Three days left! Support our fundraiser by January 5th and 
10 (Not So) Hidden Dangers of Age Verification
from the it-causes-real-problems dept
It’s nearly the end of 2025, and half of the US and the UK now require you to upload your ID or scan your face to watch “sexual content.” A handful of states and Australia now have various requirements to verify your age before you can create a social media account.
Age-verification laws may sound straightforward to some: protect young people online by making everyone prove their age. But in reality, these mandates force users into one of two flawed systems—mandatory ID checks or biometric scans—and both are deeply discriminatory. These proposals burden everyone’s right to speak and access information online, and structurally excludes the very people who rely on the internet most. In short, although these laws are often passed with the intention to protect children from harm, the reality is that these laws harm both adults and children.
Here’s who gets hurt, and how:
1. Adults Without IDs Get Locked Out
Document-based verification assumes everyone has the right ID, in the right name, at the right address. About 15 million adult U.S. citizens don’t have a driver’s license, and 2.6 million lack any government-issued photo ID at all. Another 34.5 million adults don’t have a driver’s license or state ID with their current name and address.
- 18% of Black adults don’t have a driver’s license at all.
- Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately less likely to have current licenses.
- Undocumented immigrants often cannot obtain state IDs or driver’s licenses.
- People with disabilities are less likely to have current identification.
- Lower-income Americans face greater barriers to maintaining valid IDs.
Some laws allow platforms to ask for financial documents like credit cards or mortgage records instead. But they still overlook the fact that nearly 35% of U.S. adults also don’t own homes, and close to 20% of households don’t have credit cards. Immigrants, regardless of legal status, may also be unable to obtain credit cards or other financial documentation.
2. Communities of Color Face Higher Error Rates
Platforms that rely on AI-based age-estimation systems often use a webcam selfie to guess users’ ages. But these algorithms don’t work equally well for everyone. Research has consistently shown that they are less accurate for people with Black, Asian, Indigenous, and Southeast Asian backgrounds; that they often misclassify those adults as being under 18; and sometimes take longer to process, creating unequal access to online spaces. This mirrors the well-documented racial bias in facial recognition technologies. The result is that technology’s inherent biases can block people from speaking online or accessing others’ speech.
3. People with Disabilities Face More Barriers
Age-verification mandates most harshly affect people with disabilities. Facial recognition systems routinely fail to recognize faces with physical differences, affecting an estimated 100 million people worldwide who live with facial differences, and “liveness detection” can exclude folks with limited mobility. As these technologies become gatekeepers to online spaces, people with disabilities find themselves increasingly blocked from essential services and platforms with no specified appeals processes that account for disability.
Document-based systems also don’t solve this problem—as mentioned earlier, people with disabilities are also less likely to possess current driver’s licenses, so document-based age-gating technologies are equally exclusionary.
4. Transgender and Non-Binary People Are Put At Risk
Age-estimation technologies perform worse on transgender individuals and cannot classify non-binary genders at all. For the 43% of transgender Americans who lack identity documents that correctly reflect their name or gender, age verification creates an impossible choice: provide documents with dead names and incorrect gender markers, potentially outing themselves in the process, or lose access to online platforms entirely—a risk that no one should be forced to take just to use social media or access legal content.
5. Anonymity Becomes a Casualty
Age-verification systems are, at their core, surveillance systems. By requiring identity verification to access basic online services, we risk creating an internet where anonymity is a thing of the past. For people who rely on anonymity for safety, this is a serious issue. Domestic abuse survivors need to stay anonymous to hide from abusers who could track them through their online activities. Journalists, activists, and whistleblowers regularly use anonymity to protect sources and organize without facing retaliation or government surveillance. And in countries under authoritarian rule, anonymity is often the only way to access banned resources or share information without being silenced. Age-verification systems that demand government IDs or biometric data would strip away these protections, leaving the most vulnerable exposed.
6. Young People Lose Access to Essential Information
Because state-imposed age-verification rules either block young people from social media or require them to get parental permission before logging on, they can deprive minors of access to important information about their health, sexuality, and gender. Many U.S. states mandate “abstinence only” sexual health education, making the internet a key resource for education and self-discovery. But age-verification laws can end up blocking young people from accessing that critical information. And this isn’t just about porn, it’s about sex education, mental health resources, and even important literature. Some states and countries may start going after content they deem “harmful to minors,” which could include anything from books on sexual health to art, history, and even award-winning novels. And let’s be clear: these laws often get used to target anything that challenges certain political or cultural narratives, from diverse educational materials to media that simply includes themes of sexuality or gender diversity. What begins as a “protection” for kids could easily turn into a full-on censorship movement, blocking content that’s actually vital for minors’ development, education, and well-being.
This is also especially harmful to homeschoolers, who rely on the internet for research, online courses, and exams. For many, the internet is central to their education and social lives. The internet is also crucial for homeschoolers’ mental health, as many already struggle with isolation. Age-verification laws would restrict access to resources that are essential for their education and well-being.
7. LGBTQ+ Youth Are Denied Vital Lifelines
For many LGBTQ+ young people, especially those with unsupportive or abusive families, the internet can be a lifeline. For young people facing family rejection or violence due to their sexuality or gender identity, social media platforms often provide crucial access to support networks, mental health resources, and communities that affirm their identities. Age verification systems that require parental consent threaten to cut them from these crucial supports.
When parents must consent to or monitor their children’s social media accounts, LGBTQ+ youth who lack family support lose these vital connections. LGBTQ+ youth are also disproportionately likely to be unhoused and lack access to identification or parental consent, further marginalizing them.
8. Youth in Foster Care Systems Are Completely Left Out
Age verification bills that require parental consent fail to account for young people in foster care, particularly those in group homes without legal guardians who can provide consent, or with temporary foster parents who cannot prove guardianship. These systems effectively exclude some of the most vulnerable young people from accessing online platforms and resources they may desperately need.
9. All of Our Personal Data is Put at Risk
An age-verification system also creates acute privacy risks for adults and young people. Requiring users to upload sensitive personal information (like government-issued IDs or biometric data) to verify their age creates serious privacy and security risks. Under these laws, users would not just momentarily display their ID like one does when accessing a liquor store, for example. Instead, they’d submit their ID to third-party companies, raising major concerns over who receives, stores, and controls that data. Once uploaded, this personal information could be exposed, mishandled, or even breached, as we’ve seen with past data hacks. Age-verification systems are no strangers to being compromised—companies like AU10TIX and platforms like Discord have faced high-profile data breaches, exposing users’ most sensitive information for months or even years.
The more places personal data passes through, the higher the chances of it being misused or stolen. Users are left with little control over their own privacy once they hand over these immutable details, making this approach to age verification a serious risk for identity theft, blackmail, and other privacy violations. Children are already a major target for identity theft, and these mandates perversely increase the risk that they will be harmed.
10. All of Our Free Speech Rights Are Trampled
The internet is today’s public square—the main place where people come together to share ideas, organize, learn, and build community. Even the Supreme Court has recognized that social media platforms are among the most powerful tools ordinary people have to be heard.
Age-verification systems inevitably block some adults from accessing lawful speech and allow some young people under 18 users to slip through anyway. Because the systems are both over-inclusive (blocking adults) and under-inclusive (failing to block people under 18), they restrict lawful speech in ways that violate the First Amendment.
The Bottom Line
Age-verification mandates create barriers along lines of race, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, and socioeconomic class. While these requirements threaten everyone’s privacy and free-speech rights, they fall heaviest on communities already facing systemic obstacles.
The internet is essential to how people speak, learn, and participate in public life. When access depends on flawed technology or hard-to-obtain documents, we don’t just inconvenience users, we deepen existing inequalities and silence the people who most need these platforms. As outlined, every available method—facial age estimation, document checks, financial records, or parental consent—systematically excludes or harms marginalized people. The real question isn’t whether these systems discriminate, but how extensively.
Republished from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.
Filed Under: access to information, age verification, anonymity, free speech, privacy
Comments on “10 (Not So) Hidden Dangers of Age Verification”
I’ve hated age verification for as long as I can remember, but up until recently I haven’t really been able to put my finger (or paw) onto why.
Having thought about it…my first real foray into online communities ended really poorly and hurt my ability to socialize online for a long time. When I started to become more social again, it ended up being with deviant and adult groups.
That they were deviant and perverse and all that sort of thing was important, because I felt like I could speak openly of my thoughts, no matter what they were, without being judged. And I wasn’t pressed to reveal anything about myself, I could share only the details that I wanted to, to people I’d grown to trust. The kinkiest most perverted corner of the internet was also the most accepting of my boundaries and helped me to begin socializing again.
And then the social media ban for teens, and NSFW channels on Discord being blocked for me until I let them use my camera.
I ended up giving in, but I still feel like I was violated. My access to my friends held hostage. Forced to share information I didn’t want to share, even if it was (supposedly) never stored. It made me angry enough that I was seriously considering killing people.
And, I think…if something like this had been in place back then, if I wasn’t allowed to anonymously browse and chat about dirty things, if I had to wave an ID around, be forced to share details about myself and be judged before I had a chance to talk or look…I don’t think I could have done it. I wouldn’t have healed.
So once again, I hate age verification. Because it violates my personal boundaries by demanding information I’m not comfortable with sharing, and it sends the message that someone is making self-righteous judgements about what I am and what I’m doing.
Discrimination against the poor, minorities, women, LGBTQ folk, etc. is either an intention or a happy incidental bonus for policies like these. Pointing out the discrimination isn’t going to make the proponents back off. They’ll be happy that it’s working as planned. The cruelty and suppression is always intentional.
And if it’s supposedly just incompetence that results in functional cruelty, it is morally indistinguishable. If you can’t do something effectively without hurting people, you shouldn’t be doing anything at all.
Re:
Eh, it often is intentional, but sometimes it’s also just collateral damage. Oftentimes policy will disproportionately affect the most vulnerable, given that they are by definition harder to reach. You can see that with e.g. the driver’s licenses rates themselves. Even in states that aren’t trying to suppress the vote and do homeless outreach, you still see disparities.
There are very very few (no?) policies that don’t let literally anyone slip through the cracks. Some are smaller than others, but it’s pretty much inevitable you’re going to hurt some people. You just have to factor in that miss rate as part of the cost of the policy when weighing whether the policy outweighs status quo. It should weigh heavily, though.
Parents need dedicated “child” devices that identify themselves as such. Until that is an option you’re saying we have to let kids watch violent porn.
You just pretend that the fact there is no age gate on the Internet is not a problem. It is a problem and the status quo is not a solution. Give parents the tools they need to allow their kids to access all the good stuff you are talking about without allowing access to adult only spaces.
Something needs to change. The current legislation is not a solution but neither is doing nothing.
Re:
I’m sure a bunch of journalists and pro bono rights lawyers will get be able to get right on to Nerding Harder for a technical solution.
Re:
That’s a fair bit leaning into a bad take argument. The stance was never “saying we have to let kids watch violent porn”, it’s that tools already exist for this problem and many parents lack either the intuition or willingness to use them. Then the same parents refuse accountability from the resulting situation and decide it’s someone else’s problem.
Are the tools perfect? No. But those tools still lay groundwork for a solution that doesn’t affect the agency of people completely unrelated to the problem.
Re: Re:
The thing is, whether you can get parents to use them is a part of whether it’s a good solution or not. If you have a good solution but can’t get people to actually do the thing, in some sense it’s not actually a real solution. If parents won’t/can’t use them (or at least there’s no reasonable proposal to get them to), the tools may as well not exist.
You kind of have to design policy around the citizens you have, not the citizens you wish you had. You see it in other areas of policy too, like vaccine mandates for schools. Parents have the tools to get their kids vaccinated, but we know some won’t, so we end up designing the policy to account for that.
I don’t think we need to expect perfection, but there’s a big gap between perfection and essentially negligible uptake. And there doesn’t really seem to be any sign of it meaningfully improving, or anyone who has a good idea on how to improve it.
Having parents use existing tools would be a way better solution hypothetically, but until someone figures out a way to get them to actually use them in practice at scale, it’s kinda moot. And you have to be careful about pointing to a hypothetical solution that will never materialize, and therefore ultimately ends up just being a way to propagate the status quo.
Re: Re: Re:
What a fucking asinine argument, that is legally, intellectually, and technologically illiterate.
First: You’re ignoring the entire premise of this article, that these laws impact others. At the end of the day, that’s the problem. Nothing else fucking matters. You can’t just decide that 10% of the population having their fundamental rights violated is acceptable. It’s not a statistics problem, it’s a rights problem.
Second: Virtually every provider offers you a switch to flip and activate some sort of filtering. MS, Apple, and Google all have tools that further restrict access on their devices. Routers offer it as well. Installable software fucking offers it. It’s fucking easy to do. It’s not perfection, but it’s God. damned. close. It’s not a technology problem, it’s a rights problem.
Third: The reason parents don’t do it now is because it’s NOT. A. FUCKING. PROBLEM. It’s just fucking not. OR they believe it’s a problem and are lazy and incompetent. Neither are enough of an excuse to impact other people. It’s not an ease of use problem, it’s a rights problem.
Fourth: You’re trying to use user-focused design principles to argue that it’s OK to impact the rights of other people because shit isn’t perfect. That’s just a fucking dumb way to approach this. It doesn’t matter how hard it is to do this, it’s not a user interface problem. It’s not a UI/UX problem, it’s a rights problem.
If an adult is driving a car, gets in an accident, and a child is ejected because they weren’t wearing a seatbelt: it’s entirely the adult’s fault. This is the same. If you give access to the internet to a child and don’t monitor it, you’re guilty of neglect. We’re not going to require everyone to show their ID and check their car for kids before they start it.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’m not ignoring it, it just wasn’t relevant. It’s something I’ve engaged with on these articles, and I do acknowledge.
But, yes, we do in fact do this sort of trade off. Other things do matter, even when it impacts fundamental rights. At the end of the day, what matters is what does the most good. Impacting people’s rights is extremely bad on the “does the most good” side of things, but we do in fact (rarely) restrict people’s rights. Literally, drivers licenses restrict people’s rights to freedom of movement.
We also e.g. check IDs in person for adult services. That doesn’t have the same level of risk as online (due to storage/hacking risk etc), but it absolutely fails the “having someone’s rights impacted” test. It fails the 10% threshold, too. There are a million other examples. Limiting people’s rights is not something to be done lightly, but it is something that is done.
I didn’t say it wasn’t easy. I said most parents don’t do it, and that includes parents who are active/involved with their kids. It being ‘easy’ doesn’t matter if people don’t do it.
If people want to argue that kids accessing adult material isn’t a problem, they’re free to make that argument. These EFF articles don’t. They’re also free to argue that it’s not worth trading people’s rights for. That’s totally fine, too.
However, if part of that argument includes supposedly less painful alternatives like existing parental tools, that discussion needs to include the downsides, too. Where it is a problem is when people use parental tools as a cheap way to dodge taking unpopular stances like saying it’s not actually a problem. (To be clear, not accusing the previous commenter of this.)
What I’m arguing is when evaluating policy, what matters is what ends up doing the most good in practice. And to do that, things like uptake matter. If you aren’t considering how people actually respond to a policy, you’re going to design shit policy (this goes for age ID laws as well). This is not solely a UI/UX problem, many of these tools have reasonable UI/UX and still don’t get used. There’s more factors, including yes, a culture of parents that normalizes laziness on the issue.
I agree. However, the odds of getting any sort of neglect law is basically zero, and that factors in. I would actually prefer putting more responsibility on parents. But just because I want it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.
And for the record, I do not like current age ID laws like this, and have spoken out against them. I don’t think the good outweighs the harms, as is. But I can not like ID laws while also not wanting to use existing parental tools as an easy (but nonexistent in practice) out.
Re: Re: Re:3
You start out with “I don’t care about the constitution” and move on to walking back your claims while also not understanding a word I wrote. Congrats. You’re still legally, intellectually, and technologically illiterate.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, I didn’t, stop strawmanning. I explained, in detail, that I care about the Constitution, but that we also balance that care with other concerns. With examples of existing uncontroversial policy, to boot. The fact that the Constitution is not absolute does not mean people do not care about it.
Name one. I didn’t walk back a single claim.
Totally, which is why you won’t mention a single actual detail. I understood what you wrote, I just don’t agree with it and explained why, and you don’t like that. Instead of actually engaging with an argument you disagree with like an adult, you’re swapping to personal insults so you can still feel vindicated. If I was actually illiterate you’d be shoving the how/why down my throat right now. Insults are just the next best thing when you can’t.
Re: Re: Re:5
You can’t say “I care about rights” but also “fuck those rights cuz people are lazy” and expect people take you seriously. Poor uptake of a perfectly good solution does not in any way, shape, or form justify infringing on the rights of others. You’re conflating policy design, with rights. Again. That’s not how it works. Parents can solve this problem right now, and choose not to.
Re: Re: Re:6
I explicitly didn’t say “fuck those rights”. I said it needs to be balanced, and then I gave you existing examples where we do in fact balance those rights with other things. And yes, I expect you to take that seriously, instead of just yelling rights as a trump card and strawmanning, because that’s how a society of adults living in a reality of trade offs works.
It literally is how society works, and we know that because there are literally existing uncontroversial examples of it working like that. You may not think this particular trade off is worth it, but we do in fact make policy trade offs with rights all the time. If you’re going to argue otherwise, you need to grapple with those counterexamples (and preferably, understand why those counterexamples exist the way they do).
Yes, and people can solve things like exceptions to the First Amendment by not defaming people, or making true threats. They choose not to. Ditto for the 2nd, etc. That statement by itself is meaningless.
Re: Re: Re:7
I suppose I should preemptively add to that last bit-yes those are more extreme examples to reinforce the broader point that rights are not completely inviolate. If you’d prefer to stick to more comparable examples, I already gave some above.
Re: Re: Re:8
You don’t balance rights against preferences. It’s not a thing.
And your examples for that, frankly, suck because you don’t understand what you’re tlaking about. When someone checks my ID in person I hand it to them, they look, and then hand it back. Nothing is stored, transmitted, copied, routed, reviewed, handled, retrieved, audited, or checked. It’s a simple transaction with virtually no risks. Putting anything on the internet is the exact opposite. If you don’t assume it will be compromised at some point, you’re….illiterate.
Also, your examples about exceptions to rights are all based on how someone’s use of rights directly harms someone else. What you’re advocating for isn’t even remotely close to that. You’re arguing that everyone’s rights should be limited, arbitrarily, because some else has just ….wont do some fucking work. Comparing these issues isn’t even remotely the same.
Look man, what you’re advocating for is exactly why liberals get their ass handed to them all the time. You’re advocating an incredibly easy to abuse law to ‘protect’ children from something that every parent can already do. This won’t end in kids seeing less violet porn. It ends in kids not getting access to information on birth control. You’re fucking stupid for not seeing this, and I have no time for your condescending bullshit when you don’t actually understand the problem, the solution, the technology involved, or how people work. And as a result your solution will NEVER work (Think DARE), and instead will only harm people. But when it doesn’t work, you’ll demand more.
Re: Re: Re:9
This was explicitly covered in the previous post: That doesn’t have the same level of risk as online (due to storage/hacking risk etc), but it absolutely fails the “having someone’s rights impacted” test. It fails the 10% threshold, too.
There is in fact risk (risks that the article’s author has acknowledged previously, and that have come up in SCOTUS cases on the issue). Not the same level of risks, as I already mentioned, but there is risk. More importantly however, even without those risks, the act itself is still a violation of rights. Even if it never leaks it is a violation of rights to speech/privacy. It is not the exactly same, yes. But it is a violation of rights.
You weren’t making an argument based on “the risks in this particular case aren’t justified”, but how “we never do that”. Those are two different arguments, ones that I’ve explicitly covered why the former is justifiable and the latter isn’t. If you want to swap to the latter, as I’ve said that is justifiable (and not only that, I literally agree with it), but it is not the argument you made initially.
No, I’m not. I explicitly said I’m not, so why are you lying about it?
If I was that stupid, it should be very easy to actually address the point (and not repeat points I already made, or make up points I’m not making), instead of blustering with insults. Insults you apparently had plenty of time to write. This isn’t a time issue. The problem is you still wanted to circlejerk about being more correct. Now you’re stuck with a counterexample you don’t have an argument for, and so the next best thing is insults.
If you don’t want to be condescended to, don’t act like a child. The discussion was perfectly respectful until you resorted to empty insults to avoid an inconvenient counterexample. You’re capable of better.
Re: If your kids are Finding Such
Then its Time to Talk to them.
If you think thats ALL the porn you will see and find. You are Way off.
As to Violent porn, you will see more of that in Neighbors Beating there Wives and Husbands, Children then on the net.
Reality Sucks, Hiding from it is even Worse, as you dont get a chance to Explain to your Child WHATS happening, and Why most of it is Bad.
It all comes back to the parents/responsible ADULTS(?). If you dont know what you kid is Doing/Watching, YOU cant help your Child understand.
Re: Re:
Not to mention what it says if your child does not TRUST you to talk about these things…
Re:
mandatory violent porn day is now in effect
Seriously, what a wild take on the topic. Perhaps consider the opposite. If there were no restrictions on porn whatsoever, maybe the ‘taboo’ categories like violent, incestual, beastial or minor-involving would become less interesting for those that are currently into them.
Age gating things only leads to those things becoming more desired. Humans all (for the most part) go through a ‘rebellious’ phase as they age and figure out personalities, hobbies and interests for themselves.
If you tell a rambunctious teenager ‘do not put beans in your nose’, what do you think the odds are that they might put beans in their nose?
Part of the issue in my opinion is that there is no immediately recognizable consequence of age-gated things. Smoking one cigarette or drinking one regular beer is unlikely to kill anyone or even lead to a hangover. So when the child ultimately tries one or the other and realizes this, that the only result was that they felt good, what happens? Will porn be any different?
Is there any proven, immmediate negative consequence of watching porn?
Why aren’t families having more children?
Re:
I have used social media since I was 13 to 14-ish and I have rarely seen anything people would consider porn, let alone violent porn lol. I have absolutely seen stupid non-porn stuff getting labeled porn though. I also have zero trust in conservative governments, they will literally label stuff porn if a story has a normal ahh trans girl or something in it.
Re: Re:
Your comment would make a better point if you included an estimate of your age. Saying “since I was 13 to 14-ish” means little otherwise. are you currently 15 or 50? no one knows. it makes it more difficult to understand things from your point of view.
As a 43 year old, when I was 13 to 14-ish, the internet was new and exploding all manner of horrible things onto the worlds CRT monitors, sometimes literally, for all to see, of all ages, except for the few whose parents properly helicoptered them and those too poor to access a computer with an internet connection.
i was shown violent porn at a very young age without looking for it, some of which i wish i had never seen. it was sort of a meme back then, to show friends horrible things, before the use of the word ‘meme’ became popular.
i don’t recommend looking for either of these if you are unfamiliar with them but scenes from ‘faces of death’, the ‘meatspin’ website and the ‘goatse’ image were standard trolls to run into online and happened frequently.
i think it’s one of the reasons the rick astley video and ‘rickrolling’ became prominant. it was a troll that was just a song, a music video, about a mans undying love for someone, instead of a man gaping his asshole wide enough to fit a grapefruit inside without it touching anything. the latter is what people were expecting, giving the former much more impact.
Re: Re: Re:
Sounds like you had some shitty friends and you’re assuming everyone else did too.
Re: Re: Re:
I’ve been using the internet for like 35 years without seeing violent porn. Because I have no interest in, and thus do not seek out, violent porn.
And I watch a LOT of porn.
Re:
What a fucking lazy parent. Kid’s don’t have to watch that, they only do because you fucking suck at parenting.
ID to use your computer
And if the UK government gets its way you may even be required to show ID to disable filters built into your phone or computer’s operating system:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/12/uk-to-encourage-apple-and-google-to-put-nudity-blocking-systems-on-phones/
Re: I can see it now.
Insert Drivers License HERE –>> <>out of order<<–
Re: Re: Markup
Works again..
US sites for US people
No-one seems to have considered that the Internet is international, but ID documents are not. I cannot ever get a US drivers license, and so any simplistic age/ID-gating based upon that document excludes roughly 8 billion citizens of the Internet, not just the approx 300 million (a mere 3.75% of the global population) population of the USA.
An ID document based system (if you really want it to work, and I don’t) needs to allow Tonga, Ukrainian, German, Brazilian, Chinese, Nigerian, and British formal IDs … and all the rest, or you’re excluding more than just a few LGBTQ+, Black, Native, or non-Caucasian people locally.
Why are US internet businesses cutting off over 95% of their possible market by tolerating this shit?
Re: US Internet Businesses
I can answer that one. It’s because for these companies, as for so many other dickheads, the world outside of America does not exist.
What about a generic use case that is relatable to people regardless of demographic? Such as those who don’t feel comfortable with a permanent record attached to their ID.
Sure, that falls under privacy risks, but “privacy” is an ill-defined word especially given the ubiquitous refrain by the most anti-privacy people in existance about how much they value your privacy.
Paint a relatable picture in peoples’ heads and you’ll find the message resonating with more people.
Age verification is a way on anonymous speech.
McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission 514 U.S. 334 (1995)
Protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views . . . Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. . . . It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular: to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation . . . at the hand of an intolerant society.
If we change that to an intolerant government that would be doing the retaliating, then I think that nails it down.
This kind of falls in line with a comment I saw on Hacker News a few days ago from someone who said they were raided by the UK police early last year over illegal – or what the government calls illegal – anime artwork on an artwork website.
Then I’m reminded of what Ayn Rand once said:
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”