Age Verification is Incompatible with the Internet
The recent move among U.S. states to add digital “age verification” to websites which serve adult content is a troubling one. Digital age verification systems are rife with privacy concerns, many requiring you to upload your government ID to third-party vendors or even directly to the website in que...
I think this article makes a pretty big leap in the middle. There's really no reason that the operating system needs to be involved in the "Private" solution. It could just as easily be a website or a browser plugin. All you need is your government of choice to have some way to provide a token with whatever important bits necessary in it ("Yes this person is over 18 and a resident of WA"). You could even have third party sites/libraries that could read that token and verify what it contains.
The last third of the article is all based on that giant leap.
OIDC is designed around this capability, I could already imagine a big country flag themed "Sign in with Govt ID" button on websites like we do with other options.
Its only incompatible because there isnt a system like koreas that has basically two different id numbers. One is the general id (basic info like name and birth date) while the other is financial identity (loans, taxes and stuff). Many countries cant give their form of an id (e.g SSN) because its directly tied to something that can easily affect their life.
Or we could, y'know, stop trying to exclude young people from literally every possible expression or exploration of their own sexuality...
