I'm surprised that the EFF does not highlight the best option, here: use a VPN to a jurisdiction that doesn't have such ridiculous laws.

I have never clicked "accept" on a cookie banner, as a matter of principle; I zap them away with uBlock Origin. Should the plague of age verification reach my jurisdiction, I'm sure I will handle it in like fashion.

Is there a throwaway identity that people are using? A dead person unchecked in Mississippi somewhere? Like every teen in America using the same identity like everyone's extended family does with their uncle's Netflix account?

I don't want to google it because I don't want to be put on a list but I also feel somewhat confident that this is being done. Apparently, HN feels safe to ask questions like that for me.

>If Google can guess your age, you may never even see an age verification screen. Your Google account is typically connected to your YouTube account, so if (like mine) your YouTube account is old enough to vote, you may not need to verify your Google account at all.

This has been proven false a bunch of times, at least if the 1000s of people complaining online about it are to be believed. My google account is definitely old enough to vote, but I get the verification popup all the time on YouTube.

I think the truth is, they just want your face. The financial incentive is to get as much data as possible so they can hand it to 3rd parties. I don't believe for a second that these social networks aren't selling both the data and the meta data.

Face scan: download and install Gary's mod.

There were some amusing headlines a while back about Discord's verification being fooled with game screenshots. Does anyone know if that's still the case?

How well does the selfie test detect AI-generated photos? That seems easy to bypass, especially if you copy the metadata over from a real photo.

States need to stop sniffing for age really. This is age discrimination.

I thought the article was about finding a job when you reach a certain age, which is my problem.

My kid has recently just quit playing Roblox because of the sketchy facial age check process. She said that her and all her friends know not to ever upload a picture of themselves to the Internet (good job, fellow Other Parents!!) so they're either moving on to other games or just downloading stock photos of people from the internet and uploading those (which apparently works).

What a total joke. These companies need to stop normalizing the sharing of personal private photos. It's literally the opposite direction from good Internet hygiene, especially for kids!

Why can't the EFF tell people to lie? Because if you can get away with it, lying is almost always your best option. Unless there are actual real world consequences to lying like you may anger the police.

And maybe consider using a VPN.

If my options are upload a picture of myself for Google to monetize through ads or not use Google / Youtube then I will be moving on regardless of the inconvenience to myself.

I think that age verification is important. While its not perfect, it is one tool to help protect kids.

>should I continue to use this service if I have to verify my age?

Simple answer, never accept this If everyone selected "cancel" you can be sure these sites will stop age banning, they wan $ more than anything else.

If a site asks me one question about me, I stop using if.

This makes me wonder if there's a business case for a privacy-preserving identity service which does age verification. Say you have a strong identity provider that you have proven your age to. Just as the 3rd party site could use SSO login from your identity provider, perhaps the identity provider could provide signed evidence to the 3rd party site that asserts "I have verified that this person is age X" but not divulge their identity. Sidestep the privacy issue and just give the 3rd party site what they need to shield them from liability.

I’ve noticed that many people struggle to simply let things go. Take a hypothetical case where HN requires ID verification. I'd just stop using HN, even if that meant giving up checking tech news. Sometimes things end, and that's fine.

I used to watch good soccer matches on public TV. When services like DAZN appeared, only one major match was available each weekend on public TV. Later, none were free to watch unless you subscribed to a private channel. I didn't want to do that, so I stopped watching soccer. Now I only follow big tournaments like the World cup, which still air on public TV (once every 4 years).

Sometimes you just have to let things go

My main concern is that there isn't a reliable way to know your information is securely stored[0].

> A few years ago, I received a letter in the mail addressed to my then-toddler. It was from a company I had never heard of. Apparently, there had been a breach and some customer information had been stolen. They offered a year of credit monitoring and other services. I had to read through every single word in that barrage of text to find out that this was a subcontractor with the hospital where my kids were born. So my kid's information was stolen before he could talk. Interestingly, they didn't send any letter about his twin brother. I'm pretty sure his name was right there next to his brother's in the database.

> Here was a company that I had no interaction with, that I had never done business with, that somehow managed to lose our private information to criminals. That's the problem with online identity. If I upload my ID online for verification, it has to go through the wires. Once it reaches someone else's server, I can never get it back, and I have no control over what they do with it.

All those parties are copying and transferring your information, and it's only a matter of time before it leaks.

[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/your-id-online-and-offline

> Even though there’s no way to implement mandated age gates in a way that fully protects speech and privacy rights

I think the EFF would have more success spreading their message if they didn't outright lie in their blog posts. While cryptographic digital ID schemes have their problems (which they address below), they do fully protect privacy rights. So do extremely simple systems like selling age-verification scratchcards in grocery stores, with the same age restrictions as cigarettes or alcohol.

What a piss poor article.

"We disagree with age gates but our recommendation is to comply". Fuck this.

Switch VPN region or upload a random picture generated by AI, problem solved.