It’s worth calling this by its other name: the taking away of anonymity and pseudonymity.

To date, proving you are old enough is almost always (over-)implemented by having to reveal your legal identity and the exact date you were born.

If the whole world goes down the route of AV / age-bans then I hope we at least get some kind of escrow service where you visit an official office, prove your age to a disinterested public official, and then pick a random proof-of-age token out of a big bucket. The bucket’s randomness is itself generated when it was filled up with tokens at the Department of Tokens, and maintained by a chain of custody.

You could do it on polling day: ballot boxes get sent out to polling stations filled with tokens and get sent back filled with ballot papers, with the whole process watched by election monitors. Now everyone has (a) voted (b) picked up a proof of age/citizenship token. It would improve turnout, though I believe that’s already mandatory in Australia.

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sothatsit 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

We already have digital IDs in Australia, and it seems like a natural fit for this. The digital ID doesn't need to share much information with social media companies, it just needs to confirm your age. And then we don't need new 3rd-parties holding our personal information.

Also yes, voting is mandatory in Australia. You get a small fine if you don't vote.

	▲	ulrashida 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		It's a very good system. $20 is the right number to get you off the couch, but not so much as to cripple you. There are exceptions if you have a valid reason for not voting. The maximum fine is ~$180 so you can't simply ignore the Elections Commission and hope it goes away.

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triceratops 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Another proposal to achieve anonymity, similar to yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223051