The technical implementation is messy too. Most age verification systems either don't work well or create massive privacy risks by requiring government ID uploads.
"The insistence on perfect age verification requires ending anonymity. Age verification to the level of buying cigarettes or booze does not.
Flash a driver's license at a liquor store to buy a single-use token, good for one year, and access your favorite social media trash. Anonymity is maintained, and most kids are locked out.
In the same way that kids occasionally obtain cigs or beer despite safeguards, sometimes they may get their hands on a code. Prosecute anyone who knowingly sells or gives one to a minor."
I've never had my ID recorded at any liquor store in my life. I've bought alcohol in multiple countries. If that happens where you live I'd fight to have that practice banned legally for alcohol and tobacco purchases. Stores are definitely selling it to insurance companies.
Also after I had a certain number of birthdays, clerks have stopped demanding my ID. So my purchases are pretty much anonymous.
The card should be issued by a private company, or ideally, multiple companies. And it should be a scratch-off card with a unique code, so that codes can't be tied to transactions.
This, but seriously. Maybe some age token company might also run a raffle or other promotion.
EDIT: Because age verification tokens will likely be a commodity, low-margin business with little differentiation. So I assume companies will do stuff to make their token more attractive than the competition.
In my state, they scan your ID and check it with the state's database. Store policy is usually to do it for everyone, even if they obviously are above the age of 21, and the state mandates ID checks for anyone suspected to be 27 or below.
Historically liquor store checks were purely visual. These days they are often digital, meaning claims about privacy might (or might not) be outdated. The general principle still applies though. The physical infrastructure already exists, the ID checks do not necessarily need to be digitized or recorded, and even if they are the issued tokens don't need to be tied to the check.
Grocery stores already sell age restricted items as well as gift cards that require activation. The state could issue "age check cards" that you could purchase for some nominal fee. That would require approximately zero additional infrastructure in most of the industrialized world. The efficacy would presumably be equivalent to that for alcohol and tobacco.
I don't trust that the information about my identity would not be recorded while selling me my "free speech token". So the chilling effect on free speech would be exactly the same.
That would largely depend on the implementation details I think. Both those of the ID check itself as well as the precise nature of the tokens.
Consider a somewhat extreme example. A preprinted paper ticket with nothing more than a serial number on it. The clerk only visually inspects the ID document then enters the serial number into a web portal and hands it to you. When you go to "redeem" it the service relays the number back to the government server rather than your local device doing so directly. That would be far more privacy preserving than the vast majority of present day clearnet activity.
In my proposal private companies would issue the "age check cards" for sale, not the state.
And I don't know how things work in other places, but I've never had my ID scanned when buying alcohol. These days clerks don't even ask me for ID because I obviously appear to be legal age.
In my proposal the token would be a scratch off card with a unique code. It can't be associated with the transaction.
If they don't provide an easy opt-out link then why not just block the sender and move on? Unlike the less legal operations I wouldn't expect a legitimate business to rotate domains or otherwise attempt to evade blocks.
I prefer to only report genuinely malicious behavior. As long as there's no active attempt at block evasion I figure reporting it is just increasing noise and generally making things worse for everyone. It's the active block evasion crowd that make any and every network communication protocol a pain in the ass to use at scale. It wasn't simpletons using a single static IP address that triggered such widespread adoption of Anubis overnight.