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Comment by stvltvs | Hacker News Reader

The concern isn't that an authoritarian government locks you out of some age-restricted sites, it's that it locks you out of them all.

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Well, sure. But that doesn't answer my original question - which 3rd party provider do you trust more with your own data more than the government[which in most cases already has this data]

Data ownership is just one area of concern. Controlling our access to the internet is another.

If age verification was an open standard, we could hope for competition so that we could jump ship from a bad actor. If one blocks our access, we would have alternatives. In theory.

Not so with a centralized government-mandated service.

Who is in charge of certifying implementers? What happens when I provide an implementation and don't verify anything at all?

I'm not saying age verification is a good idea, just that a centralized government-mandated implementation is a bad way to do an already bad idea.

The government can just arrest you and lock you out of all sites. It's not like they cannot do it today.

You can disable Internet access for millions instantly. You can't arrest millions.

Again, this can be done already? Look at any authoritarian country killing internet access the moment anything happens.

This could be more targeted, like a no-fly list for the internet. Political dissidents, journalists, etc. could be effectively exiled from online activity.

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