FTC commissioner says online age verification ‘offers a better way’ to protect kids https://therecord.media/ftc-commissioner-age-verification-children-online
RE: https://infosec.exchange/@patrickcmiller/115994009296716938
This is bullshit. Online age verification is trivial for tech-savvy children to bypass using AI-generated video, and inevitably leads to breach of identity documents, while directing the computer illiterate towards websites with zero concern for US or comparable laws (e.g., those hosted in Russia).
On-device parental controls, competently administered, are far more effective. If governments actually cared about protecting children, they'd be funding and promoting education for parents in the administration of parental controls, not attempting to force porn companies and other adult-oriented website and app producers to do a vital part of citizens' parenting for them.
Online age verification is only good for wholesale ID theft facilitation, for favouring of oligarch owned companies (one of the two real reasons for such laws), for furthering corporate-captured (proto-)fascist surveillance state entrenchment (the other real reason), and for driving traffic and revenue to sites wilfully hosting Russian child sex traffickers and CSAM producers.