ListNook

Nyoka_ya_Mpembe Apr 14, 2026 +47

So everyone will have to be verified which means someone will have a lot of data which will leak eventually, right?

47

Historical_Owl_1635 Apr 14, 2026 +15

It’s always been coming. Sentiment has changed and a lot of the population now wants this, it’s not like years gone past when the mere suggestion of it caused mass protests and outrage. All of us that grew up with the “free” internet are now just the cowboys watching civilisation take away the Wild West. Even from a technical view it’s not unrealistic anymore which was often one of the arguments against it.

15

vriska1 Apr 14, 2026 +2

Thing is this is not legal under EU law. Stop with the defeatist attitude and push back!

2

Ok_Beyond4225 Apr 14, 2026 +9

So we all stop using social media. Which might become a net positive for society anyways.

9

cryptokingleo Apr 14, 2026 +4

Don't they already know it all? Who is using what? In today's world, if you are using the internet, you have already made yourself public.

4

EmbarrassedHelp Apr 14, 2026 +4

If they already know it, then it should be illegal to enforce such bans with age verification and age assurance.

4

vriska1 Apr 14, 2026 +2

It is likely illegal under EU law and would end up in court fast

2

Nyoka_ya_Mpembe Apr 14, 2026 +3

Do you know my full name, address and have my ID? Does anyone? Not yet, but they will.

3

McMatey_Pirate Apr 14, 2026 +1

I mean. I don’t personally, but I would bet a good chunk of change that a lot of people you wouldn’t think of have access to all that data and are just as susceptible to a data breach.

1

asdhjasdhlkjashdhgf Apr 14, 2026 +2

those leaks already happen but they would also contain data of children. Same argument, different view. verified data certainly carries more value yet still not so as if that verification is not already happening, but privately owned by who ever requests verification for services.

2

stainless5 Apr 17, 2026 +1

hopefully if they're going to do it they do it the Australian way where they tell the websites to use their advertising algorithms to guess the age of the account.

1

agrk Apr 15, 2026

The government will be the ones holding the data, which doesn't exclude leaks, of course but they presumably already have your data somewhere. I asume this means e-ID + some token social media companies can use to verify a user's age without further sharing of data. That , in its turn, should give governments an indirect way to link a social media account, since both the government and the social media companies will log the specific token used. Is it bad if the police can identify crimimals online? Well, that depends on how well you trust the ones that write your laws.

0

Zefyris Apr 14, 2026 -3

no, there are ways of verifying age that does not provide any information to the website asking (outside of the boolean answer for "is old enough to use the website"), and does not store any information about who asked for who on the system asked. Such systems already exist in Europe, and are closely monitored by various European independent control authorities in charge among other things of ensuring that the RGPD is followed at national level, like the CNIL in France. Edit : you can downvote me all you want, but I know what I'm talking about, because working in respect of the RGPD has been my daily life for years; and you clearly don't.

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EmbarrassedHelp Apr 14, 2026 +3

If it involves a third party that you have to verify with, its not private or anonymous. The tokens can and will be tracked easily.

3

azthal Apr 15, 2026 +2

It's not third party in this case. This is being implemented across the EU as part of existing digital ids. You don't have to provide anyone with your information. They already have it. That does not mean that there are no concerns with the scheme. While it's in theory well designed for privacy, and by law have to be privacy concerving (the website have no idea who you are, and the government have no idea where you verified your identity) in practice there are a few issues with the system that mean that correlations can be made. Meaning, while there will be no list one can go to to check "did person x verify against service y", If you have the right access you can use multiple data sources to correlate the data. As such, if and when they really want to do this, it can be done, even if it's illegal. But that has not always stopped them before. Some people do argue that these services still require invasive verifications too. I disagree. I don't think showing the government an Id that they made for you is invasive, but to each their own.

2

Zefyris Apr 14, 2026 -1

huh, no. The verifying side does not provide any info towards the outside except for that boolean level of info, so there is no info to grab from the demanding side about the customer. it's not hard to understand. The only side that could get info would be the verifying side, to grab the info about which website is requesting and couple it with who is requesting. But since that side is monitored by data control authorities following the RGPD, they're not going to store that info even if they use it during the time of the validation. Quite literally, there is no room in that transaction for your personal information to leak. it's the whole point of that kind of system.

-1

Almoinho98 Apr 14, 2026 -6

All they need to know is if you are old enough or not. They don't even need to know your name.

-6

Nyoka_ya_Mpembe Apr 14, 2026 +6

And how they can verify that? What they need and where they will keep it?

6

Hydrargyrum201 Apr 14, 2026 +1

If they can target kids with targetted ads, they already know they are kids. The enforcement need to care that the advertisers cannot target minors, and platforms will find a way to spare unmonetizable bandiwith.

1

EmbarrassedHelp Apr 14, 2026 +5

Those ad targeting systems are not precise enough to be used for that task, which would mean platforms will resort to privacy violations with mandatory age verification. Any solution needs to involve making mandatory age verification and age assurance illegal, you want to respect privacy.

5

Kakkoister Apr 15, 2026 +1

Building an Ad profile is not the same as determining whether someone is exactly 18+ or not. Those are based on browsing habits, which can never be an exact science as everyone's personality/experiences/tastes are different. Thus, the only way for these system to work is by you showing them official IDs.

1

Hydrargyrum201 Apr 15, 2026 +1

What I meant is that you need just focus to remove the economic incentive to have minors on the platform to remove the problem.

1

Kakkoister Apr 16, 2026 +1

Economic incentives aren't why minors are on most platforms though... Most minors don't even have the means to earn income from said platforms. Minors go where the entertainment and discussions are, which happens to also be where most of the adults are in most cases. I grew up on the internet, and anyone else who did can attest to that too lol. Had nothing to do with economics.

1

Almoinho98 Apr 14, 2026

They can use the digital ID card most EU countries have. Or use a goverment created service that only verifies this.

0

DootyMcCool2000 Apr 14, 2026 +8

Good idea on its face, too bad this is a moral panic meant to backdoor online verification and end internet privacy.

8

Jyosea Apr 14, 2026 +8

Uhm no. This won't solve anything, just make everything worse for everyone.

8

EmbarrassedHelp Apr 14, 2026 +8

The EU Commission is pushing for countries to force mandatory age verification on their people using the EU Commission's proposed Digital ID Wallet system, which requires age verification to obtain easily trackable tokens. It also bans jailbreaking/rooting your device, bans you from installing other operating systems (ex: GrapheneOS, LineageOS), and requires GooglePlay Services/IOS equivalent be installed to "prevent tampering". You have to blindly trust that the easily trackable tokens will not be tracked, because the system cannot solve the problem of collusion. There are no protections against metadata tracking either. The EU's proposed wallet app is basically an "open source" wrapper that connects to proprietary closed source backends. It doesn't even implement ZKP, yet even with ZKP all these problems still exist. And I didn't even get into the privacy violations from having to submit personal information to a third party in exchange for the "proof" that you are a certain age. The ID Wallet documentation also states that each time you verify your age, you obtain 30 single use, easily trackable tokens that expire after 3 months.

8

vriska1 Apr 14, 2026 +6

Everyone needs to push back on this hard!

6

-_LordOfTheBings_- Apr 15, 2026 +3

awful. Discord's own age verification systems, which promised not to store your data, have been hacked a while back, revealing that they did in fact store data, which got leaked this will happen again, many times, and people's personal information like their faces, IDs, etc. will keep getting leaked.

3

TropicalSunflowers Apr 15, 2026 +3

Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to regulate the social media companies so that the internet is safer without restriction to it's users?

3

Manathar45 Apr 15, 2026 +1

Will they require age verification for VPNs as well?

1

Kodeforbunnywudwuds Apr 14, 2026 -8

The American war of aggression might cause global civilization to collapse by the end of the year, but, hey, we need to keep those kids from watching cartoons on their phones. Priorities, ya know.

-8

[deleted] Apr 14, 2026 -12

[deleted]

-12

Ameenhurst616 Apr 14, 2026 +5

Nobody with a brain wants this.

5

Appropriate-Day6714 Apr 14, 2026 +5

Social media is weaponised brain rot that bad faith actors can use as the new opioid of the people. Let kids develop critical thinking skills, many will slip through the net but give it a chance.

5

Sleepy_Witch_Maple Apr 14, 2026 +3

It absolutely is but this isn't the way to solve it. Social media bans for minors wind up creating a privacy nightmare for those who aren't minors.

3

[deleted] Apr 14, 2026 -1

[deleted]

-1

h3ron Apr 14, 2026 +4

You'll have to provide your ID. A nightmare from a privacy, security and freedom of speech perspective.

4

DoctorNo1661 Apr 14, 2026 +1

There's absolutely no security threat about providing ID, this is a fallacious argument that only enriches commercial VPN providers (which are all owned by the same two guys btw). As for privacy and freedom of speech, you don't forfeit them either by walking the street without wearing a face covering garment which needless to mention is obviously illegal.

1

[deleted] Apr 14, 2026 -1

[deleted]

-1

Cursethewind Apr 14, 2026 +2

And, if a protester said something critical of their government, opps, now their government has their identification and they can disappear because their identity is known. This is not a good thing.

2

StoneSpace Apr 14, 2026 +2

Age verification removes the possibility of anonymity, and generates troves of data that private corporations will be able to profit of.

2

ChrisOhoy Apr 14, 2026 +2

Bots can’t verify their ages though.. so less bots and less propaganda. Win-win. In fact, using the web should be strictly human activity.. a verification to earn a non traceable key would be ideal.. You need to verify to get a key but the key itself can’t be linked to you.

2

Fun-Page-6211 Apr 14, 2026 +2

I am against it because it’s not enough. Social media is bad for everyone, so it should just be completely banned.

2

Wonderful-Pause1048 Apr 14, 2026

Verbote haben es so an sich, ‚jetzt erst recht’ auszulösen. Es müssen die Betreiber der Plattformen verpflichtet werden, die Inhalte zu kontrollieren. Eine Kontrolle via Dateneingabe und damit Verletzung des Datenschutzes kann doch nur noch letzte Möglichkeit sein.

0

Media_Browser Apr 14, 2026

Don’t like growing kids learning English / American ;) .

0

bruzly Apr 14, 2026 -5

Everyone will have to be verified, witch is a good thing . Russian, Chinese botts will have a lesser influence on mentally challenged furry lolly listnookors

-5

ten0re Apr 14, 2026 +7

Bots and scammers will find their ways in like they always do, and so will the minors. In the end everyone will be worse off except Palantir.

7

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