> My gut feel here mostly has to do with how I view the activity overall. Smoking I see as a social ill that both adults and children would be better off without, so I don't particularly mind an ID check that inconveniences adults, and that can be opted-out from by simply not smoking. (Social media I see as pretty akin to smoking.)

The big difference for me is, the person looking at my ID at the gas station isn't storing all the data on it in some database, which may or may not be properly secured.

If age verification can be done ephemerally, then I think it's largely a non-issue. But of course it won't, you'll have to submit some combo of personal info + a photo or face scan, and that information will be stored by any number of third parties, probably permanently, only to end up in the next data breach.

There's also an issue of anonymity, which is increasingly under attack on the web. Even in the gas station example, while I'm not truly anonymous when I buy alcohol, the gas station attendant likely isn't going to remember me or my name, and it's certainly not being stored along side an entire customer profile.

For services on the web, we need a similar level of privacy with the age verification, otherwise it's not just age verification it's identity verification as well (and by extension, the tying of all of your activity on that service directly to you) which I do have a big problem with.

If we want age verification online, we have to have a way to do it ephemerally and psuedo-anonymously.