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Comment by drhodes | Hacker News Reader

Just an FYI: In the US, 5.6 million households are unbanked.

https://www.fdic.gov/news/press-releases/2024/fdic-survey-fi...

Okay, and those 5.6 million probably aren't accessing sites that require age verification. Not every solution needs to work for 100% of people.

> and those 5.6 million probably aren't accessing sites that require age verification.

Why would you presume that?

> Not every solution needs to work for 100% of people.

A solution that censors large amounts of speech and culture from millions of people is clearly either insufficient or, if it is deemed sufficient, authoritarian.

Any incremental advance is better than nothing where our rights are getting eroded faster than we can contact the ACLU to start investigating whether or not we have a case. The American Right have figured out that they can DDOS the legal system with all kinds of bullshit laws that they know won't stick, but it will take everyone 10x the time and effort that they spent spewing it out.

We can't back and wait for the perfect solution that covers all corner cases and makes everyone happy and has the perfect UX. We have to fight now while we still have something to fight for.

If the system is that I have to prove my id or age for averag network connections, then the system has already failed me. The only system I am behind is a flag that some devices can send if enabled that lets the receiving party know the user is underage. Completely optional (controllable by device owner/guardian) but if received, that party must behave in a way that acknowledges that fact. It is not a perfect system, but it retains the freedoms and anonymity of the user.

I'm sorry. The system has already failed me. Short of moving or becoming king of Texas; what should I do? Practical advice is welcomed!

vpn, use different sites that dont make you give a govt id.

How's that going for China?

> solution that censors large amounts of speech

I did not read anywhere that this solution can only be used if it's the ONLY solution. Did you?

How is the statement "not every solution needs to work for 100% of the people" controversial? People are different, with different circumstances and ideally there are a variety of solutions to cover all of them

What on earth would lead you to conclude that unbanked households don’t use online services? I can’t imagine any possible set of starting assumptions that would lead there, short of fairly cartoonish assumptions about the demographics the FDIC pointed out at that link.

Even within the unbanked households, the FDIC link points out that 1/3 use online non-bank services instead. And independently of that, it makes sense that even cash households might interface with online commercial activity: pick up gig work through DoorDash or UberEats or whatever; get paid out through a neighborhood informal-cash-service operator (multiservicio, hawala, guy who informally cashes out undocumented drivers). Or through opening a Venmo or CashApp account instead of a bank account.

That leads to a slightly stronger form of the claim: that those 5.6 million are likely to have undergone KYC/AML through other, non-bank financial providers…

But even then, why should a bank account be connected to whether or not you’re an adult in society’s eyes?

Soon every website will require age verification. And, currently, no access to the web means no access to society.

These people are already disenfranchised and mistreated by society. Let us not marginalize them more.

Yep, this would be a big problem. We'd have to have alternate methods as well.

Exactly. No one way will solve this problem, but this would knock out a lot.

So? I'd say the 340 million of people that actually could verify with a bank is not a bad attempt.

1. 7 million (2020) has no proper ID [0].

2. 120 million struggle with reading [1], and you can assume at least 7 million realistically can't read.

3. Banks already do identity verification across the world, even on behalf of the governments themselves.

I see many challenges in what OP is proposing, but banking adoption across population is not one of them.

[0] https://www.voteriders.org/voter-id-research/

[1] https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

You get it! Thank you!

My attempt at _a_ solution isn't _THE_ solution; but it seems like there's legitimately something around leveraging existing KYC infra that could get a solid 98 out of 100 - and can realistically be implemented in a realistic timeframe.

If I'm AYLO and have been cut off from 1/3 of the U.S. for the last 18 months, I'm contacting every lawyer, cryptographer, and engineer I can get my hands on to try and get _anything_ out of this concept or ones like it.

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