this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2026
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The ONLY way I could remotely support age verification is if it was anonymized from the individual, similar to how companies like Mullvad do their VPN or with prepaid gift cards etc
You get a card that has a PIN behind a scratch-off section. You can buy the card for cash or order online, but there's nothing tying the buyer to the card.
Age verification can be similar where you go to a registered location, provide valid ID and like $5 to get a scratch off card. The code on the card just validates "user is 18+" but otherwise has no ties back to their actual identity.
If a site wants to do an age check, it can validate the card PIN or on phone potentially scan a 3d barcode behind the scratch-off. Maybe some hash check could be involved to avoid the need for a centralized provider.
Or we could just let people do what they want on their own god damn computers.
I mean, for the most part yes. I'm not even so much concerned about my kids viewing porn, more so than somebody else will make nasty deepfakes of them and post online etc, so age verification won't fix that.
I could see it help with discriminating between people at their "own damn computers" and bots or misinformation/psyops campaigns run out of certain foreign countries though (assuming any ID also ties back to parent country).
It won't unless they can prevent people from stealing IDs. Which they can't.