I continue to think the right way to do age verification is at the operating system level. I am happy to provide a digital ID to an operating system and happy to allow an API call to confirm my age. I am not ok with any kind of distributed storage of my identity or eliminating anonymity when accessing content deemed objectionable.
My identity is already put at risk in so many ways— just look at how thoroughly compromised social security numbers are. There are data breaches all the time. And this government seems to be tirelessly gating my rights behind my identification and making it harder and harder to get a valid government ID. So why would I want to offer my identity to all these websites and force them to store it?
And there’s absolutely no way I should have to have my real identity so easily identified with every single piece of media I interact with.
The details here matter, but the concept of having a form of age-gating for content seems ok to me.
The Texas law is absolute shit, no surprise. And SCOTUS is absolute shit, no surprise (well, 6/9 are). But age verification seems fine— we should do this right.
I really wish Apple and Google would just fucking step it up and make a privacy protecting mechanism for this now that we know it’ll be the law of the land in so many states soon. Point the way so that legislatures that want to gate this content know how to do so without compromising identity or security and without creating the need for 400 different ways to be compliant.