Are lawmakers bored? Who is asking for this? Not the tax paying citizens.
I think it's one peg below intel agencies. It's the local gov agencies that want that power. The 3 letter peeps can already tell who writes what, both at scale and targeted.
These companies have fewer ethics than a minimum-wage liquor store clerk when it comes to caring about the age of their users.
What percentage of those do you think are being "allowed" to do so by their parents?
What?
"The internet" is extremely widely available and full of hazards of all sorts, some intentional, some deliberate.
I'm pushing back on this idea that it's desirable or even possible for "the parent" to completely protect their children from these hazards. Most of them can't even protect themselves.
We can demand that services, especially child accessible ones, be safer, without also expecting parents to abandon all responsibility.
What parents should be doing is enabling age controls.
Which means those age control features need to exist.
So the state is making sure the features exist.
There's no verification. The headline is a lie. It's just an account setting that parents can use if they want to.
Parents want the equivalent of being able to let their kid go to the mall and trust that the movie theater will not let them in to an R-rated movie. They don't want to have to call the theater, identify the child, and say "don't let them in to this list of movies".
And a flag on the account would be like the highschooler, right? As opposed to having nothing in way too many situations.
> Age verification doesn’t even work in the meatspace.
It works a lot better than nothing, you won't have 10 years olds getting into all the R rated movies they want. It doesn't have to be perfect, and a bit of wiggle room can even be a good thing for learning how to navigate the world.
Yes, yes, free speech and everything, you just have to first give the OS your phone number, credit card number, drink a verification can and please also... you do want to still keep your job, right?