Good arguments there, and for once addressing privacy-preserving age verification.

I just don't like that proponents of age verification are systematically (including in this article) dismissed as authoritarians hiding behind "just another “what about the children” excuse to introduce mass surveillance and censorship". Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if you are open to age verification you are either a fascist or a moron" is not constructive.

Also I find the way ZKP is criticised a bit manipulative. It kinda implies that "fundamentally, any kind of ZKP system can be switched off remotely and without anyone realising", and that is wrong. It can be implemented in such a way that people have pretty good guarantees about it preserving their privacy, similar to end-to-end encryption. I find it hypocritical to say "E2EE can be reasonably trusted, but privacy-preserving age verification fundamentally cannot", just because tech people like the former and not the latter.

> Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children

at the expense of everyone and everything else all to not have to be an actual parent.

These arguments are not coming from places of concern, they are coming from laziness and people taking advantage of that laziness to further even worse agendas.

Do you believe people should be able to traverse the internet anonymously?

There is a solution, it is regulating social media companies to stop abusing their users, and by extension, children. strict laws around adtech and tracking tech. more consumer rights, in other words - that’s why this solution comes off as authoritarian, because there is such a variety of ways to tackle this problem, and this is the most authoritarian one.

Parents need to either control the internet, or control their children’s devices and screentime. The latter sounds like the obvious option, except that Google wants every second grader to have a school-mismanaged chromebook and Google wants to mediate control of the internet, and by pushing parents to the former they win on both fronts.

Age verification literally already exists in a way that doesn't require orwellian centralized control. The <meta rating> tag has existed for decades. If you want to restrict access force websites to apply these tags, then use a browser that obeys them. Parents control what their kids access, mostly, like it's been since forever.

Think carefully about why a politician might disregard this extremely simple mechanism and you'll have your answer about the real goals here

Many people genuinely want to find a solution that is better for the children, and telling them "if you are open to age verification you are either a fascist or a moron" is not constructive.

We know they'll take a mile if you give them an inch. Ditto with "trusted" computing and the rest of that wormcan. That's why the opposition has to be absolute.