How would setting up a primary credential with an identity provider differ from the process of registering to vote for USA citizens? All the discrimination opportunities and accountability issues seem to apply equally there.
I think alcohol, tobacco and gambling here are mostly irrelevant, but the firearms is a better example because of the second amendment, where you have a clash between a very old right granted by the bill of rights clashing with modern societies beliefs.
So long as it is done for a legitimate purpose and in good faith, generally no. As such, IDs are only expected where there is reasonable suspicion of possible violation. For example, there is no onus, with a few exceptions, to see an elderly person's ID to buy alcohol when there is no reason to think that they aren't below the minimum age.
The exceptions haven't really been tested. It very well could be found discriminatory, and you could make a pretty good case that it is. Which is ultimately the same case being made earlier. Asking a no-question-about-it 50 year old to provide his ID to watch porn isn't really in good faith, is it?
The issue is that those laws are usually linked to very specific forms of ID, which just so happen to be easily available to certain demographic groups.
Imagine a voter ID law where the only acceptable form of ID would cost $50.000 to purchase. Would you consider that fair and nondiscriminatory? What if you could only get the ID on the third Tuesday of the month, between 14:00 and 14:30, at a single location in the entire state? What if the ID required you to pass a certain kind of test, judged arbitrarily by a government official?
You should not need to identify yourself to access arbitrary websites, either to the website or to some third party.
Would be interested to hear whether you've evaluated the regulatory capture angle here, of paid services being pushed by the same people who forced the legislation down everyone's throats.
> There is a lot of this going on in this thread and frankly it is quite frustrating. Texas and France are two jurisdictions I know implemented privacy laws and now porn websites are collecting PII. I know this because when I traveled to Europe, my account on an adult website (gasp, yes I admit to having one) started asking me for ID. When I tried to proceed through verification with their chosen third party the flow requested a video of my face. Yuck. When I got back the US, it was still requesting face verification. I talked to support and, basically, once I used a French SIM card it "blew a verification fuse" and the only way to get my account back was to send that video of my face. I found this unacceptable, so I abandoned my account.
> If we refuse to find a workable solution that respects privacy and is based in open standards, we are going to cede this space to private third party companies.
When we deny the government a role, we cede this territory to private companies that are accountable to no one but their shareholders. I'd rather develop ID standards that protect privacy while providing access.
Yes, and we should fight that vigorously and make it stop, not make it "better".
> I talked to support and, basically, once I used a French SIM card it "blew a verification fuse" and the only way to get my account back was to send that video of my face. I found this unacceptable, so I abandoned my account.
Helpful data, thank you. Note to self: don't browse the web at all in draconian countries without a VPN, not even once.
> When we deny the government a role, we cede this territory to private companies that are accountable to no one but their shareholders. I'd rather develop ID standards that protect privacy while providing access.
So if we're going to lose, we should try to make it hurt less? That's a strategy for when one has given up on winning.
I would like to see https://bsky.app/profile/tupped.bsky.social/post/3lwgcmswmy2... on the top of every major news outlet:
> The U.K. Online Safety Act was (avowedly, as revealed in a recent High Court case) "not primarily aimed at protecting children" but at regulating "services that have a significant influence over public discourse."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card...
It seems pretty reasonable to leverage this into online identification.
In fact, online ID is already used in the European Union for popular initiatives (see, e.g., https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ ) and nobody seems to think this is “bullshit” or infeasible or any of the concerns that are lobbed at the age verification requirements.
And it isn't mandatory for these initiatives.