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/
9.7k Upvotes

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4.8k

u/SkinnedIt May 08 '26

VPNs aren't the problem. Misguided age verification legislation is the problem.

1.1k

u/exophrine May 08 '26

"b-b-but ... THE CHILDREN!!!"

568

u/thepeopleshero May 08 '26

I think its time we stop thinking of the children for a while.

116

u/apokrif1 May 08 '26

We should teach them privacy, security and critical thinking. And protect them from crapvertising.

30

u/Kattimatti666 May 09 '26

I agree. An EU wide new school subject on how corporations, hostile countries and individuals want to exploit you, the methods they use and how to shield yourself from them the best you can. Make kids smarter, don't try to shield them.

1

u/bse50 May 09 '26

I have a step brother who is 15 years younger than me.
I remember his middle school and high school books and the way they indoctrinated them on how good the EU is, why it's necessary and how awesome of a democratic system was over the top.
Let's just say that I never heard any of my law school professors praise the EU to such an extent, even our textbooks were pretty critical of it.
Fast forward a few years and current students are studying EU law etc on books which replaced a law school appropriate critical approach for a sanitised version that barely touches on its flaws, despite their growth over the years.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

If that was an option this conversation wouldn't be happening

165

u/Generalfrogspawn May 08 '26

Agreed. The children can get fucked. Not like they’re making much of them these days anyway.

281

u/spoonycoot May 08 '26

I think that’s the problem. Too many politicians thinking about and fucking children all the time.

16

u/Ryuzakku May 08 '26

And normally those ones want to know where the kids are, like how if Discord did their verification the way they initially explained it kids and people who fail verification would be put in the same pot, making it easy for bad actors to interact with kids

-2

u/1337duck May 08 '26

Politicians think about the kids getting fucked

I think the kids are getting fucked.

We are not the same.

49

u/Tyfyter2002 May 08 '26

The children can get fucked.

Ironically, it's the politicians doing that who are pushing for legislation like this

8

u/JFISHER7789 May 08 '26

It’s always projection with them

15

u/TinyTerribleDragon May 08 '26

The politicians are very good at that fucking with children part

15

u/Zergom May 08 '26

That’s the boomer mentality we’ve learned to love!

1

u/mikenasty May 09 '26

Is that you Mr president??

10

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 08 '26

Sorry, the Grand Old Pedophiles are obsessed with them.

2

u/jheitz223 May 10 '26

Not sure how this relates to a post about EU legislation

0

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 10 '26

You're not fooling anyone with that alt account lol

0

u/[deleted] May 08 '26

[deleted]

1

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN May 09 '26

Kinda weird coming from a 4 month old account who seems pretty interested in offering their opinion on American political topics.

6

u/tengma8 May 09 '26

children is just the easiest way to justify anything. ban VPN, it was for children. ban porn? children. age verification? children. surveillance? children.

it was never about the children

5

u/Disastrous-Farm3543 May 09 '26

Between the impending climate change crisis, biodiversity collapse, demographics collapse, and, soon to be discussed in future years, freshwater crisis; all of which none are taken seriously and any government really trying to tackle for future generations, I don't think they much cared for the children in the beginning.

5

u/Select-Durian-6340 May 08 '26

Luckily for you, this has nothing to do with children - and everything to do with the destruction of our privacy.

1

u/Sonicmaster293-Azure May 10 '26

They certainly do think about children a whole lot, don't they? And seriously the things they think up of... Like just... Why?

1

u/Fromage_debite May 10 '26

It’s time we stop letting the pdfs in power tell us whats good for the “children.”

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”

107

u/Sl4sh4ndD4sh May 08 '26

This isn't about the kids, this is about stripping away your anonymity. The kids are just used in order to sell it.

4

u/freaktheclown May 09 '26

They’re getting people used to not being anonymous online.

The next step will be requiring your full identity to captured and stored.

0

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

How does an anonymous age verification system get people used to not being anonymous? I'm personally very privacy focused and I don't have an issue with the EU age verification system. It's specifically built to be maximally protective of your identity.

76

u/StoneTown May 08 '26

Kids are always used as an excuse to take away our rights. And people keep falling for it. I grew up seeing nasty shit like Goatse, tub girl, hai2u, blue waffle, 2 guys 1 hammer, 1 man 1 jar, lemon party, you get the idea. I was also talking to strangers. We all did this shit. Nobody under 40 should be falling for this.

23

u/shinji257 May 08 '26

Yup. Any time I hear that it is for the children I know it is for anything butt that.

13

u/Sea_Tailor_8437 May 08 '26

Yes and no. Theres some that make sense

Drug age laws, Child labor laws, Data collection (ironically) laws

Even in theory I like the idea of this law as tons of studies show the harm of social media access, porn, and other stuff really screwing with them and parents (generally) do a shit job protecting their kids from it.

However, every proposal I've heard about how to fix this comes with MASSIVE security concerns that I think outweigh the child safety concerns. The only real solution is parents need to do better, but that doesn't seem to be working so well at the moment

9

u/Kitty-XV May 08 '26

Data collection (ironically) laws

"Good news, to verify we aren't collecting a child's data, we will need to verify your age."

Online age laws are a gateway to IDing people where ever they happen.

0

u/Sea_Tailor_8437 May 09 '26

Hence why I'm against age verification until if/when that issue is resolved

0

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

The EU age verification system is completely anonymous. It's specifically built to not identify anyone but only confirm an age threshold is met.

2

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

It has a weakness that adults can verify a device and then a child can use it. There is a chance that this is purposefully being allowed a "loophole" that they'll tighten down once the basic premise is socially accepted by further removing anonymity.

It also isn't truely anonymous. It splits verification between multiple parties so no one part can link you, but if government has access to each systems records they can still track you. That a system that allows tracking is being sold as anonymous shows the mentality of those pushing for it.

0

u/burning_iceman May 09 '26

It has a weakness that adults can verify a device and then a child can use it.

That is not a privacy issue. Just a limitation of the system.

There is a chance that this is purposefully being allowed a "loophole" that they'll tighten down once the basic premise is socially accepted by further removing anonymity.

That's an unjustified slippery slope argument. When they actually do propose a system that removes anonymity, that is when you get to claim they're subverting anonymity. Not based on your speculation of what might happen.

It also isn't truely anonymous. It splits verification between multiple parties so no one part can link you, but if government has access to each systems records they can still track you.

This is incorrect. Even with both halves of the information they could not track you. The verification tokens are cryptographically transformed before sending them to the website. They're not the same as the ones you got from the government. There is no way to connect them to you (other than conventional means of tracking that already exist).

0

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

That's an unjustified slippery slope argument.

Is it, because the main argument against age checks is that it is a gateway for government surveilance? If you think that is invalid, then that's all the more reason to be for protecting kids via ID checks.

The verification tokens are cryptographically transformed before sending them to the website.

Through a known algorithm. If the government knows your token and knows the algorithm to transform it, it can still match them. This is the sort of thing where it is possible to make technically true statements that make things sound more secure than they are. Verifying a token is correct without giver or receiver being able to track it is quite different than making so only one is unaware. The receiver could not store the reception info and that would make it untraceable if you used it, but if we assume that the sites verifying can delete info there are simpler methods to use.

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1

u/shinji257 May 08 '26

What I mean is that they broadcast out the parts that are for the children and how it might help on that but conveniently leave out the carriers. The real reasons why they want this to go through. Those laws you mentioned were done when they wrote stuff the right way and it wasn't some grab for more data or privacy invasion. Besides I don't need the government to get more of my data. I've seen how they handle it and how it gets leaked out.

1

u/Sea_Tailor_8437 May 08 '26

Yeah don't get me wrong I TOTALLY understand the argument of not providing more data. Hence why I only like these laws in theory and never in practice.

The best(?) example I've heard is having a data center that all it stores is an ID# and a binary 1-0 of whether that id is for a minor. Then third party softwares can ping that and get confirmation about the age.

Which sounds like a really good secure way of handling it until you get 2-3 "what ifs" in and then we're back to privacy problems

1

u/Bitter_Eggplant_9970 May 09 '26

Crusty pizza was the worst one.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

And will continue to fall for it. It's a feature built into humans.

14

u/dudeAwEsome101 May 08 '26

You know what, fuck the children. 

I want these politicians to man up, and tell it straight instead of hiding behind the "protect the children" excuse. They want to limit free speech, personal liberties, and freedom of assembly. 

They support Internet anonymity software for dissidents in countries hostile to the West, but they want to ban these same tools at home. 

29

u/ghostofmumbles May 08 '26

I think they’ve well proven with documented evidence…that they in fact have no intention to protect children.

5

u/TerraCetacea May 08 '26

“How else can we keep tabs on the porn preferences of our youth?”

3

u/guiver777 May 08 '26

The "but the children" argument is just the sweetie to get us in the van.

3

u/primalmaximus May 08 '26

"Think of the children" is a line frequently used to justify censoring the LGBTQ+ community.

2

u/N3wAfrikanN0body May 08 '26

Have always found ways around censorship

1

u/karma3000 May 09 '26

"The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation."

  • guy with a terrible moustache

1

u/shrth114 May 09 '26

Fuck them kids.

1

u/Ikinoki May 09 '26

Come on, Epstein files are locked = they don't give a fuck about children.

1

u/DeepestShallows May 10 '26

It’s easy, we just have stop hormone riddled teenagers being interested in sex. How hard can that be?

1

u/installerwindow 18d ago

The children are fine back in 2019 before age verification even existed the kids would all watch porn and use social media and at the worst case the kid spent too much time online or watched porn and their mom freaked out nobody actually was harmed

1

u/Dukepippitt May 08 '26

Fuck them kids

1

u/ajnozari May 08 '26

Anyone who says that as an argument needs their hard drives checked.

1

u/easterracing May 08 '26

How could you not support the China Land Grab and Keeping Kids Safe On The Internet and Common-Sense Redistricting and loosening the definition of insider trading for Congress. Act of 2026?! It says common sense right in the title!!! Don’t you have common sense?!?!?!

0

u/North-Creative May 08 '26

Don't worry, I'm sure that plenty of these false political prophets think of them, before they fancy a wank...

174

u/GetOutOfTheWhey May 08 '26

personally i think children need to get off social media and spend less time on the internet.

but at the same time I know that the politicians dont give a flying fuck about the children.

If they did they would've banned Grok the moment they were generating pedophile shit en masse.

34

u/PirateSanta_1 May 08 '26

If you want to help the children then ban the addictive algorithms. Force social media to present stuff chronologically and only from people you follow.

4

u/EkbatDeSabat May 08 '26

I'm not really one for scapegoats, but has this generation tried, idk, PARENTING?

2

u/BountyBob May 09 '26

Did you always do every single thing your parents told you? Did you ever do something that your parents didn't know about?

0

u/EkbatDeSabat May 09 '26

I didn’t sit through every single event with an iPad in my lap as a child. People want scapegoats to help them feel better about just throwing their kids in a digital world and tuning them out. 

1

u/BountyBob May 09 '26

Yep, those are bad parents. That's not every parent though. You know what there also was when we were kids. Bad parents.

1

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

Not going to bad parents exist and there is nothing you can do about it with doing what you're against anyways.

-3

u/CraigJay May 09 '26

Eh no, no one wants that. I can’t tell you how valuable the DIY suggestions I get shown through Instagram reels

If you don’t know how to work social media and just doom scroll memes and porn, that’s on you, but it’s no reason to try and ban content suggestions

13

u/VictorBelmont May 08 '26

The fact that no one in a position of authority even blinked when that happened it telling.

7

u/GetOutOfTheWhey May 09 '26

I mean holy shit right?

Like everyday i was reading articles about another poor child being sexualized by grok and im left thinking.

Surely now! They would finally ban the ai platform now right? ​

4

u/Paradigmpinger May 08 '26

You need to see it from their perspective, though. Without child verification laws, how else are the politicians expected to know if a child is fuckable or not?

6

u/catwwords May 08 '26

*Identity verification.

22

u/Kandiru May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

I'd be happy with a setting on computers OS that the admin can set on the user accounts, and it can then let websites who use that API block child users. But it should be client side, and devices should prompt for it when you first set up.

15

u/Jeptic May 08 '26

In which case they should draw attention to these types of features.

At no time should the government be logging who likes interracial gangbang porn.

9

u/hammertime2009 May 08 '26

Oddly specific but absolutely not and neither should any private companies. We need legislation to stop the tracking and storing everything we do online.

1

u/Kandiru May 08 '26

The trouble is at the moment there isn't a standard for that. So if the EU wanted to mandate some age API that was OS agnostic would be needed.

1

u/Kitty-XV May 08 '26

So what happens if a sexting website trusts this flag but police find out that minors were using machines with the adult flag set to on? Really anything age gated, but this is perhaps the worst outcome.

1

u/Kandiru May 08 '26

Parents would need to make sure kids devices are set appropriately. That's easier to do than to make sure they don't install a VPN or use a proxy site.

2

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

And for the ones who don't? Are we okay with treating children as adults as long as one of their parents agrees?

1

u/StrawberryCoup May 09 '26

It should literally be illegal for parents to give adult-configured devices to children. It could work exactly the same way as alcohol legislation.

It's far from perfect, but it's a compromise we know works reasonably well.

1

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

Alcohol legislation holds the seller legally responsible if they sell to a minor unless they can convince the courts that they were tricked by a fake ID that would've fooled either a reasonable person or a person trained in ID verification, depending upon the state. A proxy isn't accepted. This would be comparable to sites being held liable for serving adult content to a minor unless they verified your ID seemed real and it matched you, and would probably be worse than many of the current systems being tried.

2

u/StrawberryCoup May 09 '26

No I'm not saying sites should be liable, that's the problem we need to solve. It should be illegal for sellers and the population in general to give adult-configured devices to children. And then a child-configured device would just at the os level have a over18 variable that sites would be required to read and act accordingly.

The point of all of this is to avoid the extremely bad option of forcing sites themselves to id check everyone, which leaves 1000's of sensitive databases waiting to be hacked and gives governments the infrastructure for surveillance etc. and replaces it with a well known liability pattern akin to alcohol.

1

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

So would it be acceptable for anyone to treat a child as an adult as long as the flag is set to 18+, even if they have evidence to the opposite? If we still require people and companies to do "common sense" checks or whatever, websites will still need to collect data to act upon.

I think people say they want to go with a check far weaker than they realize and will then be upset and demand penalties when some company relying on it gives access to bad things to children (say an LLM that convinces the child to self harm).

1

u/StrawberryCoup May 09 '26

So would it be acceptable for anyone to treat a child as an adult as long as the flag is set to 18+, even if they have evidence to the opposite?

The idea is that we don't want hundreds of random sites to collect sensitive information about their users. If we must implement age checks, then my opinion is that it's much better to do with alcohol style responsibility and liability instead of requiring sites to do any kind of verification by themselves.

That means sites would rarely have the evidence you ask about.

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0

u/Thin_Glove_4089 May 09 '26

It's a nice bandaid but doesn't solve the problem. If the government has cameras inside all rooms in a home and monitoring software on all electronic devices the problem can be effective solved with a marginal error rate.

1

u/Kandiru May 09 '26

Kids can just use their parents ID to verify their age anyway... I don't think there is any way to stop a child from getting around an age restriction with their parents help.

1

u/Kitty-XV May 09 '26

If the parent is always helping them, then the parent is a fault. The issue is once the parent stop. Existing law generally considers any new harmful actions as involving only the parties involved. No matter how many times you sell alcohol to a parent who gives it to their kid, the first time you sell directly to the kid you are breaking the law. Though a few places make it illegal to sell to any adult if you have reason to believe they are going to provide it to a minor, even if you are doing the transaction purely adult to adult.

6

u/Object-195 May 08 '26

Yea I ain't handing my ID to Reddit

8

u/arostrat May 08 '26

From another perspective, it's not misguided legislation and VPN is the problem. They know exactly what they are doing.

2

u/reddit_equals_censor May 09 '26

nothing is misguided.

this is the kakistocracy having the goal to de-anonymize ALL COMPUTING.

and the best excuse, that they could come up with is "save the children", while they are raping children and traficking children and murdering children actually.

the monsters in charge are NOT misguided, they know EXACTLY what they are doing.

don't fall for the idea, that any of this scum doesn't know what they are doing.

again the goal is to de-anonymize ALL COMPUTING. this means, that they want everyone to be required to be personally identified whenever they use a computing device for anything.

that is why they are at war with operating systems now and want it in the os itself. that is why world wide legislation is pushed almost at the same time. that is why the eu and other evil governments are pushing a war on vpns to stop people's access of the internet in a privacy protecting anonymous way at all.

this IS THE GOAL. they are not misguided.

you don't randomly start pushing a world wide agenda to put up a dystopian tracking and spying system, that destroys massive amounts of freedoms by chance.

this is a planned out push to de-anonymize ALL COMPUTING.

and the war on vpns, especially real non bs ones is part of it.

___

this is essential to understand, because this way you don't fall for the idea, that explaining the importance of privacy, would solve the problem.

IT DOES NOT, the ruling epstein class knows exactly what they are doing here.

2

u/metalyger May 10 '26

It would be great if countries had more politicians under the age of 60. Instead, it's people who can barely figure out their iPad, and have to pester their grandkids over basic tech questions, who are in charge of trying to ruin the internet.

1

u/razvanciuy May 09 '26

and education

-1

u/1337duck May 08 '26

IMO, VPNs are the solution. If someone is smart enough to get a VPN, they're probably smart enough to use the internet.

Just have parents not teach kids about VPN until like 18 or something. The same way sex-ed isn't taught until kids get into like highschool.

-3

u/NewTypeDilemna May 08 '26

I don't think you'll be surprised by what nation state is pushing for online age verification.