Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for privacy. But between setting up the birthdate when creating my children’s local account on their computers, and having to send a copy of their ID to every platform under the sun, I’d easily chose the former.
I’d even agree to a simple protocol (HTTP X-Over-18 / X-Over-21 headers?) to that.


You aren’t setting up your childrens accounts. You’re setting up your accounts to show that you’re not a child. And suddenly, every single thing you use, from apps to websites, is gatekept behind an API that is controlled by the government. If checking age on social media is all it ever does, then sure, whatever. But that isn’t all it will ever do. It will creep further and further, and the details you need to provide will increase, one shitty government term at a time. And then one day, they’ll able able to decide that people in your country shouldn’t be able to see safe sex information, or abortion information, and the framework to deny the whole country access is already there, and just one small tweak away from locking you out of information that is deemed inappropriate.
You’re forgetting an important detail: you submitted an official ID to prove your age. Which means your face, address, and legal name are also on record. So every time you get age-verified, you’re basically checking in with your full legal identity, leaving a breadcrumb path across the Internet of everything you do. That data can be used to track your online activities and build a database on who you are as a person, based on the things you access.
THIS is why age verification is a terrifying thing for computer access. It’s a form of government tracking that should be illegal. Cops can’t legally barge into your home anytime they want and go through your stuff. They can’t take your computer and scan it for data collection. Not without a court order.
With age verification embedded within your OS, it won’t matter if there’s a court order or not. If your computer is connected to the Internet, you’ve just publicly broadcast all your data to the world, and anyone - cops or not - can tap into that data and build a profile on you. You don’t even need to be browsing the Internet; if your OS is verifying your age, it could also be broadcasting that verification for every program you use locally on your computer. None of your data is safe; it’s all tied to your legal identity and trackable.
I wasn’t forgetting it. As it stands, at the OS level, you aren’t supplying anything to prove your age. It’s just a data field that software can read. And my point was that if that field, and social media was all it ever was, then, it’s not great, but I can understand why the OP isn’t too upset by it.
My point was more that it will never be just that.
Thats not what the current OS-level age gating is though. Its literally pick what age the account user is on account creation. You could set yourself to be 120 and that would be valid.
“You gave us that previous bit of private information what’s a little bit more. You can trust us”
Yep. This is pretty much it. Require having popular operating systems to have child accounts as an option would be reasonably ok. But regular accounts shouldn’t need any verification. ID checks wouldn’t need to be anywhere near this either. Its on the parents, they didn’t setup a child account? They are to blame.
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Won’t someone think of the poor bigots! They’re getting banned without getting to defend their bigotry!
Ada is a fantastic admin and she does an incredible job keeping shitty people off of blahaj.zone. Sounds like you’re mad you got banned for being shitty.
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Modlogs are public, and come with removal reasons
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I haven’t banned any blahaj based accounts with that ban reason in the last 12 months.
To give a summary of the remote accounts I’ve banned in that time though…
There were a couple of accounts that had been deleted, and no history was available. And a couple of accounts where content was removed, and/or a community ban was implemented, but no other instance bans.
I’m quite happy to stand by all of those bans. And if you aren’t sure why they’re ban worthy, well, banning you was the right choice…
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And there it is…
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