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Comment by vintermann | Hacker News Reader

This sounds like a really counterproductive system. Usually in age verification, you prove that you're over a certain age. 9 year olds don't have very many ways to prove that they're 9 years old. What's stopping the creeps from pretending to be younger than they are?

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They automatically assign you to an age group based on AI/guessing/face verification. If you've been assigned to an incorrect group, you need to do KYC verification with ID.

What’s to stop a 40 year old from holding up a photo of their 15 year old self for the age verification camera?

nothing at all, because it's PR security theatre done out of desperation as their platform has been gradually revealed to be a machine that destroys children's lives

It's a interactive prompt needing a webcam. You move your head to prove it is a live face.

I've seen a video of someone getting verified by drawing a face on a thumb.

It was fake

I've seen people getting verified by using a video game character creation screen. How can these AI systems possibly tell?

One thing is sure: if they can be fooled, adults will figure out a way to fool it. (Young enough children might not, but that doesn't help security). And once they're in, their child victims and their parents will be all the more likely to assume they're a child.

My 9 year old got verified as 21+ somehow. He obviously doesn’t have a photo id, so there is no way to verify him as a child. Support refused to help. The whole system is insane.

Exactly, but it's pretty clear adults can work around the automatic assignment (being adult makes you much better at figuring out how to fool such profiling systems). And the verification with ID is only good for proving that you're old, i.e. to keep kids out of adult spaces. It's no good for keeping adults out of kids spaces.

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