I’m asking for public policy ideas here. A lot of countries are enacting age verification now. But of course this is a privacy nightmare and is ripe for abuse. At the same time though, I also understand why people are concerned with how kids are using social media. These products are designed to be addictive and are known to cause body image issues and so forth. So what’s the middle ground? How can we protect kids from the harms of social media in a way that respects everyone’s privacy?
Yeah. The OS based biometric model of verification definitely has some advantages over a service-by-service form of verification (so long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t make it easier to fingerprint based on device). The biggest concern I’d have though would be what this might do to niche operating systems, like Linux distros or Graphene OS. Will they be forced to enable age verification as well, and if so will they have the means to do that?
The comparison to credit card verification is interesting though and intuitively it seems like it would make it easier for niche operating systems to manage these requirements, since they could largely outsource that functionality (in the same way most websites outsource the handling of credit card information). This model still might make it easier for governments to profile people though. I’d be interested to hear what a privacy expert has to say about the viability or tradeoffs with a model like that.