Comment by aargh_aargh
3 hours ago
> simple way to confirm their age and restore their full access with a selfie through Persona, a secure identity-verification service
The normalization of identity verification to use internet services is itself a problem. It's described much better than I could by EFF here:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/so-youve-hit-age-gate-...
The EFF are fighting a losing battle:
> we hope we’ll win in getting existing ones overturned and new ones prevented.
All the momentum is in the other direction and not slowing down. There are valid privacy concerns, but, buried in this very article, the EFF admit that it’s possible to do age-gating in a privacy-preserving way:
> it’s possible to only reveal your age information when you use a digital ID. If you’re given that choice, it can be a good privacy-preserving option
If they want to take a realistic approach to age-gating they should be campaigning to make this approach only option.