Let me see some ID: age verification is spreading across the internet

On July 25th, the UK became one of the first countries to widely implement age verification. Its Online Safety Act requires sites hosting porn and other content deemed “harmful” — including Reddit, Discord, Grindr, X, and Bluesky — to verify that users are over the age of 18. The early results have been chaotic. While many services have complied, some have pulled out of the country rather than face the risk and expense. Users have tricked the verification tools or bypassed them with VPNs. It’s just a taste of the issues that many other countries might face as they launch their own systems, and it’s a situation that privacy and security experts have long warned about — to little avail.

Following a yearslong political push to make the internet safer for kids, age verification has started seeping into online spaces across the globe. Lawmakers in the US, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere have all passed age-gating rules, and platforms have begun to comply. The likely methods for verification are similar to those in the UK. Platforms typically ask users to either enter a payment card, upload a government-issued ID, take a selfie, or allow a platform to use their data (like account creation dates and user connections) to “estimate” their age. Most rely on third-party services: Bluesky uses the Epic Games-owned Kids Web Services; Reddit is working with Persona; and Discord has partnered with k-ID.

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