> age verification doesn't have to be a nightmare dystopia

But I feel there's not a lot of trust that whatever implementation we could end up with wouldn't be such a dystopia. The real world equivalent would be checkpoints at every intersection verifying the driver's age, the cashier who carded the 20 yo with a beer now does it for everyone, makes a copy of your ID and stores it in a big folder shared with their 427 "business partners".

Imo we should scrap the whole idea of age verification. Kids get a kidPhone with kidOS, whitelist of age-appropriate resources & capabilities. You wouldn't let an 8 yo drive on the highway, yet they can have a supercar to drive unsupervised on the information highway, no biggie. Internet is full of adults doing all sort of stuff while kids need supervision and education: design safe spaces for children, not checkpoints at every corner.