this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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Finally it seems the end of Reddit is near.

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[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 24 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Hm, I'm going to need some software engineers to critique an idea I have that could at least partially solve the fears people have about their personal details being tied to their porn habits.

The system will be called the Adult Content Verification System (or Wank Card if you want to be funny). It's a physical card, printed by the government with a unique key printed on it. Those cards are then sold by any shop that has an alcohol license (premises or personal). You go in, show your ID to the clerk, buy the card. That card is proof that you're over 18, but it is not directly tied to you, you just have to be over 18 to buy it. The punishment for selling a Wank Card to someone under the age of 18 is the same as if you sold alcohol to someone under 18.

When you go to the porn site, they check if you're from the UK, they check if you have a key associated with your account. If not, they ask for one, you provide the key to the site, the site does an API call to https://wankcard.gov.uk/api/verify with the site's API key (freely generated) and the key on the card, gets a response saying "Yep! This is a valid key!" and hey presto, free to wank and nobody knows it's you! If you don't have an account, the verification would have to be tied to a cookie or something that disappears after a while for all you anonymous people.

As a result, you can both prove that you're over 18 (because you have the card) and some company over in San Francisco doesn't get your personal data, because you never actually record it anywhere. All you have is keys, and while yes, the government could record "Oh this key was used to verify on this site", they'd have to know which shop the key was bought from, who sold it, and who bought it, which is a lot more difficult to do unless the shopkeeper keeps records of everyone he's ever sold to.

So... Good idea? Bad idea? Better than the current approach anyway, I think.

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 15 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This would be better than most of the crap being proposed or implemented.

But, since the keys are presumably reusable, they'll presumably get borrowed shared by and among minors almost immediately.

There could be some "Netflix account sharing" style work to deter that, of course.

[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah I did consider that people are going to share keys, but people are going to share accounts too so that's always going to happen. The best thing you can do is stick some safeguards on the keys where if a key is found online, it can be deactivated and potentially investigated since you can tell which shop sold the key. If there's a shop out there just giving cards away to minors, well they're in for a world of trouble.

Under the Licensing Act of 2003, it's illegal to sell alcohol to an adult if you reasonably suspect that they will be then giving that alcohol to a minor. You can assume the same will apply to people selling Wank Cards.

[–] tym@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

people are going to share keys,

get ahead of it and sell discounted bukkakeys

you could probably even have a bundle called the "family plan" for the real sickos

I should get into masturbation regulation marketing!

Hungry for Adams Apples? Try our limp biscuits!

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I'm a security dev and this is a good idea!

[–] iii@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

How would you solve replay attacks? Like a million people, of age or not, sharing the same key?

[–] RedFrank24@lemmy.world 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Maybe you could limit the number of verifications a key can have in a day? Limit it to say 10 verifications per day. So if you're on Pornhub and have an account, you can have the key associated with the account, verified, and so you don't need to re-verify. But if you go on 10 completely different sites and verify for each one, you can't verify after that 10th one within the same 24hr period?

You could maybe also include guidelines for integration where if a key is associated with an account, that key can't be used for any other account. You can include that under some requirement that says you have to make 'best efforts' to ensure that a key is only ever used by one account at a time. That way, if a million people are sharing the same key, you'd have to trust that all one million of them will never associate that key with their account because if they do, it invalidates that key for every use other than through that account on that site.

[–] StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world 18 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

I keep thinking about some of RPs I've done in my life. Hot, vile, smutty text based RPs. I think about them and wonder if there will ever be a time when those words would be considered illegal and I would be arrested for posting them. This doesn't just protect minors. It tags deviance. Some of you may know the darker corners of Reddit. Imagine if an AI flagged your subs. The delete-rebuild cycle doesn't work anymore. Reddit will always know. If the law asks for suspects for newly illegal thought crime, Reddit will be able to point to all the users on those dark corners. We are moving into a future where privacy doesn't matter and I fear what that means for the kinky among us.

[–] octobob@lemmy.ml 8 points 6 days ago

I'm nowhere near as worried about this for kink stuff as I am about us LGBTQ living in the US.

[–] axEl7fB5@lemmy.cafe 4 points 6 days ago
[–] catty@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago

Something similar happened In China recently. A female author of homoerotic texts was charged for it.

[–] iii@mander.xyz 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That's a subject many never talk about: it assumes we (1) have morality all figured out and (2) it's the same for everyone, everywhere.

[–] Bot@sub.community 4 points 6 days ago

Years later, you will find many then teen’s 80yo grandmas’ photos in the leaked database

That said, as someone who has posted stuff like that and had it spread without my consent, screw (very much not literally) consuming that shit without taking the same risks as the people sharing what they get off to.

I do think its gross to require it for the other NSFW stuff. Drug forums are very important resources for harm reduction.

[–] genevieve@sh.itjust.works 372 points 1 week ago (8 children)

“Reddit has stressed that this system is only to verify users' age, and it has no interest in your identity. Lee further stated that Persona won't know what subreddits you visit, and has promised it won't keep users' uploaded images more than seven days.”

Press X to doubt.

[–] dugmeup@lemmy.world 143 points 1 week ago (4 children)
[–] blackn1ght@feddit.uk 99 points 1 week ago (13 children)

Under the new UK law, lemmynsfw would also need to have some kind of age verification for UK users.

[–] donuts@lemmy.world 129 points 1 week ago (8 children)

This. Can't believe we're seeing "lol Reddit sucks" when this is a country-wide implementation and has nothing to do with Reddit in particular.

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[–] genevieve@sh.itjust.works 164 points 1 week ago (9 children)

The “won’t somebody please think of the children” rhetorical tactic is always just a pretext for authoritarianism, mass surveillance and data privacy intrusion. Always. It’s the perfect motte-and-bailey: when you attack the actual motives, the motte becomes, “So you don’t care about children?”

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[–] BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.world 123 points 1 week ago (22 children)

This is a combination of terrible legislation in the UK meets awful social media site.

The Online Safety Act is an abomination, compromising the privacy and freedom of the vast majority of the UK in the name of "protecting children".

I'm of the view parents are responsible for protecting their children. I know it's hard but the Online Safety Act is not a solution.

All it will.do is compromise the privacy and security of law abiding adults while kids will still access porn and all the other really bad stuff on the Internet will actually be unaffected. The dark illegal shit on the Internet is not happening on Pornhub or Reddit.

The UK is gradually sliding further and further into censorship, and authoritarianism and all the in the name of do gooders. It's scary to watch.

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[–] ageek@lemmy.world 105 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Next in the news: "500k Usernames, Passwords and biometric data leaked in the latest hack"

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Yeah, I will definitely trust an internet stranger with my face so they can verify that I'm not underage to access content which could, in case of being leaked, damage my reputation or even destroy my life.

DEFINITELY

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