As one of the libertarian people here, my concern is that this “what about the children” will force IDs to post. Because how else could it be done?
That said smoking and Instagram are probably best avoided by kids
That said smoking and Instagram are probably best avoided by kids
https://blog.google/products/google-pay/google-wallet-age-id...
Or do you expect the government to understand there are other operating systems out there?
IOW, this problem is as "unsolved" as the problem of deciding who's allowed to drive a car, or travel to another country.
ID verification is a universal hammer, to which all problems look like nails, but we shouldn't be so quick to reach for it. Not all of its downsides can be solved with cryptography.
As it stands, the government in the US uses an identity verification vendor that forces you to upload videos of multiple angles of your face, enough data for facial recognition and to build 3D models, along with pictures of your ID.
I use Tor, so I get to see how age verification is implemented all over the world. By large, the process almost always includes using your government issued ID and live pictures/videos of your face.
There are zero incentives to implement zero knowledge proofs like this, and billions of dollars of incentives to use age verification as an opportunity to collect population-wide datasets of people's faces in high resolution and 3D. That data is valuable, especially for governments and companies that want to implement accurate facial recognition and who have AI models to train.
The important point is that such invasive approaches are not required; clearly, however people already authenticate with government agencies for getting a driver's licence or passport would suffice. I think it's the responsibility of knowledgeable tech people to advocate for this.