Proton CEO warns global age verification push will mean "the death of anonymity online"

I found some other articles that didn't ask for my email.

That's unfortunate. I was actually about to get Protonvpn next month. I did a quick search on Nordvpn and I can't find anything about supporting or praising Republicans.

I looked into the features and specs of a lot of VPNs and it came down to those two. I was going to use Proton so I could set up my own mail and other accounts. Guess I'm using Nord

Thanks, wondered about that vs. Tor!

if they want to censor and monitor the internet, its time to start building on a new one that's private and encrypted by default: https://reticulum.network/

I don't have to worry about my OS because it's open source. Yours should be too. They can't actually enforce age verification on an open source OS because my OS can lie, and I can use its source code to make it lie if I have to (which I won't, because many other people will do it for me). For that matter they'll find ways to make Windows lie too, but you still shouldn't be using it, it's shit.

I don't have to worry about my ISP either because I live in a still-civilized country, but yeah, if they really lock it down at that level that's going to be tough, you'll probably have to identify someone for that if that's the next place where they go to. There are countermeasures and workarounds though. VPN, mesh networking, borrowing somebody else's wifi or mobile data hotspot, finding open networks. Maybe we'll get to the point where we need point to point links, pirate satellites, datajacking ourselves into communication lines, who knows.

But we're not there yet. We'll continue to develop more countermeasures as these sorts of hostile police surveillance state measures encroach on our freedom as it becomes necessary. You don't have to let your identity be associated with anything beyond your ISP if you're only using your ISP to get to somewhere you do trust with a VPN. If they block VPNs, then we will find other ways around the blocks. Are you familiar with I2P? If you aren't, maybe you should get familiar with it. We already have plenty of ways of sneaking information into and out of even more totalitarian of states like China, Russia, at least until there's an absolute shutdown like in Iran. You should also consider not living in a totalitarian country, and doing what you can to stop yours from becoming more totalitarian, because it's only going to get harder the longer you let them do this. Give them your ID in exchange for internet access for now if you absolutely have to and can't find any other option, but you might not absolutely have to, yet. And if you do have to, do it with caution: start learning and planning what you're going to have to do after that and how you're going to get very active in your resistance to being monitored and observed.

You sound like you've got a little bit of learned helplessness, but people in shitty, scary countries have been dealing with this for a long, long time. Yes, it sucks, but it's not the end of freedom. You have to learn how to fight it.

Sorry, it didn't do that to me. Maybe my plugins. I went to look it up on archive.org and they ALL did it to me, lol.

Oh yeah, 1000%.

It really sucks seeing supposed democratic nations having this forced on them. I really hate how little people understand the implications in practice.

China's "cameras up everyone's nose" approach should be a sign of failure and a caution to the world, not permission for other governments to "catch up".

Are you okay?

This way, identity theft can be catastrophic, more so than it already is

It seems like you've completely lost the capability for any type of nuance.

I also lost the remaining value on my 2-year Proton subscription when I stopped using their services.

I didn't read the whole doc. How would this prevent kill switch network if the government can just tell internet service providers to shutdown the network?

I looked at the technology used by the EU age verification.

You prove your age to the app by scanning the NFC in your passport. No government servers exist.

When a site requests your age, you return only a "yes I'm older than 18", proven by your passport. Not your age, just that you're older.

I think it preserves privacy pretty well.

I don't think that it will protect children, but I do think that it preserves privacy.

Because reticulum don't use providers to reach other like on internet. It is working fine if there are enoug individuals nodes.

Edit : auto completion carnage.

Well in theory it can communicate over other networks. Like radio

This is interesting, I think people should be aware of and check out i2p as well. I actually don't use it (because there's not that much of a community yet ) but I run a i2p router to support the network, that bitch does ~15TB a month in bandwidth. I think the main use of the network is torrenting currently.

But with governments and tech companies getting so oppressive hopefully i2p and other similar systems can flourish into the new free net.

From what I understand, social credit score is mostly an invented bogeyman to demonize China in the west, and while many frightening "consequences" of low social credit score were imagined, none ever materialized and it was rarely even actually tracked. Yes, they could, in theory, but we imagine a massive level of administrative competence and effectiveness that I think serves both western interests and Chinese ones without necessarily being reality. As far as I can tell (granted, not very far as I'm not in China and haven't been for a very long time) it actually had very little real impact in China itself and has already been mostly forgotten. China's got lots of problems, but social credit score isn't really part of any of them. They don't need to have social credit score to genocide Uighurs. They didn't need social credit score to massacre Tienanmen square. They don't need social credit score to prepare the South China Sea for war and try to subvert Taiwan. They've got bigger fish to fry, and they're frying them, and social credit score is a silly distraction that nobody there is taking seriously and neither should we.

The lost art of learning from other people's mistakes (and/or history). Sigh.

Ah yes, Proton, the company infamous for providing anonymity online, and totally never rugpulling their customers everytime the swiss government rolls up with a search warrant.

Lawmakers who are pushing age verification: "Win - win"

Was promoted in Australia by the gambling industry seemingly in an effort to dodge a total gambling ad ban.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/12/12/pro-teen-social-media-ban-group-funded-firm-making-gambling-ads/