[alkonaut]

How is a bicycle helmet a bad idea? Many countries have that for minors. And obviously most(?) western countries have seatbelt laws and motorcycle helmet laws. It's also a natural effect of having publicly funded healthcare I guess.

> Will this mean I will have to register as my real name on Hacker News?

First of all, age verification shouldn't mean the social media provider gets true identities. They shouldn't be trusted with that info. There needs to be services that allows verifying your age against one service, and the media service just getting the receipt of that verification. Whether such a service exists already or not shouldn't matter. The law should be written so that social media companies are restricted in what they can do when they can be sure someone isn't a minor, and when they are sure. For extra safety, perhaps it should say they can't be allowed to see for example physical ID:s. Because otherwise you'd risk privacy issues.

Second, I think it's better to formulate these laws the way the new york draft did: that specific features are restricted for minors. Such as: enless media feeds based on past behavior (such as any video "shorts" feeds in all the major platforms today).