For sure, but with the EU system you'd just give discord an expiring certificate that proves you're over 18. They can leak that all they want, it's worthless otherwise. Right now you have to upload your actual ID which is obviously extremely dangerous if leaked. So yes, even though there are obvious problems that you mentioned, the EU implementation is better.

EUDI requires Google or Apple, I hope it is DOA. It is even bloated before anyone adopted it.

I mean leaked from the EUDI side.

> the EU implementation is better.

It's better than the current implementation, sure, but you can never beat zero identifiers

Again, for sure and I agree with you - but we're talking about institutions that already have our IDs in some form or another, so just asking them to issue a certificate that says "yeah this user is actually over 18" seems like a no brainer functionality on top of an existing system. Like obviously our government office has a copy of my passport and ID card, but if those leak then we have a much bigger problem as a country.

> we're talking about institutions that already have our IDs in some form or another

The issue isn’t who already has our IDs, it’s that EUDI introduces new auxiliary information (public keys, signatures, revocation identifiers) that create globally unique, linkable identifiers.

Even if the same institutions issue the wallet, each transaction generates additional personal data that can be misused for tracking and profiling, far beyond the data already stored in government registries.

Right, and I'm firmly in the camp that everything on the internet should be both anonymous and accessible to anyone from anywhere.

But clearly this isn't the way the internet is going. As much as I hate it, it seems inevitable that globally every government is introducing at least a requirement for websites to check the age of their users.

So right now this can be done(here in the UK anyway) either by scanning your ID with a 3rd party provider who "promises" to delete it straight away, or by linking your bank account(yes, I'm definitely going to do that to go on pornhub, 100%). Both methods have the problems you mentioned + the additional risk of leaking my personal details because they are getting more info than they need to fulfil their legal obligations.

But if the government could just issue me an expiring cert that says "yep, this user is 18", without any of my other data on it.....then that's vastly preferable to having to scan my passport or driving licence to browse reddit or discord or whatever? Like yeah, maybe someone could still track it somehow(don't see how if every certificate has a unique ID and doesn't contain any identifiable info other than "yep this is a valid certificate and yes the user is over 18", but let's just say they can), but at least my IDs are not at risk of being leaked anywhere.