There's a lot of precedent in the real world to force providers of a service/product to verify the age of the consumer. What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
I think this pov tends to come from people that are nostalgic for the wild west days of the web. It doesn't matter if the internet was not originally intended for children -- they're here, en masse, and now society is looking for solutions.
> What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
Metaphor time:
Consider a liquor store in a physical space, and a porn site on the internet.
The liquor store requires ID at point of sale because it has limited entry and exit into the building. It has physical restrictions making it harder for minors to enter, and harder to exploit their way into accessing age-restricted items. This is because the physical world is always shared by default, and we must make rules securing adults-only spaces in a world that’s intrinsically shared with children.
A digital porn site exists on a realm solely built by adults, that requires adults to access in the first place. A child cannot sign up for an ISP, a child cannot buy their own cellular phone[1], and a child cannot decide to share their coffee shop or library WiFi for free to everyone within range. At some point, a child requires the assistance of adults to enter the internet. That makes the internet a de facto space for adults first, not children, and that is why I vehemently disagree with vilifying the majority of users (adults) just to “protect” kids who will bypass those age checks like they’ve successfully done for decades.
There will always be youth finding a way to procure pornography, drugs, or alcohol underage. The difference with the internet is that it’s by adults, for adults, and that children are guests who should be supervised by adults in their circles - not by policing all the adults online through intrusive surveillance measures.
[1] Children can, of course, use cash or cards to buy prepaid phones and airtime in many countries. I do not think this should be allowed and would be a better venue to restrict access than a surveillance state.
Another really important distinction here is simply that drugs and alcohol damage health, cause cancer, cause brain damage, cause car crashes and kill people, and photons of humans having sex with each other are probably orders of magnitude less harmful and it would require a massive amount of scientific research to prove to me otherwise.
I'm not critiquing your argument, I'm really just sitting here in amazement that the zeitgeist thinks these are of similar harm.
If a bartender asks to see your driver's license, that's fine. Now imagine a bartender asks to see your driver's license, and then run it through a scanner to capture a digital image of it, which they then store in a folder for the owner to peruse at their leisure. It's not the same thing, at all.
The difference in this scenario is that bars and retailers can actually do that and it's perfectly legal (AFAIK in the US), while a porn site doing that is explicitly illegal according to all of the bills I've read. If you hand it to a store clerk to read and they scan it real quick, you can't even react before it's done, and then what are you going to do? You have no recourse. The clerk almost certainly can't even remove the information. In addition to the legal side, digital ids do have some protections against this designed in.
In the real world, we have many businesses which will look at ones gov't issued ID, most bars for instance. We have other businesses which will record the information off ones ID, most dispensaries for instance. I will go into the first. I will not go into the second. Verifying my eligibility is one thing. Recording my data for later use is a very different thing. I can tell the difference in the real world because I can see the process. Online, it is impossible to tell. Providers can build a reputation for privacy, think Proton.
You say we are looking for solutions. There are better solutions, including privacy preserving solutions, which can work. We just don’t have any of those yet.
I agree, and I advocate for adopting such solutions. I'm definitely not a fan of sending my ID to an arbitrary 3rd party with no visibility into how it will be processed. I am confident that if verification becomes the norm, a good solution will become ubiquitous (whether that's Google's ZKP or something else).
But, dismissing the whole verification effort on principle because "it's the internet and it's inherently for adults" is silly and unrealistic, IMO (not that you were). It's just not the world we live in anymore, the internet is used by everyone, for everything, and we should build accordingly.
> a good solution will become ubiquitous (whether that's Google's ZKP or something else).
Believing that Google's solution will be truly ZK, interoperable, or good is similarly silly, unrealistic, and not the world we live in anymore. Unfortunately.
>What is so special about services delivered over the internet?
The most dangerous people on earth who are not in prison are on the internet; It is an adult place. Making it look like a child friendly place will not change this. But it will lure more kids online unsupervised and unprotected.
One of THE major selling points for the internet is the option of anonymity, is that true for your other examples? I'd add what exactly is the point in this context? For alcohol sales or tobacco sales you can see the rationale in public health, clearly stated data about reducing accidental deaths, road accidents, and violence.
In the U.S, to get into an R-rated movie without a parent you need to show ID to prove that you are 17.
But you can watch videos of people being beheaded in subreddits by simply signing in.
My point is that if a society decides that certain content should be age restricted -- it being on the internet shouldn't make the difference.
I largely think that age restriction laws are ridiculous. BUT, I don't think the internet is some special haven, exempt from all of society's standards/laws enforced offline.
your first statement is not correct. at theaters in the US, ID is only required if the moviegoer appears under 17. there is no blanket ID check nor recorded storage of those IDs.
also worth noting that in most places in the US, it’s not a legal requirement to card, but a industry agreement with the MPAA (self regulation)
Watching a movie in a theater is... just casual entertainment. The internet is a "place" where billions of people communicate, do business, are entertained, and share confidential information.
I don't think that's a very good comparison, even setting aside the points made in other replies to you.
I think this pov tends to come from people that are nostalgic for the wild west days of the web. It doesn't matter if the internet was not originally intended for children -- they're here, en masse, and now society is looking for solutions.