Posted by muse900 6 hours ago
This simple policy then goes on to silence most individual publisher(/self-media) and consolidated the industry into the hands of the few, with no opportunity left for smaller entrepreneurs. This is arguably much worse than allowing children to watch porn online, because this will for sure effect people's whole life in a negative way.
Also, if EU really wants "VPN services to be restricted to adults only", they should just fine the children who uses it, or their parent for allowing it to happen. The same way you fine drivers for traffic violation, but not the road.
And if EU still think that's not enough, maybe they should just cut the cable, like what North Korea did.
1. First, year ~2015 legal framework was created under disguise of banning pirated media(specifically torrents.ru)(legislative push). State-wide DNS ban introduced. Very easy to circumvent via quering 8.8.8.8
2. Then, having legal basis, govt included extra stuff in banned list(casinos, terrorist orgs, etc)(executive push). IP bans introduced, applied very carefully.
3. Legal expanded allowing govt to ban specific media on very vague criterias(legislative push). IP blocks tried on some large websites. DPI hardware mandated to be installed by ISPs to filter by HTTPS SNI(executive push).
4. At ~2019 Roskomnadzor(RKN) created, special govt entity which enforces bans without court orders(legislative push).
5. ~2021 sites become banned if they are not filtering content by Russian laws by request of RKN(executive push). VPN services were obligated to also DPI-filter traffic(legislative push).
6. ~2023 Crackdown on VPN started(executive push). Popular commercial services were IP-banned, OpenVPN and IPSec connections selectively degraded by DPI.
7. ~2025 Heavy VPN filtering(vless, wireguard, etc) introduced(executive push). Performance of certain sites were degraded(youtube, twitter, etc).
BTW I live in Turkiye where the government banned ALL the adult websites around 2008. Even as an adult you can't access them. This year they are banning VPNs, introduce age controls and ID verification COORDINATED with the rest of the world. Also banning some games, control social media, and basically make it legal to control and track everyone on the internet. What a coincidence that similar attempts are simultaneous in many independent countries.
And no, children have not been really protected in Turkiye since 2008.
Others look at this recipe and can't help but notice its effectiveness. Eventually nobody is beneath pulling this kind of logic, even if they were the ones crucifying it just a few short years ago. The weaker the leader, the more likely that that they forget where they wrote down those principles of theirs and resort to this crap.
Indeed I do not remember this, nor can I find corroborating evidence that there was much of an effort to justify the requirement to the public at all. As far as I can tell, the government simply decided that they needed more control over the internet, so they made a law to give themselves more control over the internet. https://www.gov.cn/gongbao/content/2000/content_60531.htm It has no special provisions limited to children that only later got extended to adults. (Meanwhile, restrictions on how long children may play games continue to only apply to children, AFAIK.)
People don't remember because it didn't happen and the license wasn't about protecting the children. But it's so convenient to just blantantly lie on the internet nowadays, isn't it?
Just like the title of this article blatantly lies about "EU" doing something.
I would like you to make that argument.
Governments getting involved absolutely, unequivocally will be used to clamp down on the free exchange of ideas.
You sure about that? )))
> Source: I’m a parent. My kids haven’t seen porn and can’t access the internet.
Are they above the age of 16? Because then you're either Amish or out of touch.
You're the one that needs to argue the presence of harm, given you're the one arguing we need to create a surveillance dragnet to shield certain age groups of humans from witnessing how their species procreates.
The default state is that humans procreate via sexual reproduction. You need to argue why we need to take action to hide this, especially given we let children witness other far more brutal activities from the human species like violence.
Surely someone claiming it's arguable should be willing to make that argument.
For me it's not that it's reproduction. Film that shows sex is not an issue as I see it and I don't know anyone that has developed serious addictions to sex in Hollywood film. However I know several people, family members included, that have absolutely obliterated their childhoods and early adult years by becoming addicted to porn. They were groomed by adults online from a young age and, although their parents tried to stop it, kids are sneakier and they got around it, exposing themselves to some truly dark things. It is not easy for families to recover from having dealt with a child with serious addiction issues.
I think it's pretty silly to argue that systemic protections are ineffective and overreach whereas the efforts of one or two parents should be enough and are the correct level of enforcement for the protection of children. The parents of the people I know went to extremes to protect their children and they were mostly unsuccessful.
If your argument in favor of that is that watching porn isn't harmful to children, then I don't understand what all that superfluous waffling about china is doing in there.
The EP paper appears to be highlighting the existence of a debate regarding VPN.
Relevant quote:
"Some argue that this is a loophole in the legislation that needs closing and call for age verification to be required for VPNs as well. In response, some VPN providers argue that they do not share information with third parties and state that their services are not intended for use by children in the first place. The Children's Commissioner for England has called for VPNs to be restricted to adult use only.
While privacy advocates argue that imposing age-verification requirements on VPNs would pose significant risk to anonymity and date protection, child-safety campaigners claim that their widespread use by minors requires a regulatory response. Pornhub and other large pornography platforms have reportedly lost web traffic following the enforcement of age-verification rules in the UK, while VPN apps have reached the top of download rankings."
Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs, but nowhere in this paper is "the EU" stating that VPNs need closing.
no, they want to pretend this is the issue, so that pervasive monitoring or permission and/or deanonymization is normalized. It is to serve the state apparatus, rather than any actual protection.
Maybe some want more control, but most certainly not everybody.
> so that pervasive monitoring
If you haven't gotten the memo, pervasive monitoring already exists. To sell ads.
> or permission and/or deanonymization is normalized
For age verification, it's possible to do it in a privacy-preserving manner. Now people spend their time complaining about the idea and claiming that all who disagree are extremists, so it doesn't help. But we could instead try to push for privacy-preserving age verification.
This topic is just unfavorable with this community... for good reasons.
Those who want less regulation are not hackers, but rich and powerful assholes.
"Being a hacker" does not mean "being stuck in the 80s", IMO. If TooBigTech cryptographically controls everything, it becomes harder to hack. Are you aware that the biggest restriction against jailbreaking stuff is that it was made super illegal... because it helps corporations?
Ah yes, so that's why Meta et al are the main ones behind pushes for more "think of the children" ID verification/attestation regulations.
Last two times they tried to push other censorship/tracking laws (claiming as always "we have to, EU is making us") there were mass protests in every city and town.
In my own town of 5k people there were several hundred (500 people at least, probably more). And the previous govt backed down.
This topic seems to be coming back everytime certain countries (Denmark etc) hold the rotating EU presidency. Our current PM is certainly in the same EU clique that wants to push this so much, but it's an extremely unpopular position and he is already leading a weak minority coalition govt. It wouldn't take much to topple him, so he will not do anything like that (unless he is convicted people are distracted with some crisis, but that is where normal people come in. To keep watching what is being smuggled in).
I wonder why do voters in those countries that propose these laws tend to allow this to happen again and again.
No matter what you (as population) say it will get implemented. If you don't, then they will put sanctions on Poland, withdraw financial partnerships, etc. Like with migrants, they are going to be sent there, even if Polish people vote against.
No matter if you are in favor or against, raising the topic will just make you socially be isolated or even legally punished in some places.
Sad for democracy and free speech.
EDIT: clarified about migrant policy and the decision of countries to choose or not
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_expulsion_of_Polish_Jews_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigration_of_Jews_from_Nazi_G...
That, and the lack of real issues to solve.
The rise of authoritarianism? Inequality? Revival of geopolitical "realism"? Decrease in empathy and holistic thinking? Increasing willingness of the general population to engage in political adventurism? Accelerating resource consumption (and decelerating resource stocks).
And if you consider none of those "real" problems, I know some people seem to have forgotten about it, but what about climate change? Given the half-life of CO2 and methane, that's a problem as "real" as they get.
Kids don't have money and hardly ever manage to do crime without getting caught so they're profoundly uninteresting to surveil in this way, but adults are and here the interests of the state and corporations converge so they'll make a push for tyranny.
But how to make people accept it? Tell them they want to expose kids to gruesome tentacle porn, or else they'd support this. Few adults are willing to admit they even look at porn, let alone argue that this is an important activity that needs to be protected, which it is.
There is absolutely no need for new technology to track people, it's there already.
Also I feel like a big reason for age verification is social media. Many countries are trying to prevent kids from accessing social media (because we know it's bad for them), and age verification is the way to do that.
Badly implemented, age verification is bad. But there are ways to implement it in a privacy-preserving manner, which wouldn't make the current state of surveillance capitalism worse.
But the current push from all sides to provide id for everything and remote attestation through Google and apple will make the alternatives very hard to use as it basically cuts such people from the economy altogether.
And corporations are having issues discerning bots from people without making access to their services a fuss or dependent on possibly idealistic and troublesome open source projects, like Anubis.
It's truly, absolutely, not about "age verification". If it were about protecting kids from harm they'd take money from corporations post factum that are offending. Instead they're preparing to spend a lot of money. You could also look at who is heavily lobbying for this, you'll find it is fascist tech oligarchs from the US. They couldn't care less about kids except for obscene or profitable purposes. It would be weird for them to be cosy with epsteinian networks of power and at the same time be mindful about the wellbeing of children.
You vastly underestimate the current state of surveillance capitalism.
> You could also look at who is heavily lobbying for this, you'll find it is fascist tech oligarchs from the US.
Go in the street, and ask a bunch of random people: "If there was a way to prevent kids from accessing stuff that is bad for them, and it had no downsides. Would you want it?". I'm absolutely certain that not only fascists will say they would want it.
Did you grow up with free streaming platforms? Pretty sure many adolescents were accessing porn before those, though it was slightly less accessible.
I personally don't have a definitive opinion about porn (I feel like young kids obviously shouldn't have access to it, but it shouldn't be illegal to adults, but I don't know where the limit should be), but I feel like making it harder for kids to access social media makes sense.
E.g. the problem of social media is not that kid access information. It's more that kids get harassed by other kids.
You are right at pointing out that the paper is overall presenting the subject in a balanced manner, unfortunately it seems a bad choice was made when it came to that specific sentence, that gives a venue for it to be fed in the outrage machine.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2026/7826...
Bombing children is OK and we happily produce and deliver all the weapons needed for that.
Patterns of an ill society.
Usually things like these are qualified like "the Department of Defense of the USA stated X".
> Of course I'm not saying the EU won't regulate VPNs
The word choice is quite revealing. You write "regulate VPNs". To me this is not "regulation" at all - it is restriction or factually forbidding it. It is newspeak language here if we dampen it via nicer-sounding words. It also distracts from the main question: why the sudden attack by EU lobbyists against VPNs?
Live sports, they’re already assaulting internet infrastructure in various EU member states (eg. La Liga forcing Spanish ISPs to block cloudflare IPs during matches). With this in mind it seems less a case of surveillance state and more a case of corporate state capture.
Yep... and to make it worse, nobody is trying to push them towards looking at privacy-preserving age verification: instead technologists try to convince them that they just shouldn't regulate anything. Which... may not work so well.
It isn't a stretch to imagine that a small business owner literally doesn't have enough time in their life to maintain their own health and run their business. There are some pretty grim stories out there, I can tell one based on a friend of mine who was working ... I think 70 hour weeks. Sounded rough. It isn't actually crazy to say they may not have an hour free to figure out what form they need to fill out and where to file it, or that they'd be too sleep deprived to get it right. Assuming that this thing is the only thing they need to disclose and there aren't any other pieces of paperwork that need filing (which we all know there will be).
Sure if they have to they'll probably figure it out in most cases, maybe it is trivial. But the businesses where a straw broke the camel's back don't exist any more to point at as evidence. It is hard to know.
[0] https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/the-cost-of-regulation
Basically, you have no privacy if you start a small business under these kinds of rules.
Mandatory age verification online is a blight imho. It should be outlawed.
Parents should learn how to be parents; the government shouldn't force companies to do parenting instead.
Social media companies (e.g. Meta, Snap) are the first that should provide that but they don't.
Regulate the poison first, not the access to it. All this age verification nonsense is an admission that some platforms knowingly harm their users. And instead of fixing the issue by cracking down on the proverbial crack, governments make everybody's life worse.
I remain hopeful that one day, humans will regard the online advertising companies with the same scorn we do the tobacco industry and may they be ashamed and disgusted at our inaction.
(Not to mention all the other consent age laws.)
That said, VPN is a national security issue, children are only a pretext.
They’d just get an older sibling, or stranger to buy it. Or they’d have a fake ID. Or they’d just steal it from a family member.
But you know which kids did this the least? It was the ones where their parents / guardians took their responsibilities as a guardian properly.
Doesn't mean that it's equivalent to giving them free access to those consumables.
> But you know which kids did this the least?
Source?
Why do people on HN always need to look at things as a Boolean state? It’s entirely reasonable to have some preventative measures but acknowledging that there are ways to circumvent them and accept that as a reasonable conclusion.
Things don’t need to be “all or nothing” ;)
> Source?
I grew up pre-WWW. Literally lived and breathed the points I’m making.
But don’t just take my word on this. Ask anyone of a certain age and they’ll tell you the same: they either tried cigarettes or knew lots of kids in school who smoked under the age of 16. They had access to alcohol under the age of 18. And pornographic content was easy to get hold of under the age of 18.
The age at which they gained access and the frequency of the usage depended greatly on their upbringing.
I totally agree. That can be used as an argument in favour of age verification, though.
:/
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/ireland/corporate/tax-credits-a...
In case anyone wonders: this means the FANG companies don't pay tax in Ireland if they hire enough people in Ireland, which has famously high income tax. It is, in other words, effectively a massive tax increase on the employees while actually reducing total tax income in the EU compared to the "double dutch sandwich".
Note that Ireland signed at least 2 international treaties that they weren't going to do this (OECD minimum tax treaty, EU tax treaty). Of course, there are no consequences to this.
The response to is that EU is exploring company-tax-per-transaction which is so incredibly bad in the massive administrative burden it will generate. It's not final, but it will mean that for every transaction done companies will have to keep (PER transaction) pieces (plural) of evidence for what country they happened in. Every single transaction.
https://joint-research-centre.ec.europa.eu/projects-and-acti...
> How come tax loopholes aren't as scrutinized?
When I was a kid, child programming and commercials were heavily scrutinized. Now any kid can access porn, violence, and scams on the internet. That's a blight. Not age verification.
It was still the job of the parents to set the bed times etc, but at least this was something the parents could actually control.
And for pay-per-view stations with actual heavily violent or pornographic content: Yes, they were absolutely age-gated, usually via a PIN.
Im contrast, the internet is default-permit: Everyone can access everything, unless the device is specifically set up to block it. Setting up such a block has the risk of causing massive drama with your kids, and they fill probably quickly find ways to circumvent it anyway.
This is why I find the "it's the parent's responsibility" calls so hypocritical: The whole idea behind the internet is to make it as hard as possible to block things. But suddenly we expect the parents to do exactly that? How?
(All that independent of the point that the current push for age verification really seems like a disguised push for control. But that doesn't mean there isn't a real problem. Both things can be true at the same time)
Before Internet they used paper.
It isn't just governments.
This is also quietly being backed by some big corporations with money .
> big corporations with money
Is there a notable difference between these two in most places? There _should_ be but in practice it feels like more and more places function closer to an oligarchy than whatever form of “democracy” they espouse to practice.
Why is age verification connected with identity verification?
I understand why the former is not possible with the latter, but my question is -
Whichever entity is responsible for the verification can just pass on the age verification confirmation without passing through any of the other details, right?
Am I mistaken here? Because if this was possible, I could still go ahead with using the VPN.
> The report highlights emerging approaches, such as “double-blind” verification systems used in France, where websites receive only confirmation that a user meets age requirements without learning the user's identity, while the verification provider does not see which websites the user visits.
The EU digital wallet framework is built around those, and your suggested scenario is a first class citizen.
It is now moving from the academic/research world, to the political field, and feedback/pressure from both commercial groups and political agendas is muddling the field.
Here are some links to canonical docs, you can easily find high quality videos that explain this is shorter/simpler terms to get a grasp of it.
https://www.w3.org/TR/did-1.0/
https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model-2.0/
A note: it’s one of the healthy byproducts of the blockchain age, don’t get sidetracked by some hyped videos from crypto bros.
At least most complaints I see here are assuming that age verification means tracking.
Too bad, there could be interesting discussions about privacy-preserving age verification, if people just bothered getting informed before complaining.
Now there is a time politicians control what websites we can access.