of time. Kids will still find workarounds. Adult privacy will be compromised.

Its also an easily enforceable policy to require registration of children’s devices. You can hold the parents to compliance. You can hold the carriers to compliance. Its truly the simplest way to keep kids from accessing porn without having to mess with adult use of the internet whatsoever

[–] jasory@programming.dev 1 points 6 days ago

Your solution is worse.

As is, it is the responsibility of the content provider to make sure that they are distributing only to people who are legally allowed to have it.

With age-verification the user has to prove that they are allowed to access the content, then the site can distribute it to them.

Your approach is to distribute the content by default and only deny it to ChildDevices. In order for this to work at all, you have to mandate that children can only use ChildDevices. This is soooo much worse than simply requiring that adults who want to see certain content have to prove that they can legally access it. If adults have reservations about providing ID for pornography, the loss of such content seems to be much less than denying children Internet access. (Although, I'm sure that Lemmings would disagree for obvious reasons).

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[–] ageek@lemmy.world 106 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Next in the news: "500k Usernames, Passwords and biometric data leaked in the latest hack"

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Yeah, I will definitely trust an internet stranger with my face so they can verify that I'm not underage to access content which could, in case of being leaked, damage my reputation or even destroy my life.

DEFINITELY

[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 78 points 1 week ago (12 children)

Yeah, fuck all that.

Guess we're transitioning into a VPN only future.

We have the opportunity to head into a utopic or dystopic future and we're absolutely choosing the dystopic one.

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[–] AcidiclyBasicGlitch@sh.itjust.works 69 points 1 week ago (1 children)
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[–] lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world 69 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Well, I guess i am going to be regularly updating the metadata on my most recent selfie.

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[–] bnrnrtbgd@sh.itjust.works 69 points 1 week ago (18 children)

If the UK is going to require adult verification it should be built into your internet contract. Yeah, I'm an adult. I'm paying my bills, of course I'm a fucking adult. I over pay for this garbage internet.

Uploading a selfie? The ai is going to determine if you're over 18? Can the ai determine if the selfie is also ai?

[–] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 6 days ago

Just send an AI selfie problem solved.

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[–] jjmoldy@lemmy.world 62 points 1 week ago (8 children)

POV: You're the intern tasked with reviewing the selfies.

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[–] Outwit1294@lemmy.today 56 points 1 week ago (2 children)

This whole thing is a security disaster waiting to happen.

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[–] jhoward 52 points 1 week ago (14 children)

What's to stop uploading a random picture of a person? Or even an AI generated person? I get what they're trying to do, but seems like legislative theater more than anything.

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[–] LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world 50 points 1 week ago (3 children)

u/spez was the lead moderator of r/jailbait, and when he was caught, he got rid of mod transparency. Ghilisaine Maxwell was likely a l lead moderator of news Reddits as well (u/MaxwellHill). Reddit has always been compromised.

[–] Krompus@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago

I’m not defending Spez, I think he’s a piece of shit and he did edit other users’ comments that were critical of him, which is fucked up, but I don’t think he was actually involved with that sub. It was possible to appoint mods without their knowledge or consent, and he’s a huge target, someone must have done it as a joke.

[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 2 points 1 week ago

what's the topic of r/jailbait?

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