Post #1110818
2026-04-06 12:46 UTC
Parts of what you just said are not really a proper response to what I said, either because of accuracy or relevance. So I'm just going to address the one important part of what you said, metadata.
I didn't consider metadata because I treat proof of age as what it is, proof of age with proof of identity being incidental. If visiting a website requires handing over my full birthday, "hardware ID", or real identity then I would be concerned, but we're not there yet.
It's a widely held view in the general public that you should be able to browse the internet privately just like you should be able to browse a library without the government seeing a log of every book you read, and I hope that would be enough to resolve this. The general public is not very concerned about browser fingerprinting, which effectively erases user privacy, but government mandated sharing of your identity online would be a red line that would get the normies involved.
Replies (1)
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@TheIPW@lemmy.ml 2026-04-06 12:56
You’re right that the average person doesn't care about fingerprinting, but that’s exactly the problem. To me, browser fingerprinting isn't just a technical quirk, it’s a violation of privacy that effectively erases your ability to be anonymous, regardless of whether you have a VPN or not. If we let OS-level ID checks become the standard because people don't care, we’re essentially legitimising that tracking. My red line isn't just a government log of my identity, it’s the fact that the tech is being built to make that log possible in the first place. Once the infrastructure is there, the incidental proof of identity quickly becomes the primary feature.