Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

https://bsky.social/about/blog/07-10-2025-age-assurance

by zimpenfish • 1 year ago

35 55 1 year ago

zimpenfish5• 1 year ago

Bluesky will block adult content and DMs for age-unverified users in the UK until they verify themselves using Epic's "Kids Web Services" system.

verisimi• 1 year ago

Statements like this one by bluesky:

Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

Make me think of one word:

Collaborators

The company is happy to strip people from their privacy, for the sake of children, terrorists, or whatever other excuse governments use to justify their excessive intrusion into people's lives.

basisword4• 1 year ago

Privacy is very important to me. And having to verify your age/identity in anyway online seems very risky, open to abuse, blackmail etc. The privacy conscious can work-around the verification or decide not to access restricted websites anymore.

It's hard to deny the negative impact that unfettered access to inappropriate material has had on the younger generations. Some sort of verification seems like a net-positive for society.

The problem is that bypassing it whether via VPN's or accessing sites that don't comply will be so easy that the whole thing will be ineffective to a large degree. But maybe a little effectiveness is enough. If it helps prevent very young kids from accidentally stumbling upon inappropriate content maybe that will have a meaningful impact.

thmsths2• 1 year ago

I also strongly value privacy and honestly this kind of scheme always rubs me wrong. In the physical world, we have IDs, provided by the government, a business is only required to do a brief check and often does not have to retain information. This means that you can retain a fair bit of privacy for the individual, and the burden on the business is fairly low. And yet, for some reason, online we get the worst of both worlds: businesses have to figure out how implement cumbersome verification measures (which means small businesses/ hobbyists will struggle to comply) AND there is basically no privacy. How did we get there?

basisword4• 1 year ago

Yeah this particular system doesn't sound great. It seems like Epic are storing the fact you're verified and your email. I've definitely seen systems where they verify you and immediately delete the data.

hluska• 1 year ago

We got here because adults cannot stop using the internet to victimize children. Education failed. Enforcement has largely failed. A loss of privacy is the next logical step until adults stop victimizing children. I use my nine year olds accounts fairly regularly and I’ve gotta tell ya mate, the number of dudes I meet who are pretending to be 9 and 10 year olds girls is pretty shocking. A loss of privacy stinks but at some point, society as a whole pays for the actions of very few. It’s the dark side of laws - they restrict freedom for everyone because a select few cannot be trusted with the tools we have at our disposal.

JoshTriplett• 1 year ago

This is a good way to test if a service is actually federated: Does this affect people using other servers? If people using other servers can communicate with each other and not care what policies the central bsky server sets, then it's actually federated.

odo1242• 1 year ago

The way Bluesky works, there's a "personal data server/PDS" (which is how you host your own posts) and an "app server" (which queries everyone else's posts to create the whole app interface). You'd have to host both (the PDS is easy, the app server is hard) to avoid the Bluesky policies.

That said, since it is still quite possible to do so, I think Bluesky is on the right side of that tradeoff.

bjackman• 1 year ago

I think the important question here is: once they've got your face or ID, do they store it? Is this effectively forbidding pseudonymity?

It's worth thinking twice about this in a country that is actively censoring mainstream political speech in its media.

aboringusername4• 1 year ago

The claim is that the data is "deleted", but there is no way to actually verify it is in fact being deleted (and the chances are data itself might be stored in say AWS which may have its own way of "deleting" data, such as in backups, caches, multiple regions etc (however they have their own legal process which may not allow data to be deleted in the event of a law enforcement request, and there's no way for anyone using the service to understand who is actually handling the data as it passes by their servers, which could be suspectable to interception etc)). Truth is, the data is much too valuable, and is useful for long term storage to know what somebody looked like or who they were when accessing content online. The UK has the RIPA so they could serve a technology notice for data to be retained and prevent disclosure of that fact. Apple was recently involved in such a request to disable advanced data protection, and the UK government is disgusted by E2EE and the very idea they cannot access every piece of data they like on demand, and wanted the entire thing held in secret.

So the reality is, assume everything on the internet is being archived, including any scans you do, and adjust the threat model accordingly. The UK government will absolutely be able to access this information and know all about what you've been doing if you're foolish enough to actually submit legitimate information.

xg154• 1 year ago

So the reality is, assume everything on the internet is being archived, including any scans you do, and adjust the threat model accordingly.

OK, but what would the practical conclusion of this be? A lot of services will require those scans to be made. So, just get used to the fact that your face scans will be stored beyond your control?

crtasm• 1 year ago

The linked https://www.kidswebservices.com/en-US/privacy-policy#retenti... seems to say they'll keep it all for as long as they want, except for "some information" that you can request to be deleted by emailing them - but no detail on what that covers.

zimpenfish5• 1 year ago

once they've got your face or ID, do they store it?

I work at a place that uses Yoti[0] for age verification and we definitely don't store any facial images[1]. Yoti also claim they don't store any images once they've delivered the age estimation back to the caller[2] (but obviously that's something unverifiable from outside.)

[0] Who provide the facial image age verification for KWS.

[1] Unless the client team have gone rogue and done something weird, I suppose? I can confidently assert that the backend doesn't store them though.

[2] https://support.yoti.com/yotisupport/s/article/Is-facial-age...

IshKebab3• 1 year ago

Here's what you want to know:

https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/kids-web-services/pv-service/...

Parents in all regions except the USA and the Republic of Korea can verify their age using face scan. KWS prompts the parent to hold their device in front of their face. A machine-learning algorithm estimates the parent’s age using the device’s camera.
Face scan verification is provided by Yoti (yoti.com).

They have an app:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.yoti.mobil...

I installed it but there's no direct interface - it needs to be opened via some intent and I can't be bothered to figure that out.

I would put a lot of money on it not being able to detect you pointing your phone at a Veo3 video of an old person though. Maybe on iPhones where you reliably have a depth camera? Doubtful on Android though.

It only takes one smart kid to beat this, and there are plenty of those.

rphln2• 1 year ago

Can't speak about this one in particular, but the face scans for banking that I know of also includes liveness checks to avoid AI impersonation (and presumably dead bodies).

IshKebab3• 1 year ago

What kind of liveness checks?

heavyset_go4• 1 year ago

This will be a lot of fun. I regularly get clocked as being a teenager, despite not being one for a long time. I've been kicked out of bars, get carded buying cough medicine, etc. If I'm lucky, the only thing that gets me out of those situations is my government ID with my birthday on it.

Something tells me people who don't look exactly their age are going to get caught up in these automated systems.

zimpenfish5• 1 year ago

Something tells me people who don't look exactly their age are going to get caught up in these automated systems.

But then you just verify with a different method like government ID or credit card.

michaelt• 1 year ago

I would put a lot of money on it not being able to detect you pointing your phone at a Veo3 video of an old person though.

I recently had to verify my identity for UK government company registration purposes.

I had to use my phone to scan my biometric passport, then it did facial recognition while flashing the screen between red, green and blue. Presumably doing... something... hoping to detect fake faces.

(as well as the biometric passport and modern phone, it also needed an e-mail address, password, TOTP code, verifying the e-mail address, full name and address, and year I moved into the address, and I had to log in about 5 times...)

Retr0id• 1 year ago

Presumably doing... something... hoping to detect fake faces.

I'd assume they were checking that your face reflected the light properly. If you were using a fake face on another screen being held up to the camera, it'd be more emissive than reflective.

IshKebab3• 1 year ago

flashing the screen between red, green and blue

Ah that's actually pretty clever. It'll detect reflective surfaces instead of emissive ones. Still possible to defeat but significantly harder. I imagine there are still some smart kids that could do it. Definitely fewer though.

ImPleadThe5th2• 1 year ago

I used to be vehemently against this.

But now I really do think we need to reel in the youth having unfettered access to attention grabbing algorithms. I know this isn't really what this is for but it's a step.

That being said, I wish these verification services would be provided by the government (with ridged watchdogs for storage) and not by private companies.

ronsor• 1 year ago

I think the youth's parents should be reeling them in, not the government or third parties at the expense of everyone else's freedom.

snarf_br• 1 year ago

I think we're ten years beyond that point now.

634• 1 year ago

Ideally, sure. In practice, that hasn't worked well. I was a youth fairly recently and I can assure you my mother lacked the knowledge to meaningfully enforce any content restrictions on my devices short of physically going through my phone. Incognito windows and deleting texts isn't exactly out of reach for children.

ImPleadThe5th2• 1 year ago

The issue is that the internet is too ubiquitous. It'd be like trying to stop teenagers from smoking cigarettes when there are cigarette trees all over the place. While I agree parents need to do better, somethings become so big they are a societal problem. Simply saying "We need better parenting" unfortunately won't fix the state we're in.

Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the government should be reeling in the social media and advertising companies. But I would trust Facebook's Age verification system less than one created by the EU for example with our NFC enabled IDs.

All I know is that Mass Social Media has been poison to young people, and I don't really see a way to put that cat back in the bag.

What would you suggest? How do you "fix" parenting? Or do you not think that there is a problem at all with the interent for the youth today?

heavyset_go4• 1 year ago

The death of anonymity on the internet is not worth making parents feel better about not parenting their kids.

634• 1 year ago

So your alternative is teaching millions of 40+ year olds how the internet works so they can implement dns blocks on their home routers? Service side age restriction seems much more effective than mandatory parenting classes.

isaacremuant2• 1 year ago

Conveniently you're no longer affected by the restriction you want to impose on others. How about you police your kids if you have them instead of trying to police other peoples?

Screw your mass surveillance

aboringusername4• 1 year ago

Laws such as these are dangerous because it normalizes the idea that you should submit your most personal data - and the risks that come with that - in order to access a service. In the real world, as another commenter has said, we don't retain that information beyond the confirmation.

Just like the Ashley Madison leak, data will be leaked, and companies hide behind "third party" to limit their own liability. I would like to know who these third parties are however, and they should be required to identify themselves (with their names, addresses, photos being made public).

However, I actually welcome changes like this. And they are healthy and good for the internet.

Because when draconian laws such as these are passed it's our obligation to express our displeasure and disobedience. So we'll use proxies, VPNs and other tools we may not have even invented yet just to make it clear they are not welcome to control access to content, they can try, but must never succeed.

They will try to block such tools, and we'll need to make new ones, and, as a community of hackers, it's vital free access to information is protected at all costs.

So we need more of this, it should be the law in every country, because only then will there be a motivation to ensure such laws are not enforceable on a technical level.

TacticalCoder• 1 year ago

The UK is in the middle of a huge scandal that prompted a national enquiry regarding actual physical harm done to countless teenage girls: in the hundreds for sure, probably in the thousands:

"PM announces national inquiry into grooming gangs"

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c7872pngj2qo

Note that the PM eventually bowed and launched a national enquire due to pressure: it's not as if he's a white knight here.

For it was all covered up by local politicians and police (some of which whom, for sure, also abused the girls) for fear of showing certain communities in a bad light (that's the official statement of several police officers as to why the countless reports of rape weren't followed).

It's great to "think about the children" but the UK should first look into why the number of rapes in the UK went 10x from 2000 to now. Ten fold. 10x. In a quarter of a century. What happened to the UK?

So the UK protecting children: remains to be seen.

As a sidenote there feels like there's an hint of posing here by BlueSky too: many call that social network "PedoSky" and the reason for it is many people with very dubious behaviour who couldn't silence their critics on Twitter/X moved to BlueSky. You know which kind of people: those who'll say it's acceptable to be attracted by children as long you don't physically do anything to them, those men wearing women outfit and dancing salaciously under the pretext that it's "art". They are on BlueSky, that's a fact. Hence, maybe, the posturing by BlueSky now.

I see that announcement as a safe haven for pedos teaming up with a government actively involved in the coverup of massive rape rings operation.

But I take it we should all applaud because it's all done in very good faith?

It's Orwellian stuff.

isaacremuant2• 1 year ago

Working with the UK government and other mass surveillance lovers to create the forcible use of digital I'd identity to be online, which so many lobby companies are creaming at the idea of getting the concracts for.

Protecting the children in the UK would actually be pushing for less wars, lowering taxes and improving healthcare and education. Providing good community centers and paths to economic independence.

These "think of the children" excuses are the same as "oh no the terrorists/drug kingpins" and all those other threats.

The threat is plutocracy and concentration of power.

xg154• 1 year ago

Maybe the screenshots just don't show it, but I'm missing the "I'm under 18, just don't verfify me and dismiss the notifications" flow. Or are you just supposed to ignore constant nag screens if you can't verify?

cladopa• 1 year ago

My question is: who protects Children against the UK Government?

Governments are very dangerous institutions. They hold a lot of power and can abuse it.

gjsman-1000• 1 year ago

Well, in the US, we invented this cool thing called an amendment which gave everyone in theory the ability to hold a government accountable the hard way, and we invented it after a long history of knowing what the UK was like...

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. /s

SllX• 1 year ago

UK Voters or no one, depending on which half of the glass you focus on.

Sovereign power is scary af, but in theory also kept in check by voters. The problem is that no matter what form of government you have, it is still downstream from culture, and if this kind of policy is what UK voters want or can be talked into wanting, then this is what the King’s subjects shall get.

baw-bag• 1 year ago

It's just so tragic to read it like that but, that's exactly how it is.

heavyset_go4• 1 year ago

Case in point: what's happening to trans kids in the UK at the moment.

If you don't think this technology will be used to keep kids from connecting with peers like themselves, or learning or reading about themselves, because of some trans panic, you haven't been paying attention.

Politicians all over the world have put forth legislation like this with the explicit purpose of preventing LGBT kids from connecting with peers or learning anything related to their identities[1]:

A co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to protect children from the dangers of social media and other online content appeared to suggest in March that the measure could be used to steer kids away from seeing transgender content online.
In a video recently published by the conservative group Family Policy Alliance, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said “protecting minor children from the transgender in this culture” should be among the top priorities of conservative lawmakers.

[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/sena...

hello_moto• 1 year ago

Governments are very dangerous institutions.

Could be.

Having said that US culture vs the rest of Western Nation culture mindset imho.

Majority of Europeans and Canadians don't see Governments as a Monster.

Working with the UK Government to Protect Children Online

Related Stories