You don't? Google already requires ID for developers in Belgium [0], and it's complying with regional laws for age verification [1]. The EU is also starting to look at age verification [2]. I don't see how it's such a stretch that Google may want to expand this further even in the absence of government demands, considering the huge ad/data incentive for them to directly link accounts to IRL identities.
> Unlike the simplicity of taste, we have a huge array of smell receptors, with most of them having much more indirect associations
Slightly unrelated, but what I find very cool is thinking about your taste sense as a hyper-sensitive molecule detector. Individual aromas are just the signal your brain generates for different kinds of molecules, and it's very good at that. That's why at wine tastings, for example, people come up with all these elaborate terms for specific aromas—it's a way to name the molecule composition.
If you generalise enough, all comparisons become useless: Sure, all Sapiens have common ancestors.
That doesn’t take away from the wonder of imagining people thousands of years ago literally travelling across half the earth to settle somewhere else, people we usually consider as extremely different and more "primitive" than we are.
Learning that these people led in fact a life very similar to ours, were intellectually equivalent to us, had the same struggles and goals and aspirations we do (for the most part of course), is deeply fascinating, to me at least.
Again, you being right doesn’t change anything. This is the world we live in, and that means we need to work with what we have. Which includes inattentive parents.
So... what's the point. Outlawing being an inattentive parent doesn't fix that problem. I'm not sure human beings have found a fix for that that has optimal outcomes for the kids.
This is wildly unpopular, for good reasons, but if I want to get a third dog I need to apply for and get a license from the council - they’ll come round, inspect my property and ensure that it’s adequate for a number of dogs, that it’s secure and my current pets are well treated before issuing it.
The disconnect between this and children seems wild to me. Why don’t we display the same amount of concern for children?
But then again, should the EU follow up with a similar policy, it could mandate the use of these checks and prevent/penalize ID photos. I’m very optimistic here.
> It also ties a uniform ID to an account, simplifying tracking and surveillance by corporations and governments.
That is by no means the only solution. A lot of work is happening in the area of cryptographically verified assertions; for example, a government API could provide the simple assertion "at least 16 years of age" without the social media platform ever seeing your ID, and the government never able to tie you to the service requiring the assertion.
Companies and governments see age verification as an opportunity to hoard data for facial recognition and other ML/AI training sets.
It will always be cheaper to go with a vendor that forces you to scan your face and ID, because they will either be packaging that data for targeted advertising, selling the data to brokers, or making bank off of using it as population-wide training datasets.
Governments will want the data and cost savings, as well.
Both corporations and governments will want to use the platforms to tie online activity to real human beings.
Arguments like these end up like arguments for PGP in email: yes, in a perfect world we'd be using it, and platforms would make it easy, but the incentives aren't aligned for that perfect world to exist.
> a government API could provide the simple assertion
Yes, it could, but we don't have that, do we? They launched the ban without implementing a zero-knowledge proof scheme as you described. In a very short amount of time the providers will have associated millions of people's accounts to their biometric information and/or their government issued IDs.
While this is a good thought.... Do you really trust the Government to implement a cryptographically verified assertion correctly, and not track which website is making the request, for which individual at what time, and then cross reference that with newly created accounts?
I trust the EU for one, yes, because it doesn't really have the capability or agencies to create massive databases on citizens. Aside from that, there's really a lot of research going on around zero knowledge proofs and verified credentials and such; involved researchers have very obviously already thought about most of the knee-jerk concerns voiced in this thread.
Seems foolish to trust them. The EU is fundamentally undemocratic with the unelected Commission proposing laws and decision making hidden within councils. It has been steadily centralizing and concentrating power, creating a dense web of regulations that have been strangling member states' stagnant economies. Right to free speech is notoriously bad in Europe. The EU is trying to increase military power, and ultimately a centralized European army.
It can be achieved with a zero-knowledge proof - there are many schemes, but in essence, they all allow you to prove something (e.g. your birthdate, validated by a government agency), without revealing who you are. You can prove to a third party "the government authenticated that I was born on 1970-01-01" without exposing who "I" is.
Some worthwhile reading on the topic if you're interested:
ZKP is better, but still not foolproof. Depending on the implementation, the government may now know that you have an account, or at least attempted to open an account on that service. You will have a hard time denying it in the future if the government asks to see your posts (as the US is currently doing at their borders).
I disagree. I can't think of an implementation mistake that would allow just the government to see what services you sign up for.
You could of course screw it up so everybody could see. If the government put a keylogger on your device then they could see. However broadly speaking this is not something that can be screwed up in such a way that just the government would be able to see.
The protocol wouldn't even involve any communication with the government.
"This is experimental software. While it has undergone external review, it has not yet received a formal security audit. Please use with caution and at your own risk in production environments."
The anonymity is that the government doesn't know who is asking for the verification, not that the the government doesn't know whose majority it should attest.
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