Comment by flossposse
1 day ago
Alcohol is harmful, and you want to prevent minors from obtaining it without parental supervision. Do you pass a law requiring every car to log the age of every occupant in case the driver drives to an establishment that sells alcohol? No, that's stupid. You require the person providing the alcohol to check age only when they are about to hand over the alcohol. Until someone actually attempt to access alcohol, they should not be asked their age.
Now exchange "car" for "OS" and "alcohol" for "age-sensitive content"
Letting someone look at a date on an ID to 2 seconds is a lot lower stakes than handing over a scan of your license, face, and who knows what else, to hundreds of companies that will do god knows what with it.
To your point, a user shouldn’t be forced to put in age details just to use an OS. That said, if an OS can send a simple Boolean to an app/site if the user is over 18 or not, I’m guessing more people would rather opt into that system vs handing over extensive details to each and every vendor who asks.
As a person in my 40s, with no kids in my house, I find all of this absurd. Let parents install some nanny software if they want, don’t force it on everyone and use “protecting children” as the scapegoat.