If you're using Chrome, which most people are, I'd assume this is the case anyway?

Note - agree with your sentiment.

> google will sell the fact that you visited that porn website to anyone who is interested.

Has Google has actually done this? According to Google, they don't sell personal information:

https://about.google/company-info/how-our-business-works/#:~...

I'm willing to believe they've broken this promise, but if you can point to some actual proof, I'd like to see it.

"sell the fact that xyz" can this phraseology die? this is not what these big companies do. they sell attention, not data.

The Railcard website you linked is pretty clear.

> For those aged 16-25, save 1/3 off rail fares for days out, seeing family and friends and even festivals!

> For those aged 60 and over, save 1/3 off rail fares for days out, holidays, seeing family and friends, and theatre trips!

So, provide proof of age via ID and get a discount. It's very common on public transit for the young and elderly to get a discount.

Railcards in the UK have a complicated history, but essentially there's a sliding scale of discount you can get up to the age of 30, in order to encourage more young people to use the rail network. You get more discount under 18, some between 18 and 25 for one price, and some between 25 and 30 for another price.

Additionally, the way the discounts work is that you buy a pass that lasts for a period of time. That then needs to work with your current age. i.e. you can't buy 2 years of discount for under 30s at 29, you can only buy 1 year, so they need to share your age and I think possibly in some cases, date of birth.

Age is a proxy for money. You want to set the price for optimum profit (assuming the rail company isn’t controlled by the government and implements social measures), so you want to charge every group of people the amount where (number of costumers)*(profit per customer) is maximized. If you would price every group the same fare, some people wouldn’t get a ticket and you would lose customers. It makes sense to charge those users less, but try to keep the profit of other groups higher by not reducing their fare.

I'm not familiar with the specific situation in the UK, but age-based discounts can support many policy goals.

Maybe you want teenagers to be more independent, instead of relying too much on their parents for transportation needs. Maybe you want young adults get used to using public transit instead of driving everywhere, which can lower infrastructure costs in a densely populated country. Maybe you want to encourage retirees to get out and participate in the society, instead of sitting alone at home. Or maybe you want to encourage the use of public transit outside peak hours, which could reduce the overall need for subsidies.

Simple systems, such as age-based categories, often work well enough. Targeted subsidies can be more efficient in principle. But that assumes that regulators manage to target them properly and have the regulations implemented in software correctly and in time. All of those often fail. And even when they are successful, they may cost more than you save with better targeting. Not to mention the opportunity costs: when regulators focus on one thing, they can't work on another.

And it sounds like a complete nightmare when you're one of those people whose Google account gets suspended for some random reason, with no appeal process and no way to contact actual customer service.

Now you don't have any ID either, and can't prove who you are.

You’re more worried kids won’t be able to see filth online if they want than how this will be abused by authoritarian governments to clamp down on free speech?

And yet governments can do this in the offline world. Why is it so much more dangerous in the online world?

i am in favor of increasing government capacity

Plus, you'd be giving Google your government ID. A company that collects and trades thousands of your behavioral metrics as their core business model.

The Baltics have handled this better with a Smart ID system[0] that also allows cryptographic document signing (like Adobe Sign but non-repudiable by law). It can perform proof-of-human like Altman's orbs, and allows Baltic citizens to file documents with the government, access electronic court records, electronic medical records, e-banking, and similar services.

One downside of the system is that its purpose is to identify a natural person using a service. So whichever service uses it as authentication, it will receive personal data. However, there are third-party sign-on gateways that use Smart ID (and other e-signature methods legal in the Baltics) to authenticate users and only disclose certain bits of personal information to those requesting authentication. In Lithuania, the government operates a service called the E-Government Gateway, and one can easily imagine it could be used for zero-knowledge age verification.

Ultimately, Google seems to be offering a far inferior product at a lot more risk to the user. Once again, their core business is user profiling, associating various user metrics with each profile. A government ID is the holy grail for user profiling. It's sort of like if a wolf offered a sheep-verification service - yes, we could trust the wolf to act professionally towards the sheep, despite it coming out in sheep court several times that it hasn't in the past. But is it wise to suspend disbelief like that? It's better to leave this to independent, expert companies, or even governments.

[0] https://www.smart-id.com/

I've had similar ideas regarding how US Military ID cards work. The tech enthusiast in me loves the idea of ubiquitous strong 2FA, functioning ID systems that separate "identification" from "authentication" (looking at you, SSNs), etc.

Identity theft would become essentially impossible. Then if it were adopted by things that are fundamentally associated with your real identity (e.g., banks, payment processors, insurance providers, government institutions) then whole classes of phishing scams would become impossible.

Then there are the use cases where it's convenient for the user. Public transit, event admissions, membership cards.

Then there are the use cases where it's convenient for the provider. Alcohol sales, social media, adult content.

... Yeah, that would turn into a dystopia incredibly fast.

Why do you think Google "gets" data in Google Wallet?

Too true. The better option is for each computing device with internet access to continuously do a biometric scan of the user (fingerprint, retina, face, etc) and check against a government controlled database that stores identity info.

even if kids stop visiting porn sites, there are many other ways of downloading porn and what they will download will be even worst

> Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress.

This is quite a leap.

Societies would be perfectly capable of evolution as long as they are not totally convinced of their own perfection at any given moment. It is quite possible to have everyone follow a law while simultaneously supporting changing it.

Yep, every society believes itself perfect (or about to become perfect with just one more law), and then 10 minutes later is proven hilariously wrong.

> Societies rely on imperfect enforcement of the law in order to progress. There's no way to create a critical mass of resistance and disobedience that will lead to the toppling of an unfair law if you enforce the law perfectly and universally, and this will lead society to ossify.

Don't worry, it won't be perfect and universal. Politicians, the police, and their friends and family will surely make themselves exempt.

>which will use digital IDs from Google Wallet to verify user identity and ZKP to verify age

This seems to imply you have to upload your information to Google first. But if you do that then what's the point of ZKP, Google might as well just send over a signed attestation token.

> We have the results of what happens when kids grow up with no actual age verification on the internet or with video games.

A mental illness epidemic? [0]

[0] https://www.afterbabel.com/p/the-teen-mental-illness-epidemi...

An 18 year old account doesn't necessarily pass the liability requirements legally.

Who would guarantee that the account has been used by the same person all those 18 years?

Better than Apple Intelligence which put the cart before the horse.

Nah it would be called Google Wallet Money Duo.

Google Wallet will keep working for 6 months. Then stop. Around the same time Google Money Wallet will launch. Neither will support credit cards correctly for another 6 months.

Then Google Billfold will launch...