They aren't comparable. Showing an ID to a staff member isn't stripping my anonymity. I know the retailer won't have that on file forever, tied to me on subsequent visits. Also they stop ID'ing you after a certain age ;)

There isn't any way to achieve the same digitally.

I know they're not compatible. I'm asking if you're also ok with those. There are also plenty of situations where you are asked to provide an ID, digitally, when above a certain age. For example booking hotels and other accommodations.

Personally I'm still trying to figure out where my position is when it comes to this whole debate because both camps have obvious pros and cons.

Which hotel asks for id online..? I've only ever had to provide it once on-site and checking in.

And when then, only when I'm in foreign countries.

Happens quite often with Airbnb for example. You often don't meet the host in person so there's no way to show them a physical ID.

Ahh. The not-quite-a-hotel. I don't think I ever used them.

Actually there is, various age verification systems exist where the party asking for it does not need to process their ID, like the Dutch iDIN (https://www.idin.nl/en/) that works not unlike a digital payment - the bank knows your identity and age, just like they know your account balance, and can sign off on that kind of thing just like a payment.

I hope this becomes more widespread / standardized; the precursor for iDIN is iDEAL which is for payments, that's being expanded and rebranded as Wero across Europe at the moment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wero_(payment)), in part to reduce dependency on American payment processors.

We have a similar system in Italy so the age verification process itself doesn't personally concerns me that much since the verification process is done by the government itself and they obviously already have my information.

I'm personally more interested in the intuition people have when it comes to squaring rejecting age verification online while also accepting it in a multitude of other situations (both online and offline)

My main issue is trust.

In real world scenarios, I can observe them while they handle my ID. And systematic abuse(e.g. some video that gets stored and shows it clearly) would be a violation taken serious

With online providers it's barely news worthy if they abuse the data they get.

I'm not against age verification (at least not strongly), but I'd want it in a 2 party 0 trust way. I.e. one party signs a jwt like thing only containing one bit, the other validates it without ever contacting the issuer about the specific token.

So one knows the identity, one knows the usage But they are never related

> So one knows the identity, one knows the usage But they are never related

I could be wrong but I think this is how the system we have in place in Italy works. And I agree that it's how it should work.

The privacy issue has two facets, when I show ID to get in to a club or buy alcohol, the entire interaction is transient, the merchant isn't keeping that information and the issuer of the credential doesn't know that happened (i.e. the government).

Just allowing a service provider to receive a third party attestation that you "allowed" still allows the third party to track what you are doing even if the provider can't. That's still unacceptable from a privacy standpoint, I don't want the government, or agents thereof, knowing all the places I've had to show ID.

> Just allowing a service provider to receive a third party attestation that you "allowed" still allows the third party to track what you are doing even if the provider can't. That's still unacceptable from a privacy standpoint, I don't want the government, or agents thereof, knowing all the places I've had to show ID.

Isn't this solvable by allowing you to be the middle man? A service asks you to prove your age, you ask the government for a digital token that proves your age (and the only thing the government knows is that you have asked for a token) and you then deliver that to the service and they only know the government has certified that you are above a certain age.

The service gets a binary answer to their question. The government only knows you have asked for a token. Wouldn't a setup like that solve the issue you're talking about?

I'm a lot more okay with that because alcohol purchasing doesn't have free speech implications.

It's weird how radicalized people get about banning books compared to banning the internet.

> It's weird how radicalized people get about banning books compared to banning the internet.

I don't think asking for age verification is the same as banning something. Which connection do you see between requiring age and free speech?

The chilling effect of tying identity to speech means it directly effects free speech. The Founding Fathers of the US wrote under many pseudonyms. If you think you may be punished for your words, you might not speak out.

We know we cannot trust service providers on the internet to take care of our identifying data. We cannot ensure they won't turn that data over to a corrupt government entity.

Therefore, we can not guarantee free speech on these platforms if we have a looming threat of being punished for the speech. Yes these are private entities, but they have also taken advantage of the boom in tech to effectively replace certain infrastructure. If we need smart phones and apps to interact with public services, we should apply the same constitutional rights to those platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pseudonyms_used_in_the...

> If we need smart phones and apps to interact with public services, we should apply the same constitutional rights to those platforms.

Are private social media platforms "public services"? And also, you mentioned constitutional rights. Which constitution are we talking about here? These are global scale issues, I don't think we should default on the US constitution.

> We know we cannot trust service providers on the internet to take care of our identifying data.

Nobody needs to trust those. I can, right now, use my government issues ID to identify myself online using a platform that's run by the government itself. And if your rebuttal is that we can't trust the government either then yeah, I don't know what to say.

Because at some point, at a certain level, society is built on at least some level of implicit trust. Without it you can't have a functioning society.

> Because at some point, at a certain level, society is built on at least some level of implicit trust. Without it you can't have a functioning society.

This is somewhat central to being remain anonymous.

Protesters and observers are having their passports cancelled or their TSA precheck revoked due to speech. You cannot trust the government to abide by the first amendment.

Private services sell your data to build a panopticon, then sell that data indirectly to the government.

Therefore, tying your anonymous speech to a legal identity puts one at risk of being punished by the government for protected speech.

> You cannot trust the government to abide by the first amendment.

Again, this is a global issue. There is no first amendment here where I live. But the issue of the power these platforms have at a global level is a real one and something has to be done in general to deal with that. The problem is what should we do.

First, children also have a right to free speech. It is perhaps even more important than for adults, as children are not empowered to do anything but speak.

Second, it's turn-key authoritarianism. E.g. "show me the IDs of everyone who has talked about being gay" or "show me a list of the 10,000 people who are part of <community> that's embarrassing me politically" or "which of my enemies like to watch embarrassing pornography?".

Even if you honestly do delete the data you collect today, it's trivial to flip a switch tomorrow and start keeping everything forever. Training people to accept "papers, please" with this excuse is just boiling the frog. Further, even if you never actually do keep these records long term, the simple fact that you are collecting them has a chilling effect because people understand that the risk is there and they know they are being watched.

> First, children also have a right to free speech.

Maybe I'm wrong (not reading all the regulations that are coming up) but the scope of these regulations is not to ban speech but rather to prevent people under a certain age to access a narrow subset of the websites that exist on the web. That to me looks like a significant difference.

As for your other two points, I can't really argue against those because they are obviously valid but also very hypothetical and so in that context sure, everything is possible I suppose.

That said something has to be done at some point because it's obvious that these platforms are having profound impact on society as a whole. And I don't care about the kids, I'm talking in general.

> narrow subset of the websites on the web

Under most of these laws, most websites with user-generated content qualify.

I'd be a lot more fine with it if it was just algorithms designed for addiction (defining that in law is tricky), but AFAIK a simple forum where kids can talk to each other about familial abuse or whatever would also qualify.

> but AFAIK a simple forum where kids can talk to each other about familial abuse or whatever would also qualify.

I'm currently scrolling through this list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_... and it seems to me these are primarily focused on "social media" but missing from these short summaries is how social media is defined which is obviously an important detail.

Seems to me that an "easy" solution would be to implement some sort of size cap this way you could easily leave old school forums out.

It would no be a perfect solution, but it's probably better than including every site with user generated content.

> I'd be a lot more fine with it if it was just algorithms designed for addiction (defining that in law is tricky)

An alternative to playing whac-a-mole with all the innovative bad behavior companies cook up is to address the incentives directly: ads are the primary driving force behind the suck. If we are already on board with restricting speech for the greater good, that's where we should start. Options include (from most to least heavy-handed/effective):

1) Outlaw endorsing a product or service in exchange for compensation. I.e. ban ads altogether.

2) Outlaw unsolicited advertisements, including "bundling" of ads with something the recipient values. I.e. only allow ads in the form of catalogues, trade shows, industry newsletters, yellow pages. Extreme care has to be taken here to ensure only actual opt-in advertisements are allowed and to avoid a GDPR situation where marketers with a rapist mentality can endlessly nag you to opt in or make consent forms confusing/coercive.

3) Outlaw personalized advertising and the collection/use of personal information[1] for any purpose other than what is strictly necessary[2] to deliver the product or service your customer has requested. I.e. GDPR, but without a "consent" loophole.

These options are far from exhaustive and out of the three presented, only the first two are likely to have the effect of killing predatory services that aren't worth paying for.

[1] Any information about an individual or small group of individuals, regardless of whether or not that information is tied to a unique identifier (e.g. an IP address, a user ID, or a session token), and regardless of whether or not you can tie such an identifier to a flesh-and-blood person ("We don't know that 'adf0386jsdl7vcs' is Steve at so-and-so address" is not a valid excuse). Aggregate population-level statistics are usually, but not necessarily, in the clear.

[2] "Our business model is only viable if we do this" does not rise to the level of strictly necessary. "We physically can not deliver your package unless you tell us where to" does, barely.

The difference is the internet is forever. A one-time unrecorded transaction like showing your ID at the bar is not. It is a false equivalence.

Not only is the internet forever, but what is on it grows like a cancer and gets aggregated, sold, bundled, cross-linked with red yarn, multiplied, and multiplexed. Why would you ever want cancer?

> It is a false equivalence

It's a false equivalence only if you decide to equate the two. My question wasn't worded that way. I'm curious to know if someone who oppose this type of laws is also for or against other laws that are dealing with similar issues in other contexts.

Also, as I said in another post, there are plenty of places, online, where you have to identify yourself. So this is already happening. But again, I'm personally interested in people's intuitions when it comes to this because I find it fascinating as a subject.

Personally, I am pro-both. Even if it helps a single child not fall in to a bad situation, it's worth the many other cons that come with it. <tinfoilhat>I believe that the original concept had good intent, then flowed through a monetization process before delivery.</tinfoilhat>. If our weird reality eventually balances out, at least we'll have this on our side. People > Money.