> uploading sensitive identity documents to multiple sites and hope

Go to local liquor store. Present ID. Purchase $1 anonymous age verification card. Problem solved. (Card implementation left to reader.)

> kids are just going to find places to hang out online that are less moderated and less regulated and less safe. How is that not worse?

We used to have to visit a separate forum per community/topic/whatever. There was no realtime feed shoving posts in your face. No algorithm optimizing for engagement. How was that not better?

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eli 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The government issuing everyone a smart ID that lets them attest anonymously to being of legal age would be better.

But there are age gate laws today, and calls to pass more of them. A hypothetical better way in the future shouldn’t excuse legally mandating a poor implementation today.

	▲	fc417fc802 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		We could distribute scratch off cards to stores within a few months. It's incredibly low tech. I can't speak to elsewhere in the world but most (possibly all?) US states run lotteries. If a given government body can't manage to stand up a web API to validate one time use codes within a few months then they clearly don't have the technical knowhow to manage smart IDs in a secure manner. My point being that this either doesn't qualify as hypothetical, or if it does, then it indicates gross incompetence to an extent that precludes more complex solutions as a matter of course.

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camillomiller 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is actually a great idea. It is even compatible with having private companies run the system. The real issue is distribution (online code verification is trivial). Tbf I believe that a fully government-owned anonymous system should be the goal. The government knows you already, so creating a proof of age anonymous token should also be somewhat trivial. Truth is companies don’t want to forgo the potential profit in data mining, and governments don’t like the actual lack of control and full anonymity, otherwise we’d have this already worldwide

	▲	fc417fc802 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		In theory I agree. In practice I have severe misgivings about directly incorporating government issued IDs into mundane online transactions. I don't want "papers please" to be normalized. If the smart ID can do anonymous attestation of age then it can presumably also share various details with a requesting party. Next thing you know Facespace 365 is requiring you to provide your (attested) full legal name in order to register an account. I find that to be a highly objectionable outcome. If things escalated beyond basic age checks that also adds hardware requirements. Would I find myself needing a smartcard reader to do anything online? The friction of needing to visit a bank in person seems like a feature to me. What doesn't bother me is age restricted content guarded by a low fence. The bare minimum required to blunt the impact of something that appears to be analogous to an epidemic.