With the way elections changed after social media became big. Govts want to have control back, like they did before. And are increasingly curbing open internet and AI wave made it worse. Ultimately we'll get 2nd hand version of great firewall and social credit system. Some liberal democracies already have root of such systems implemented.
I don't know if it has anything to do with changes in elections directly. My government has been talking for a while making the case that social media use makes us dumber, sadder, and more scared. I believe it's true that they also see that playing out in elections, but that's not where they want to solve a problem.
Wouldn't it be strange if solving a problem didn't affect elections?
>My government has been talking for a while making the case that social media use makes us dumber, sadder, and more scared. I believe it's true that they also see that playing out in elections, but that's not where they want to solve a problem.
The governments themselves are "dumber, sadder, and more scared". They are worried because social media puts regular people talking on equal footing to official propagandas (being able to reach everybody else). That's what they fear, because they have the lowest approval ratings and legitimization in over half a century, and they're also making everything shittier and shittier to the benefit of their corporate overlords.
It seems unlikely that a true Zero Knowledge Proof system for things like age verification would ever be allowed.
Also, remote attestation doesn't work that way and for good reason. Under a true ZKP system, a single defector (extracted/leaked/etc key) would be able to generate an infinite number of false attestations without detection.
> In any case, it was always presented as a toolbox that countries should adapt into their apps – so judging the app by itself does not make much sense, it depends on how these techniques are implemented in each country’s verification app. There will be no single EU app, despite what the honchos of EU say.
Even more reason to make the "demo" app do things correctly because it's very unlikely that all member states actually implement things correctly.
> The internet is scary, parents think they can’t protect their children from many bad things happening, and someone came to provide a “solution."
A simple solution is just not providing your kids with a phone or computer.
Don't forget that many sources of porn will not obey this. Think the pirate bay will ask for age verification? If they obeyed the law they wouldn't even exist.
It's a solution for nothing, as the article points out too.
Whether there is a single app or not doesn't really matter - i'm more concerned about the database itself and the inter-connectivity between them and most importantly by which control acceptance protocol we abide between states.
The idea that we want a single database or a network without any kind of control is frightening me
Interesting point about ZKP systems. The challenge
with age verification is balancing privacy with
enforcement — any centralized solution creates a
honeypot for data breaches.
Wouldn't it be strange if solving a problem didn't affect elections?
The governments themselves are "dumber, sadder, and more scared". They are worried because social media puts regular people talking on equal footing to official propagandas (being able to reach everybody else). That's what they fear, because they have the lowest approval ratings and legitimization in over half a century, and they're also making everything shittier and shittier to the benefit of their corporate overlords.
Also, remote attestation doesn't work that way and for good reason. Under a true ZKP system, a single defector (extracted/leaked/etc key) would be able to generate an infinite number of false attestations without detection.
Even more reason to make the "demo" app do things correctly because it's very unlikely that all member states actually implement things correctly.
> The internet is scary, parents think they can’t protect their children from many bad things happening, and someone came to provide a “solution."
A simple solution is just not providing your kids with a phone or computer.
Don't forget that many sources of porn will not obey this. Think the pirate bay will ask for age verification? If they obeyed the law they wouldn't even exist.
It's a solution for nothing, as the article points out too.
The idea that we want a single database or a network without any kind of control is frightening me