Government sets up page to verify age. You head to it, no referrer. Age check happens by trusted entity (your government, not some sketchy big tech ass), they create a signed cert with a short lifespan to prevent your kid using the one you created yesterday and without the knowledge which service it is for. It does not contain a reference to your identity. You share that cert with the service you want to use, they verify the signature, your age, save the passing and everyone is happy. Your government doesn't know that you're into ladies with big booties, the big booty service doesn't know your identity and you wank along in private.

But oh no, that wouldn't work because think of the... I have no clue.

I think this starts to not work when you start to include other states that want to do this, other countries, cities, counties, etc.. How many trusted authorities should there be and how do you prevent them from being compromised and exploited to falsely verify people? How do you prevent valid certs from being sold?

Some examples of the type of service you mentioned:

• https://www.realme.govt.nz/
• https://id.me/

I can only verify with my own government. The rest I don't know. But shut up, that's how it works! /s

To be honest, I have no clue. But dropping my pants to write a mail isn't what I want to do.

The service provider could even generate a certificate request that the age verification entity signs (again, with no identifying information, other than "I need an age verification signature, please"). That certificate would only be valid for that specific service provider and can't be re-used.

It does not contain a reference to your identity.

but they know who they issued it to, and can secretly subpoena your data from your instance.

no thank you.

I give it 2 years till Netflix requires you to have an ID every time you open the app because it has rated R movies.

This is the same principle. The account holder agreement should make the account holder responsible for the use of the service.

The government shouldn't be parenting our minors, their guardians should be.

Otherswise we should put digital locks on every beer bottle, pack of cigarettes, blunt raps, car door, etc. That requires you to scan your ID before every use.

"Kids shouldn't be driving cars, it isn't safe!"
Yes, but somehow we have made it 100 years without requiring proof of age/license to start the car.

And the car is far more deadly than them seeing someone naked.

That sounds like a very functional and rational solution to the problem of age verification. But age verification isn't the ultimate goal, it's mass surveillance, which your solution doesn't work for.

Oh, I was thinking the certificate would only be needed for signups - once the account is created, it absolutely should be on the account holder, not the service provider.

Age check happens by trusted entity (your government, not some sketchy big tech ass), they create a signed cert with a short lifespan to prevent your kid using the one you created yesterday and without the knowledge which service it is for.

Sorry, not sufficient.

Not secure.

" I certify that somebody is >18, but I don't say who - just somebody "

This is an open invitation to fraud. You are going to create at least a black market for these certificates, since they are anonymous but valid.

And I'm sure some real fraudsters have even stronger ideas than I have.

Lucky for Mastodon and other ActivityPub projects, they don't need to host any servers. People outside of regions where age verification is required can host the servers instead.

Why not apply this to the ISP account holder and trust them to protect their own kids the way they see fit?

The fact that they haven't gone for this approach that delivers age verification without disclosing ID, when it's a common and well known pattern in IT services, very strongly suggests that age verification was never the goal. The goal is to associate your real identity with all the information data brokers have on you, and make that available to state security services and law enforcement. And to do this they will gradually make it impossible to use the internet until they have your ID.

We really need to move community-run sites behind Tor or into i2p or something similar. We need networks where these laws just can't practically be enforced and information can continue to circulate openly.

The other day my kid wanted me to tweak the parental settings on their Roblox account. I tried to do so and was confronted by a demand for my government-issued ID and a selfie to prove my age. So I went to look at the privacy policy of the company behind it, Persona. Here's the policy, and it's without a doubt the worst I've ever seen. It basically says they'll take every last bit of information about you and sell it to everyone, including governments.

Just a moment...

(withpersona.com)

So I explained to my kid that I wasn't willing to do this. This is a taste of how everything will be soon.

But what if govt block the site hosted outside? And the VPNs require you to do an age verification?

What stops non-anonymous certificates from being sold?

If John Doe views way too much porn, then you expect the site to shut him down? They have no ability to track other site usage. The authorities have to block him after the 10,000th download.

At that point, why does the site need to know? Either the government blocks someone's ID or they don't

Good luck blocking Tor or I2P. China already tried that.

Ideally, it would be handled directly on the hardware. Allow people to verify their logged in profile, using a government-run site. Then that user is now verified. Any time an age gate needs to happen, the site initiates a secure handshake directly with the device via TLS, and asks the device if the current user is old enough. The device responds with a simple yes/no using that secure protocol. Parents can verify their accounts/devices, while child accounts/devices are left unverified and fail the test.

Government doesn’t know what you’re watching, because they simply verified the user. People don’t need to spam an underfunded government site with requests every day, because the individual user is verified. And age gates are able to happen entirely in the background without any additional effort on the user’s side. The result is that adults get to watch porn without needing to verify every time, while kids automatically get a “you’re not age-verified” wall. And kids can’t MITM the age check, due to the secure handshake. And if it becomes common enough, even a VPN would be meaningless as adult sites will just start requiring it by default.

For instance, on a Windows machine, each individual user would be independently verified. So if the kid is logged into their account, they’d get an age wall. But if the parent is logged into their verified account, they can watch all the porn they want. Then keeping kids away from porn is simply a matter of protecting your adults’ computer password.

But it won’t happen, because protecting kids isn’t the actual goal. The actual goal is surveillance. Google (and other big tech firms like them) is pushing to enact these laws, because they have the infrastructure set up to verify users. And requiring verification via those big tech firms allows them to track you more.

They (the govt) would know that they issued a certificate to ex. lemmy.dbzer0.com

They can't know that the certificate is issued to conmie

Unless, of course, the instance logs the age certificate used by each user

And also, unless the govt's age verification service logs the certificate issued by each citizen

Philosophically I agree with you. I was just discussing a technological way to accomplish age verification without giving up users' identities to a service provider, or the government knowing what service you're using. Unfortunately, too many governments want to know what you're doing inside your pants.

Yeah, there is likely a tech answer to this that would work. Coming up with one and them choosing not to use it makes it even more clear kids’ safety isn’t their goal.