How is age verification supposed to work? I don't suppose users of the site are going to provide legal documents just to use it. It's tantamount to shutting it down.
I ask because there was a similar moral outrage around age verification for access to porn sites that I recall being a big issue a while ago. I don't recall exactly how it played out in court, but it appeared to amount to nothing, which I can't help but to feel was due to the fact that mechanisms to verify someone's age online are either trivial to circumvent or present such a high barrier to entry that no reasonable user would surmount it.
It's supposed to work perfectly. That was easy. Next?
But in all seriousness, age verification will soon be a legal reality. It's only "hard" because it's optional. When the government makes it required, they'll also have to make it possible - or those laws won't stand up in court. It'll probably require government issued digital IDs and MFA hardware.
I think it's likely just to result in offshoring of site, which is a net negative, imo, for constructive regulation of these sites. I think the effort for age verification is going to turn back the clock on progress that has been made in content moderation done by the bigger sites in the US, by pushing eyeballs to less regulated sites overall.
I ask because there was a similar moral outrage around age verification for access to porn sites that I recall being a big issue a while ago. I don't recall exactly how it played out in court, but it appeared to amount to nothing, which I can't help but to feel was due to the fact that mechanisms to verify someone's age online are either trivial to circumvent or present such a high barrier to entry that no reasonable user would surmount it.