Comment by sltkr
2 months ago
The solution to that is to make sure the age verification is used for a variety of different purposes.
For example, why not use the same age verification system to block access to sites that advertise or sell alcohol or tobacco products? Or sex toys. Or dating apps. Or loans applications. Or for any number of adult-only apps that aren't necessarily blackmailable? Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
That provides people with plausible deniability. “Oh, I wasn't looking at porn! I was just trying to find the perfect brandy to buy as a business gift.” or “Oh, I was just trying to get a quote to refurnish my apartment on credit.”
I'm against this because 1. of chilling effects and 2. it risks solving the sybil problem, making it easy to e.g. restrict people to one account.
> Normalize age verification for adult-only services.
Lets not, please.
Normalization like this could absolutely invite overreach / abuse. The immediately/obvious one is now sites have a "this is/is-not a minor" data point to correlate with the user activity that they'll sell off to some advertiser/broker.
I don't recall where I heard it, but the quote was essentially "the perception of surveillance is itself restrictive."