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There is a surprising amount of engineers who don’t understand what’s happening. So they deal with it as if it’s a funny thing… yeah if two police officers come knocking your door with hard data, you will just explain… and yeah, I mean kids, can bypass it… right? Wrong. This is not 1995. They can make very harsh laws and they can make it borderline impossible to bypass should some authority choose to do so.

The danger here is control: total and absolute control of who will be able to see what, at any given time. Once upon a time this was a hard problem, not anymore.

what's the current solution that's impossible for kids to bypass with a borrowed or stolen id, say?

I don't see any proposals yet that will actually work for what they say they'll do.

The last time I had police knocking at my door, it was a lot more than two, and they were readying their battering ram when I opened, and then immediately swarmed me and told me to sit down, and then I just explained and they realized their warrant was for a different address and they left. It was scary in the moment, but I never had a gun pointed at me and I wasn't even touched, so overall it left me with a rather positive impression of how search warrants are executed in Germany.

By all means, if you have an adversarial relationship with the state, fight every expansion of its power tooth and nail. But conversely, if you think that everything is going basically fine and the police are reasonable folks overall, then giving them more power doesn't look like a slippery slope straight to dystopia.

You've seen Australia. Every kid who wanted had access to forbidden social media.

The control bit is the dangerous one, sure.

Kids can't bypass it because the systems they're trying to access are entirely different than they were in 1995. They are not accessing "the Internet" on which they connect to their friend's BBS's, irc servers, Usenet, etc. They're large, private systems which can absolutely be locked down by the parties that own them, on which activity has largely been centered.

Kids CAN absolutely bypass a lot still. Jump on Nostr and nobody can stop anyone -- a server can be run on any device (mine is on my phone), and it'll even run on non-TCP/IP networks (FIPS is in early days and still largely runs on existing infrastructure but absolutely doesn't rely on it staying there). Give it another few months with some LoRA build out (and enough motivation for the kids) and even the ISP gateway stops being a filter point. Not that ISP level controls have ever really been the most effective anyway, given the existence of VPN's and other tunneling methods (to say nothing of public wifi networks).

We see this happening in real time as India tries to stamp out Bitchat. The codebase has appeared on more and more repositories, and the most recent version of Bitchat is capable of transmitting itself for install to other devies without relying on any server or Internet at all.

So should we push back? Of course. At some point we would need to worry that they'll say enough is enough and make the hardware itself inaccessible. We're a long way off from that, and it'd be a surefire way to get a LOT more pushback.

But in the meantime, we shouldn't despair too much. The cypherpunks that gave us private and secure access on the Internet used by everyone today despite being once illegal to export didn't go anywhere. They're still here, kicking down every wall that gets put up, or at least pointing out that there are multiple ways around (or through) it.

Here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49080929

There is discussion about LLMs, models, CSAM, undressing people with AI, and posting those images to places.

No handy wavy stuff, makes this problem go away due to filtering at creation. That's because, open models are a thing. So you either ban all open models, or maybe make it a crime to publish uncensored models, or you punish what individuals do on the internet.

Slander and libel and defamation are a thing, and have been a thing forever, millennia. Suddenly, on the open and free internet, for barely an eyeblink, anyone could say anything with zero liability and responsibility.

Then, 2010s came. Then, doxing of people we didn't like, or didn't agree with, became OK. So suddenly, it was OK to "out" a person, but not to just force everyone to be de-anonymoized. In other words, unpopular opinions? Yeah, that's OK to remove the cloak.

And with AI, everyone and their dog will be able to render images of anyone they want naked. CSAM. Political lies, made up videos, slander, libel, literal wors in people's mouths, on and on.

What's my point?

Well, just as 2000 brought a new world to people, 2025 is doing the same.

This is only going to get worse. And I fully agree, the dangers for "control" are going to exist. But the dangers of people posting all of this stuff, has hit the point where a lot of people are uncomfortable with it. And if you think Grok creating CSAM is bad, then you must think anyone creating CSAM is bad. Or anything. So how to you prevent the harm?

Well really, you either heavily restrict software. Open LLMs, or?

You make people posting this stuff liable.

The world is at a fork. Everything will change. Because banning software requires immense control over hosting software, but so does deanonymizing the internet. And really, this is inline with how the political and societal landscape changes.

It's only been 20 years since a lot of people were on the Internet, and only 10 years since I'd label it 'mainstream'. As in, even grandma uses it. And so, now the laws are coming, as legislation and law and change takes time for politicians, and political bodies.

We're here. Right now. This is the moment.

So I 100% guarantee that absolutely nothing will stop the path to liability for slander, libel, and more that is coming. Nothing. Whatever it takes, you can be sure it will happen.

So how will it happen?

Well, by knowing who to sue.

Like it or not, that's the truth. And no, I don't like it myself.

They're just protecting the kids, at least to start with.
I want the right to not be identified. I also want the right to SELF identify. I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability. I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify. The cost of running LLM botnets is going down. I cannot imagine how the next cycle of elections is going to be like on all countries. I understand the right to remain anonymous, that should remain, but that state should not be the default on these massively big platforms. Our brains and political systems are not designed for this. And no, "get people to get rid of their smartphone voluntarily" like I see on the comments is not going to happen.
> I think the toxic culture of the internet has happened in part because anonymity leads to lack of accountability.

It is trivial to demonstrate that this is incorrect (despite sounding plausible). There's plenty of incredibly toxic behavior to be found all over facebook.

Among other considerations it's worth noting that most of the usual social feedback mechanisms are missing from typical online interactions.

> The cost of running LLM botnets is going down.

Agreed that this is an existential threat to anonymous discourse as it is typically implemented.

Toxic culture was always there but it really took of with social media where users often have zero shame to self-identify. There are anonymous communities that are far more friendly than the common insta group. "My brain" is perfectly fine with anonymous users.

And yes, anonymity should be the default because otherwise the alternative is that you need to identify. If not, most users would stay anonymous because it is simply the smarter decision with the exception that you seek exposure.

>I want to self identify and interact with other people who also self identify.

You can do that already, Facebook is pretty close to exactly what you're talking about. They do a lot of work to identify real people and de-prioritize spam/bots. You can configure your account to only be able to interact with real people if you want. Many people like anonymity though, it's important for speaking truth to power and discussing topics which are outside the Overton window.

There's a good reason that many of the United States' founding fathers used pseudonyms when writing. Anonymity and real freedom of speech are foundational to democracy. If you can put someone in jail for saying something that the government doesn't like, then the government will be able to steer discourse towards outcomes it deems acceptable, even if those outcomes subvert the will of the people.

There's no real need to have the government force all websites to always authenticate all humans. The only real argument for such a system is to move us toward dystopian authoritarianism.

Things are far more enjoyable as a teen when it s forbidden, remember the golden age of p2p!

Teens who want to see porn will be able to see porns, but they will learn somethings along the way to do so

This is caricatural of course, but it s just so dumb as law as enforcing age verification "anonymously" is just like a don quichotte battle at AI era

I often joke that every technical measure that prevents teens from watching porn is a way to make teens more tech-savvy.

Kids these days have it too easy, we need stronger protections or the next generation will make pathetic hackers.

> Teens who want to see porn will be able to see porns, but they will learn somethings along the way to do so

How will teens overcome the Android SafetyNet?

I think it's a missed opportunity to not have called it "Stop spying on every EU citizen online". It would make for great headlines and might finally wake people up when they see that the EU has rejected a proposal called that.

"Stop killing the internet" unfortunately means nothing at all to the layman, they will still be using it pretty much exactly as they were before, and governments will just claim "See, internet is still working".

You may be overthinking this. It is privacy that means little to the regular joe. The internet they use every day and it being changed beyond recognition is much more tangible than privacy being curtailed just a little bit more.

And these authoritarian politicians will destroy the internet with these actions. Maybe they will even change society as we know it, and not for the better.

The problem is thinking such initiatives will achieve anything in a bureaucratic system devoid of honest debate and actual democracy.

These citizen's initiatives must at least be tried but simultaneously we must create a new internet forever out of politician reach.

Agreed.

I think it's time that "please let 1800 analytics firms monitor your every browsing habit in exchange for this content" was seen in the same light as "please let 1800 private foreign espionage and propaganda agencies spy on you".

"Stop enabling pedophiles in government"
And keep pushing this until it passes. Keep repeating like they do chat control.
Great point. Reminds me of Biden’s constant whisper-scream “the future of democracy is at stake!”

Like, yeah, it was an accurate statement, but total shit if your goal is to get people up off the couch and into voting booth. Way too abstract and high-minded

The title is misleading "No Age Verification" and then later on call for using ZKP to do Age Verification.

Is the Pirate Party supporting Age Verification now?

I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity, and that could solve problems like bots, socketpuppets, etc along with reasonable age-gating. It could be an ideal internet if it's properly applied. The problem is it's difficult to verify all the promises are being kept, and if they're not it instantly becomes a true dystopia. And sites could use it in inappropriate ways resulting in discrimination.
> I'm glad they mention privacy preserving and being voluntary. It's possible to make digital ID that allows selectively revealing attributes without identity

Not without either being able to trivially let others use your proofs OR ending open computing. There is no zero knowledge proof about the slab of meat sitting in front of the screen.

Hopefully this fares better than Stop Killing Games.
The name could also be:

"Stop overcontrolling and overregulating every aspect of our lives!"

This initiative has the ID "ECI(2026)000011". If I understand this correctly, that means there have only been eleven citizen initiatives this year? Is that system working as designed, because that's a shockingly low number.

Edit: the initiatives themselves also have shockingly low numbers of signatures. A few thousand. A million are required for the EC to take notice. This system seems a bit shitty. But maybe I'm misunderstanding it.

A few things you can legally do online without ID or age verification in the US

1) buy cigars and pipe tobacco (but not cigarettes!)

2) Buy "CBD" by the pound

3) Buy ammunition, a barrel and the rest of gun parts for a glock, except a frame/receiver that can be 3d printed in a few hours to complete it.

4) Order and have delivered wine

But there are people arguing to skip all that and go to straight to ID for social media. It isn't about the children. It's about keeping tabs on who says what.

I have a hard time figuring out whether most of the comments are genuine or not.

Are you guys really in favor of giving governments and police corps more control and more power so that you are observed, monitored, restricted because "the internet is dead", "think of the children" and "you need to know who to sue"?

You guys are joking, right? Right?

>The legislation should require anonymous or pseudonymous proof-of-age

NO. It really shouldn't. I will not comply. Porn sites can require this shit, but not the rest of the internet. Social media, dating websites, that's up to the users. If kids are on there, that's on the parents. Do your job, be the parent. I'm not going to let lazy good for nothing parents ruin the internet for everyone else.

I haven't considered this before with SKG, but if this progresses, it means the EU parliament may choose to take action based on an initiative that potentially only a vocal minority supports [0], while coming across as if they were simply following the will of the people.

Not sure how I feel about that, sounds kind of problematic in retrospect. Especially since there's no mechanism for triggering EU-wide referendums to help this AFAIK.

[0] population of the EU: 452 million, unique signatures required for this: 1 million

The internet's (at least as we knew it) days were numbered as soon as the dot com bubble happened. It changed from a thing to share info to a thing to make money. It's irrecoverably corrupted and this blatant overreach for everyone's PII is just a symptom.
So if i understand correctly, there's no webpage to sign this initiative yet?
We can talk, talk, and governments will still move forward. Or we can build an alternative that shows it's possible to get age verification while maintaining privacy.

There is a real way out of it -- the governments can have their cake and eat it too. I published several academic papers to prove it, and I'm open to building and deploying it. Would anyone want to work on this together:

https://magarshak.com/papers.html

Stop letting regular people know they are engaging with bots

Only massive data gatherers should be able to track and know everything about people

am i alone in wanting the internet to be killed? we’d all be better off if everyone wasn’t terminally online
How are we on the tech and protocols side of having a truly distributed worldwide mesh-net?

i.e. drone swarms replacing ISPs?

The physical world has age checks when kids attempt to enter a premises with dangerous or unsuitable content - eg bars, casinos, strip joints. These seem largely accepted as a good thing. Why do so many seem to feel that the same protections are so outrageous when applied in the virtual world? Honest question, I can see both sides.
The Internet is already dead.

I'm reasonably confident that in the relatively near future, the Internet will be so overrun with bots and other worthless "content" that people will flock to platforms that confirm IRL identity.

UA spies on Europeans, and vice versa. Then they share, it's not spying on your citizens, it's called 'intelligence sharing'.
It’s interesting to *imagine* the future development of “The System” of segregation.

Government driving changes to laws, imposing fines on platforms which create EULAs resulting in technological controls (or alarm flags)—whether you can bypass it or not—leading to irreversible bans and prosecutions. Growing disenfranchised. Those who do not materially support the system are left out, and the laws prevent new players. /imagined dystopian future.

internet is just infra. you probably mean the web.

and yeah, LLMs kill it faster.

So if i can not circumvent the surveilance- can i pack my wanted unsurveiled stuff into harmless data and send them- basically use the surveiled Internet as a UDP layer - over which my hidden unsurveiled internet goes via TCP?
As far as I know the only thing that influences change is money. What methods could be implemented to take money away from governments that implement with such things? All of my ideas would be very low traction but there are clever people here on HN that I am sure could come up with a few better ideas.

One of my (probably dumb) ideas is:

- Create a legal presence in a country that does not require being dystopian, relaxed business laws, less regulation, lower taxes, move most of the corporate side of the business there. Take the tax revenue with you. It does not have to be all at once. Make the move a slow boil so they don't see it until it's too late.

Which countries, provinces, regions, states have the least regulation, least dystopian behavior and the least taxes? There has to be a incentive for business leaders and board members to move things around. Bonus if the saved money pays for a Gulfstream G650 ER or two.

I think if it we want to stop killing the internet, the lack of regulation of AI/bot companies is the biggest problem right now.
This is funny coming from the EU who brought us cookie banners.
Even for a "Citizens' Initiative", this stuff is remarkably tone-deaf. "No Digital ID" ignores the very-real need for people to prove their identity to government(-ish) entities online, and to do so in a reliable, cheap and convenient way. Sure, you do not want that ID to become mandatory for publishing or existing on the Internet in general, but that's a separate discussion: demand sufficient protection for anonymous/pseudonymous posts instead, which is absolutely something that needs to be codified as part of basic human rights.

"No age verification" is even deader-on-arrival. Parents are literally screaming at politicians to protect "the children" (as always), but pretty much everything that has been tried so far to silence those screams has failed (remember PICS, the Platform for Internet Content Selection: that was the last serious contender, and it has been dead for, like, 20 years). Again: demand a way to implement this securely and anonymously, don't take an untenable abolitionist stance or resort to hand-waving in the vague general direction of "parental responsibility": that has been tried, and it's not working anymore.

And, please, stop vilifying the EU in these matters. The UK left the EU, ostensibly so they could make "more sensible laws" in, specifically, respects like these, and they're now leading the assault on basic freedoms with even more fervor. And no, that's not just big-bad-Starmer's fault: it's a preview of what you have to argue against and propose a compromise for instead.