I think there is a flaw in EU’s way of acting and functioning. European countries seem to be sharing the same cultural values yet there are different deeper values hidden to the foreigner from country to country. For example we look at Middle East, Africa, Asia and we easily spot cultural differences. Yet we fail to see the gaps between our countries inside EU. Holland and northern countries had for years a culture of child protection on computing devices,and not only,that 20 years ago I found strange. There is an industry for that in there and thriving. What they just did was to apply their normality to us, without them understanding the gap. They just don’t understand the issue. Controlling children like that is normal for them.
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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The whole thing is wrongheaded in the first place; any child wanting to access adult-only content will use an adult’s account to do so; any adult attempting to access adult-only content is likewise going to use an adult’s account.
So unless they’re tying this to biometrics that are actually secure against an adverserial child, all the system really does is creates a registry of adults. And we already have those.
Creating a registry of adults and what content they access is exactly the point of these laws. Always has been. "Protecting children" is just the easiest excuse to make it seem more urgent to violate people's rights. Just like removing trans healthcare started with children and is now targeting adults.
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Wasn't there something about the effectiveness of the Australian law to restrict minors on social media? Ah...
Four in five under-16s in Australia using social media despite ban, study shows
Experts say law not enough to stop children accessing harmful content online and more ‘convincing strategy is required’ . More than 80% of under-16s in Australia said they were still using social media three months after legislation banning them from it came into force, research shows.
It’s like any controlled substance ban — unless there’s a really invasive crack-down it just shifts the problem to a less safe black market.
Making things easy and safe to access with controls that are adjustable is always more effective than an outright ban that shifts the access fully into unregulated territory.
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Can't wait for EU to ban general purpose computing. At some point ,everybody is just going to get a locked down Windows tablet where only EU approved software runs.
Can't wait to become a shady dealer who sells pre 2026 computers with highly illegal software running on it (such as debian)
There's gonna be a whole black market for smuggling open computing platforms from China 🤣
I fear that is the inevitable whimpered ending of the personal computing era. Cory Doctorow called it back in 2011.
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They're gonna ban abacuss next, and then comes mental math, and suddenly 2+2=fish
so bye anything that isn't microsoft, apple or google? really tech independent of europe.
Disgusting
How I see it, ocurres when the laws are made by ancients which confuse an remote control with an smartphone.
Gee. I totally not saw that coming.
These people who push for it are fascists, and the only way to deal with fascists is to kill them before they murder you.
Please explain... If I'm below the age of... Whatever they decide, what will or will not be accessible to me? Like, if I'm below a certain age, will some EU appointed DNS restrict what domains I can reach? Or, since this article is about hardware-bound attestation, are my devices going to prevent me from installing and using certain apps if I'm below the age? I don't understand where the restrictions are going to lie...
Bonus: can't I just buy, say, five phones right now, root them or install custom OSs before shit hits the fan and be happy?
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The real explanation is that they want control. The children are a excuse.
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No because you can go to jail for that, like the dude with his GrapheneOS in the US. They're probably working on that next.
No because you can go to jail for that, like the dude with his GrapheneOS in the US. They’re probably working on that next.
no... you can not go to jail, in the EU or the US at least, for having a phone with a custom OS. They are facing charge for using a duress code which wiped their phone. It is very different.
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The services themselves will probably be made to ask for verification and your devices will answer through the age verification app. Since custom mobile OSs (or desktop Linux) won't provide hardware attestation, the app won't work on them and the websites will treat you as underage. The types of services that require age verification aren't specific, they can change based on EU decisions so eventually people not using "approved" OSs may be locked out of most of the internet.
so eventually people not using “approved” OSs may be locked out of most of the internet
Agree 100%. I hope everyone realizes this! I have seen too many ppl who think, "It's OK, open source will save us". But open source can't. This is a legal and social prob, and needs a legal and social solution.
And you can be damn sure this will infest necessary government services and apps that won't allow you to contact the government in any other way.
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First of all,
I don’t understand where the restrictions are going to lie
Yes. That's exactly the question.
The point of the... excitement around this is exactly the uncertainty. We simply don't know what the EU or national governments of the EU will do with this.
The first problem is that the "hardware bound attestation" isn't just hardware bound, it's specifically Apple and Android's attestation and NOT the more open standard. That means the device that can do this thing, whatever it's going to be "necessary" for, MUST always be an Apple or Google device, with that bit intact. Tbh, I don't really know how much rooting affects this, but I would be surprised if it didn't.
The second problem is that once the infrastructure for blocking access to something and requiring this sort of authentication is in place, it's just a list of targets. It's very easy to add another platform, website, app or anything else behind it.
And the reason for this excitement happening now is that the specification that was given for all this to happen previously only said it should be "secure" somehow, but not detailing the "how". They think they can do it as an implementation detail and pretend it's not a big deal. So it's very clearly something those bastards have tried to be sneaky about.
Can you use rooted phones
No, whatever the point of their efforts is, they will make sure to not leave obvious loopholes like that open.
Doesn't sound like an internet worth using
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The solution lets users prove they are over a certain age without revealing their name, exact birth date, or full identity document. To prevent credentials from being copied, cloned, or reused by modified clients, the project relies on keys stored in protected hardware like Android TEE, StrongBox, or Apple’s Secure Enclave.
The project’s technical specification requires age verification apps to use native cryptographic hardware when available. However, stricter checks like root detection, Google Play Integrity, and Apple App Attest are not universally mandated by the reference implementation and may be left to individual deployers.
So there's a chance that GrapheneOS will be supported. I mean, we can still decompile the app, modify it and then repackage it. Or someone will make a patcher app.
I would love to be wrong about this, but I don't think it's likely. Why would a government voluntarily spend money on making the app work for a minority of people running a privacy OS that politicians associate with criminals and gangsters?
Also, it's not like the wallet app will actually be open source in the traditional sense where you can fork and compile it yourself, so I think getting any decent version of it seems like a long shot
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I have a solution to the age verification problem. There is a way to affirmatively prove someone is a real human adult without invasions of privacy. We can use the same ID verification system we've been using for centuries: public notaries.
Governments could hand anonymous cryptographic tokens to notaries. These contain no information on the individual. They're simply a unique cryptographic token. You can go to a notary, pay a nominal fee, show your ID, and grab one of the tokens (possibly just a code printed on a card) from a large bin of them. You can then use this token to register for any number of sites. The notary themselves does not need to note which cryptographic token you grab. The notary doesn't even know what token you received. The goal is merely to prove you're an adult human, not to create a cryptographic key tied to your specific identity.
I would then let people do this as many times as they want. You can get a hundred such IDs. They wouldn't cost much, a few dollar or Euros. This would be no barrier to individuals accessing the net, but it would make them unsuitable for mass spamming.
No. There is zero need for this shit, don't normalize it.
There is a clear need for it. There's value in having online discussion spaces that aren't just swamped with bots. We really need a reliable way of telling human from bot. I want to find a way to do that preserves privacy to the greatest degree possible.
Do you have any constructive criticism to offer? Maybe a suggested improvement, or an alternative way to accomplish the same goal? What's your solution to separate human from bot?
There is no need for it. Sorry. Certainly not government mandated, which is the worst part.
Frankly if you treat the internet like we did all the way back in bbs days, it doesn't matter that much: Everyone is a liar. So I don't care what anyone says. Bot or not.
In the forums I run we haven't seen much of a bot presence at all, so these spaces already exist. How do I know? We have all met each other at one point or another. So I may know a, a knows b, and so on.
Do I want the burden of starting authentication on top of this? No.
I don't want the internet to require me to get authentication. I really don't care about the bot issue. Go outside and meet people in real life if that's what you want.
There is no need for it. Sorry. Certainly not government mandated, which is the worst part.
YOU have no need of it. You're projecting your experiences onto everyone else. Maybe you're content only hanging out in limited forums where you have to know someone to join. And those forums can continue to operate without any human verification. If you don't care whether the spaces you occupy are infested with bots, or can manage with white lists, fine. But most people don't want to talk to bots. Not everyone has the social connections you do.
I don't support mandating ID for anything. But you are not the only person in the world. Just because you have no need of it, doesn't mean no one does. Not everyone uses the internet the same way you do.
"Only join forums where you personally know the people there" is not a scalable solution to this problem.
Respect a diversity of viewpoints and experiences. Your way is not the only way.
You’re projecting your experiences onto everyone else.
In fairness, you are doing this right now.
I don’t support mandating ID for anything. But you are not the only person in the world. Just because you have no need of it, doesn’t mean no one does. Not everyone uses the internet the same way you do.
You are free to create websites that function this way, or participate in websites that function this way, but don't push it on the rest of the internet.
“Only join forums where you personally know the people there” is not a scalable solution to this problem.
Sure it is. We didnt all know each other personally when we started, and people are welcome to join anytime. We just can figure out pretty quickly who is real and who is not because we meet each other. So what problem?
Not everyone uses the internet the same way you do.
Of course not, because they are either idiots, or never learned the basics. This is internet 101.
- Everyone is a liar.
- Everyone is anonymous
- Because of rule 2, see rule one.
You are commenting in a privacy forum. I quite likely am talking to a bot, or you are talking to a bot right? So don't listen to me, BUT: no matter how hard you try, making any system that requires any kind of verification on an internet wide scale WILL be abused.
Use the internet as intended and the problem goes away.
Edit: also, even if you filter the bots, the issues remain because in many ways people are just as bad. Misleading, argumentative, liars, agendas, half truths, etc. So it doesnt really matter.
It’s all silly because computers are not paired with any specific body. You could toss your “18+ accessible phone” to your kid, etc.
Unless they do implants, which is nightmare land because we know they’ll want more than just your birthday.
I didn't like the age verification law either, but as it would be introduced everywhere, yes or yes, at least it's mandatory to search an privacy protecting methode, which isn'y not so easy, Because of this I asked Sketchapedia, which shows an zero knowledge system, the service provider only receive an OK or Not OK with it.
In problems which I can't avoid, I always prefer to search solutions or at least workarrounds to fix it.
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These kinds of laws will not succeed. People will choose to ignore them, like they ignore other laws, like they litter, jaywalk, drive 10 over the limit, run stop signs, etc. It will succeed in driving up prices on products from those companies who choose to comply, because they will be forced to hire in a lot more lawyers and compliance staff. These laws create lots of full time jobs in tech companies that few realize even exist. They have meetings every week, attend conferences, constantly send letters back and forth to each other. Then people wonder why their Gamepass fees went up $10 (its not actually the games)
Fuck EU.
Well, in that case, fuck you too.
The EU is the only organization that fairly consistently tries to do the tight thing. Its the only organization from which I regularly hear good news. Just because sometimes they make mid steps doesn't mean they're the devil. World wide, it currently is the best we have.
This age verification shit is literallyhappening everywhere, so dunking on the EU for also doing it is disingenuous at best. That they require hardware attestation for that is more a "if you do something, do it well", so in this case "if you do something stupid, do it very well"
Just to be clear: fuck everything about this, but I'm not so small minded to throw the entire idea of the EU off a cliff just because they do something stupid
Edit: this goes without even talking about how without the EU, Russia would simply start picking off state after state because fuck genocide Putin
The Linux + open source community has more potential to be a historic force than the Eurasian Peninsula, and all first world socialists combined. One will be erased, replaced, the better one consumed and made use of.
I am not joking btw
I am not joking btw
Just being ever so slightly delusional if you think that developers are the same as the EU
It's a totalitarian move aimed only at establishing a police state for the average people. It will not affect the criminals or terrorists in the least. They've managed to figure out how to operate without cell phone tracking apparently. Seems the gadgetcops need to figure out how to do real police work again. I'm sure a few guys in their 60s-80s might remember how it was done before the gadgets showed up
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