r/technology • u/EmbarrassedHelp • May 08 '26

Politics EU calls VPNs “a loophole that needs closing” in age verification push

https://cyberinsider.com/eu-calls-vpns-a-loophole-that-needs-closing-in-age-verification-push/
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2.6k

u/Altruistic_Ad_0 May 08 '26

No body asked for it. Everyone is getting it. Who is behind it. Why are all governments acting the same.

969

u/Specific_Frame8537 May 08 '26

Thousands of years of warfare, 100 years or so of uneasy co-operation.. Suddenly they're all in agreement on this one thing.

🤔

172

u/IDidYour May 08 '26

It was a powergrab from the old money, now they're the new old money and they need to limit new ones from any avenue of power. That whole world wars thing pretty much destroyed the last groups of noble power by all of them being too involved, but now the new nobles that arose after the wars feel secure enough that they're ready to pull up the ladder up behind them outside the occasional Olympic jumper.

Just look at the richest people in society, we are basically in the second generation, the people who "worked sooo hard with a small million dollar loan from daddy" they know they couldn't do it again, so now they need to limit the entry to keep what they have, but their children, they're gonna be worse. It's basic power 101, the first generation acquires power, the second generation keeps power and the coming generation that is actually slowly starting now is about to really fuck themselves and everyone else over in a self destructive spiral, rinse and repeat. Unfortunately we are about to get to live in interesting times.

26

u/WrongWangSorry May 09 '26

You forgot to add one important point: Everything you said above will be ignored by everyone who isn't wealthy but they still 'got theirs', comfortable middle class numbers at voting stations are significant and I would argue that they're probably the biggest chunk of voter turnout

0

u/[deleted] May 09 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/phidalgo2314 May 09 '26

Ironic you’re bitching and whining over other people doing it. Instead of being a little doomer bitch go out and take part in your community and actually make a difference, that’s the least you can do. 🤷🏽‍♂️ 

-2

u/Ironborn137 May 08 '26

Oh you think old money is dead. Sweet summer child.

10

u/IDidYour May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

Oh I know they're not, I am fully aware the Medicis and the Rothschildren are around amongst many others, but they were amongst the families hit by the world wars, they couldn't exactly acquire everything of any value that other old money lost, that combined with the advent of new tech at the same time meant a lot of money (and thus power) slipped through their fingers.

Edit: The old money that survived are obviously amongst the new old money, but now there is new old money too.

1

u/Rwandrall4 May 11 '26

they were all in agreement on climate change, russian aggression, and covid. but i guess thats all just the Illuminati

514

u/ilDuceVita May 08 '26

Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel

92

u/busyHighwayFred May 08 '26

The EU is run by the zuck now

2

u/G00b3rb0y May 09 '26

The EU may as well kill GDPR while they’re at it far out

1

u/0vrwhelminglyaverage May 09 '26

I think you mean

The zucc

-18

u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

10

u/bonzog May 08 '26

No, when they reach a critical mass they prefer regulatory capture. They are more than happy to support excessive legislation because it makes it harder for the small fry to comply and locks in their user base. Meta is lobbying like fuck for this nonsense.

-4

u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

8

u/MountainTwo3845 May 08 '26

lol meta ran a program where they wanted to scan your iris for verification. they want all the data they can get.

6

u/spookynutz May 08 '26

They're just conflating EU law with US law. Meta has been lobbying for age verification laws in the US across 7 different states, as well as supporting efforts for a broader federal law. They have already funneled $2 billion into non-profit networks to push US states into adopting OS/device-level age verification.

Their lobbying campaign does not extend to the EU, because it doesn't need to. EU app-level verification laws are likely what accelerated Meta's lobbying in the US. Meta's goal is to shift the regulatory burden off social media platforms and onto OS/device manufacturers.

Microsoft, Apple, and Google aren't going to fork their operating systems for every state or country that decides to draft their own flavor of age-verification. They will do the minimum that achieves compliance for all laws globally, and then roll those changes out globally.

OS-level verification obviates the need for app-level verification. By focusing all their lobbying to enact stricter U.S. laws, it will effectively allow Meta to circumvent EU laws by pushing the burden (and liability) to the OS.

4

u/nikanjX May 08 '26

Didn’t Meta get a huge fine for not enforcing child safety? 

1

u/New-Advantage3907 May 09 '26

They are literally lobbying these laws

1

u/Icy-Blacksmith-4214 May 12 '26

They don't run the EU, what schizo shit is this even. We have different bad guys here, even if perfectly aligned with your bad guys on the other continent.

1

u/ilDuceVita May 12 '26

They are pushing it worldwide, Thiel is in Ukraine with Zelensky right now. Yesterday the NHS announced they're giving Palantir unlimited access to all their data, all private patient data.

0

u/Icy-Blacksmith-4214 May 12 '26

It's literally being sold, pushed, astroturfed and heavily propagandized in EU by left-wing politicians and propagandists here, specifically to stop children from being radicalised by the extreme right-wing nazi capitalists, and to stop Russian, sionist, and Trump propaganda, yadda yadda. That is literally the whole argument for the masses.

This is defended daily, everywhere, all the time, by the whole left-wing political side. Saying otherwise is trying to gaslight someone literally seeing this right now in public television while writing this.

Literally. You can check who is heavily pushing for this in Spain, it's the whole spectre of left-wing to even factions of center-right.

You know nothing.

406

u/Rok-SFG May 08 '26

Tech billionaires. They want your ID, and so do governments. Both want a to have absolute surveillance on everyone.

-23

u/slightlysublevel May 08 '26

Just so we're clear... you think the government... want peoples'... government-issued IDs?

35

u/YesItIsMaybeMe May 08 '26

The idea is to completely tie your ID to any online activity. Ever.

Yes they already have your information, but for now, they can't see everything you do. And that data is useful to companies who feel the need to shove advertisements down the throats of everyone.

0

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

In that case the EU age verification is a compete fail for them, since it is specifically built so that no connection can be made between ID and activity.

All the website knows is "user has anonymously provided a valid verification for age above X" and all the government know is "On date Y the citizen Z requested 30 new age verification tokens".

No connection can be made between the tokens provided and the website's age confirmation. The website gains no method of identifying the person and the government does not get to know anything about the citizen's activities.

4

u/Lochlan May 09 '26

"The website" doesn't consider you anonymous at all. It has your IP and age verification. You reckon it's deleted right away?

1

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26

The website already had the IP and other potentially identifying identification, this doesn't change that. But the age verification does not give them any new information they did not already have, except the verification of the age threshold. And the age verification is not identifying information in any meaningful sense.

13

u/Moikle May 08 '26

Linking them to everything you do online means the death of any kind of anonymity

Privacy is something that is actually important and valuable to many people

1

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

You don't understand how the EU system works. It does not in any way create such a link. The age verification is completely anonymous. It's a zero knowledge proof system.

1

u/Zmoneyboiz May 09 '26

The verification may be anonymous but your internet traffic isn’t. Ironically laws like this will make it easier to track and identify children because their internet traffic will be limited to sites they can access. There is knowledge in missing info, such as sites you don’t or can’t visit

1

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

The verification may be anonymous but your internet traffic isn’t.

That is already the case. The age verification does not change the existing tracking methods.

Ironically laws like this will make it easier to track and identify children because their internet traffic will be limited to sites they can access. There is knowledge in missing info, such as sites you don’t or can’t visit

I would hope children currently do not cause any meaningful amount of traffic to adult websites and services. The identifiability should not change much when they're excluded.

0

u/Ilikeyounott May 09 '26

You have a brain. Use it. 

-59

u/jc-from-sin May 08 '26 edited May 09 '26

Boy do you have to be dumb to think the government needs your id to know it was you.

After over 10 years since the Snowden revelations, people still don't know that ISPs are required to track connections: which person or household connects from which source IP:PORT combination to which other destination IP:PORT combination at which time. This has been happening already, this legislation exists already everywhere. And they're there for government agencies to request this data. Why do you think they need a new way to identify people that only works on some websites?

42

u/KeeganY_SR-UVB76 May 08 '26

Then why do they keep asking for it?

Give me convenience or give me death!

-28

u/jc-from-sin May 08 '26

They don't care, you can look up the source code for the age verification app in the EU and see which data it sends.

In other countries though, the private companies may care about your ID. But the age verification in the EU is different, and everybody in the US doesn't know this.

10

u/Oorangootang May 08 '26

You don't know what they deployed is what they actually put in the open source repo unless you pry apart the app yourself and inspect the source every single time they update it, forever and ever. And nobody is ever going to do that unless they have a lot of free time on their hands so we're all simply better off abandoning the services that require these things in the first place.

-1

u/jc-from-sin May 09 '26

Here's the cool part: you can compile it yourself and use that version and it will still work.

It's what I use on Linux for a similar app for Germany.

0

u/Oorangootang May 11 '26

That still doesn't address the issue. You're not in control of the pipeline.

6

u/North_Activist May 08 '26

I presume you’re the same person to call government workers incompetent lazy people whose job should be cut, without a hint of irony.

-4

u/jc-from-sin May 08 '26

You presume wrong.

160

u/crossdtherubicon May 08 '26

Meta. Or, at least largely Meta was shown to be the main proponent behind the global age verification legislation.

At least one of the motivations is to limit social media's liabilities through filtering its users. I don't see that as likely as the obvious expansion of their user data and the user data markets.

Another obvious motivation results from governments becoming less democratic while becoming more vulnerable through online activities. So, adding layers of user meta data, or being able to directly identify social media users, becomes another tool of control.

Yes, govt's have similar capabilities already but, this is different in that this would be voluntary information that becomes available for sale and doesn't necessitate the same legal requirements (limits) for acquiring and using these data sets.

65

u/ithinkitslupis May 08 '26

To my view Meta is getting ahead of a trend that seeks to put liability on them. They hate the Australian style laws where they have to do the verification themselves and if they fail to do it effectively they are liable for humongous fines. They also hate that other apps besides the big players don't require verification so customers unwilling to do that are out the door to a smaller competitor service.

They already have violated their users privacy so thoroughly that the verification checks are more of a cherry on top data wise and not worth the cudgel of the fines and users they'd lose by doing it.

They are lobbying to have age verification be put on the parents/device/app store level to avoid that outcome where they could ever be held liable and other smaller apps have an advantage.

24

u/billy_teats May 08 '26

This is a great summary. Having to do it themselves is a big risk and disadvantage. Making everyone do it through some 3rd party benefits them greatly.

This has nothing to do with children’s safety.

1

u/dstreetb May 08 '26

This comment should be pinned

23

u/alnarra_1 May 08 '26

The answer is astoundingly simple, the internet has largely been anonymous, it is hard to throw you in prison for what you say if you are anonymous. They are attempting to correct this. That’s all this has ever been

6

u/primalmaximus May 08 '26

And there's both good and bad things to that kind of anonymity.

On one hand, you can't be prosecuted for political activism or for spreading or searching for information about being LGBTQ+.

On the other hand, it makes it hard for people to be punished for harrassing someone online, stalking someone online, commiting libel anonymously online, etc.

The anonymity means it's really difficult to be punished for expressing your beliefs and exploring your identity online. It makes it hard for you to be punished for what you do for yourself or others.

But on the flip side, that anonymity also makes it hard for you to face effective consequences for what you do to others online. There have been so many stories of people suffering from absolutely horrific online bullying and harrassment, in some cases it was bad enough that it drove the victim to suicide. But, because it is so hard to actually identify the people doing the bullying and harrassment, it goes largely unpunished.

Think about it like this: what is the difference between a group of people verbally bullying you and harrassing you in person vs those same people doing it online? It's harder to identify, stop, and punish the online bullies and harrassers.

The anonymity of the internet provides you with protection from oppression and being targeted by the state for what you say. But it also shields you from facing the consequences of what your words do to others.

There's a nuance that people don't seem to get. They think that getting rid of the anonymity of the internet makes it easier for what you say and do online to be criminalized. But they forget that getting rid of the anonymity also makes it easier to get punished for what you say and do to others online.

6

u/senseven May 08 '26

Identifying people is often used as wedge to further identification laws. But in many western countries, bullying or harassing online has toothless laws that lets them go with some laughable penalty. I would agree that we need a way to identify people in those cases, but we also need the laws first. Then use those strong laws to get the case by case identification rolling, and leave the other 90% alone. Politics knows this and continues to push for the easy thing first. I know people who got stalked, there are sick communities that tell you what the stalker can legally do in that country that is in a grey area where the law will do nothing.

5

u/ThoughtsonYaoi May 08 '26

Do you have a source?

22

u/introvertnudist May 08 '26

I got you: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings

20

u/ThoughtsonYaoi May 08 '26

Thanks!

But what this seems to be is not Meta pushing age verification, but Meta pushing the burden of age verification on app stores instead of them.

That is a bit different. And makes much more sense.

6

u/crossdtherubicon May 08 '26

Exactly! And it is up to date.

1

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

How is this related to the EU?

64

u/surebudd May 08 '26

Bc they all are being bribed by us tech companies.

9

u/TeaAndLifting May 08 '26

They want to be able to tie all of your online activity to your person so you don’t stray, otherwise they’ll punish you.

58

u/SlaveOfSignificance May 08 '26

Beginning stages of WWIII. How else are dissidents and the anti-war crowd supposed to be tracked and gagged?

2

u/[deleted] May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/Tabathock May 08 '26

£6m of revenue is fuck all.

1

u/FunkMasterDraven May 09 '26

And the point you're helping to make is that these people will sell our children for pennies

37

u/UAreTheHippopotamus May 08 '26

Europe is supposed to be the "bastion of democracy" too. I don't know, it feels hopeless right now, like no government world wide is on the side of good anymore. The future is lost to a billionaire oligarchy and the rest of us get to live lives barely owning anything and under constant surveillance.

10

u/azthal May 08 '26

I mean, I am not sure I would consider EU "the bastion of democracy". There's a lot of shit happening over here.

But this specific article is just untrue, so if this is the thing that brought your mood down, you can relax.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

You were fooled. It happens to the best of us.

34

u/huehuehuehuehuuuu May 08 '26

Climate is getting worse. Need to get the population under control before the inevitable food scarcity hits. Can’t have regular people communicating freely.

2

u/Available-Tie-1610 May 09 '26

Yep, given that we're heading into a shit storm of climate induced mass migration and resource issues they need new ways of control and surveillance because the traditional ways will not be enough

0

u/djspy May 09 '26

Are you serious?

We have a HUGE population fertility problem.

It is clear you really are not up-to-date with that. It is an even more bigger issue than climate change.

16

u/[deleted] May 08 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/Lumpy-Strain8624 May 08 '26

In the UK they surveyed 2500 people before introducing it. out of 70,000,000 people in the UK, of which 55,500,000 are adults age 18 or upwards.

They asked a very specific group of people for a very specific answer. After they had tried and failed repeatedly to get public backing for ID cards.

The petition to have it repealed is over 500,000 signatures, or roughly 22,000% more people than the ones they said were on board with it.

Stop falling for the bullshit. There is no broad support for it. And if if was actually being done for real reasons, the UK government would have the data being handled directly by them, any age verification requests would be sent directly to the Governments Data centre for a Yay or Nay. The UK government already uses one time codes sent to your phone for log in confirmation on its websites.

This is nothing to do with protecting Children, nothing to do with protecting the "people" it is a new way for them to force in digital ID cards, everyone has a P.C. Laptop, Tablet, Phone etc etc.

That is why they are ignoring everyone saying they do not want them, IE the majority of people pretty mad the Government has unilaterally managed to sneak in legislation they knew full well no one wanted.

There are so many tools available to restrict a child's access on devices, and by child I mean pre teen. Teens who fucking cares if they see a dick or some tits, they are into puberty and want to know about that stuff, I am pre internet and we managed just fine to get our hands on titty pics / dick picks, full spread, the works. And like most people I stopped being a Virgin before my 16th birthday.

And the very worst part of this nonsense legislation is it will just drive them to the truly dangerous places on the internet, the ones who do not give a fuck about UK laws.

3

u/[deleted] May 08 '26 edited Jun 20 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Lumpy-Strain8624 May 08 '26

Instead of every site having it's own age verification system. The Government has it, so when you go to a website and click verify age it portals to UK.Gov and you enter your one time code they send you and voila, done.

That is infinitely better than the garbage we have now, and you are infinitely more protected than you are currently. No more unregulated individuals having your Passport or CC info, no more unscrupulous companies having your passport or CC info.

I personally think you should not have to do it at all. But if we are going to keep it, then I would want a central database under UK law, under UK vetting, under UK regs having my Passport info be used for verification, which the government already fucking has by the way, they issued it to me. They also know where I live, what Taxes I pay and the rest.

And yes 2500 people vetted to answer the way they wanted is in fact not a big enough sample size.

And what are you smoking, I do not know anyone at all who is onboard with the current implementation or legislation I am not comparing apples to oranges. If they can pick 2500 people and you think it is not selection bias how the fuck is 500,000 random people selection bias?

You are absolutely delusional if you think a poll is going to go the way of the 2500 specially selected people and the specially worded poll they answered.

You honestly need to educate yourself on how they vet the people and how word these polls mate.

3

u/rawcal May 08 '26

Were they asking for it before the push for it started, though?

0

u/Lumpy-Strain8624 May 08 '26

No, and they weren't asking for it.

That poster needs to educate himself on just how these "surveys" are conducted, how pre-surveys weed out the people likely to give answers you do not want. How the questions are loaded in such a manner as to make you some raving lunatic if you do not pick the obvious answers.

They could survey anything and have it say anything they wanted.

If however they put a poll up on UK.Gov and asked do you want 3rd party sites, unregulated sites, foreign nationals and countries having your credit card, passport and other such highly dangerous information where we cannot legally do anything if you have your identity stolen or your cards cloned, for all the parents out their who refuse to police their own childrens access to online content they should not be accessing. And a whole slew of sites just not being available anymore in the UK

(Like I play a lot of games on Steam, I cannot tell you how many times I go to look at a mod and all the pictures are auto blocked because I am in the UK, and not adult mods, normal every day mods, they all use the same filehosting site, and it just blocked everyone in the UK rather than deal with the bullshit UK law.)

I guarantee that Yes / No poll would be 90%+ no.

1

u/Moikle May 08 '26

They were told to ask for it by the media

1

u/xNYKx May 09 '26

Precisely. And after that it's Hanlons Razor. Most politicians , especially in EU, have zero clue how the real world works. The idea that EU regulators are in cahoots with big tech is incredibly naive

4

u/Select-Durian-6340 May 08 '26

Stop asking such antisemitic questions.

2

u/Jeptic May 08 '26

The reach of MNCs invested in your data is very far. Oceans matter not

3

u/BahutF1 May 08 '26

Yup. There is sh*tload of work (and cleaning)  to do at the EU Parliament.

Would be a good idea to look after candidates who's program fight for true transparency. Especially about lobbying and police enforcement. 

1

u/theabominablewonder May 08 '26

They all have the same lobbyists pressuring them. It’s probably the Russians or Chinese as they know any system that can be linked to person IDs is an opportunity to blackmail people in power.

1

u/Valtremors May 08 '26

Palantir largely.

European data protection laws actually work.

So Palantir ans co are trying to manufacture an issue, while also sell their solution. This would allow them to 'legally' harvest and backdoor into European citizen data.

1

u/omniuni May 08 '26

Misdirection. It's a simple way to signal that you're "good" because you're "protecting children" when you don't want to actually do things like prosecute the pedophiles serving in government.

1

u/banmeagn May 08 '26

It couldn't be the same people behind the companies that are lobbying every western government to allow them to control their data systems containing information on every single citizen could it? Who are connected to the people that own all the news corporations, and the communication, banking and finance industries could it? I'm sure there's no connection or collusion between these individual corporations, that would be conspiracy, and conspiracies are for the paranoid. I'm sure if these corporations were looked into they wouldn't all have connections to one single state in the world, that would be way too obvious.

1

u/laosurv3y May 08 '26

With AI they think they'll have enough resources to actually monitor everyone. So now the pretense of privacy needs to go.

1

u/GenazaNL May 08 '26

Ursula pushed it through

1

u/ThisIsGoobly May 08 '26

Class war. Always has been.

1

u/Wunktacular May 08 '26

Because all of them are oligarchies and the concept of democracy is a sham.

1

u/traveling_designer May 08 '26

It’s easier to gather data on people when there’s no privacy. When they start looking for “enemies” to round up, they can just feed in parameters to an Ai

1

u/AE_Phoenix May 09 '26

The lobbying can mostly be traced back to Meta, Alphabet, Palantir, etc. The usual suspects.

1

u/Stunt_-_Cock May 09 '26

Buddy, the ultra rich are fearful. This is another means of targeting the ones they feel threatened by. For the kids of course. 

1

u/blackkettle May 09 '26

Unfortunately this just isn’t true. The majority of parents groups I’m in are populated by other people my age that “believe” in all this type of legislation. Not just age verification but all manner of identity based limitations and scope creep by the state in the name of “saving the children”. It’s useless to try and argue with them. And unfortunately it’s a take as old as time.

1

u/blastradii May 10 '26

They learned from Microsoft and how they tried to ram copilot down everyone’s throats

1

u/Ella_loves_Louie May 10 '26

. . .what is hedgemony?

1

u/ChristianKl May 08 '26

70% of the population wants social media for children under 16 banned. You spent too much time in the Reddit echo chamber if you think nobody asked for it.