this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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This is being made in response to a law that is a bellwether for compulsory identity verification, which should strike fear into the hearts of everyone (well, everyone who cares about their privacy. Which should be everyone, but ...)
Yes, it’s in response to those laws, but it would also undermine their arguments. When a privacy protecting method of age checks is in place, they’ll need to use poorer arguments for why they should dox all internet users.
Regardless of the laws, having a simple age check from the browser/OS would be handy. Wish the EUs anti tracking had required it to be a check against a users predefined setting instead of the popup on every single website.
"just comply bro"
Do you hear yourself?
There is no way to age check that both preserves anonymity and isn't game-able by a motivated 12 year old.
"It'd be handy" isn't a good argument for taking away our rights to privacy.
You forget about sudo? If you give up the password, that’s on you. That’s the whole idea of letting the OS handle it. You aren’t trusting some other service with your info. It’s all on you if your kids get around it.
Complying would be installing back doors to id.me or some other such nonsense and the hell with that.