Age verification is a mess but we’re doing it anyway
In the span of a few years, age verification went from an idea to standard practice on large parts of the internet. Seeking to prevent kids from accessing porn, other inappropriate content, or social media altogether, laws mandating age-gating have spread rapidly across the globe, reaching the UK, the US, Australia, France, Brazil, and many more countries. The problem comes in with exactly how to check that a user isn't lying about their stated age. Unfortunately, every method politicians have settled on has significant flaws - and though experts have ideas to improve on them, these remain just concepts for now.
One popular method is age i …