Age verification inherently requires identity verification.
The UK's Online Safety Act originally had a proposal that would allow users to purchase an ID code anonymously in cash from a corner store, presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol. This was never implemented, because it's more useful for the government and corporations to link all online usage to a government ID.
I didn't know the Online Safety Act had this proposal. Do you have a source?
I've been proposing the same thing on this site for months. IMO anonymous age verification with no record-keeping is the only form of age verification that should exist. No zero knowledge proofs, no centralized government identity provider, nothing.
How do you prevent selling those ID codes to kids?
Sometimes this question comes up with an implied subtext of: "It needs to be bulletproof."
It really doesn't, and especially if the ostensible rationale is blocking the ills of social media. If your friends aren't there, there's less motive to waste a bunch of allowance-money dealing with a sketchy adult to get there.
The same way you prevented adults buying pornography for kids prior to the web, and the way you prevent adults from buying beer for kids now.
Namely, you don't prevent it (I was 11 when I first saw hardcore pornography, on a VHS tape, at a sleepover party), but it does place a (surmountable) barrier in the way, which will reduce access to some degree. The degree to which that happens depends on a lot of things that are hard to predict. We have culturally normalized access to a lot of things for children, and reversing that will likely take more than just changes to a law.
If it's good enough for beer and cigarettes it's good enough for social media.
> presenting only ID to the cashier the same way as buying alcohol
Selling alcohol to minors is illegal in the UK. Some do circumvent this by various means (e.g. fake ID or having an adult purchase on their behalf, both of which are also illegal), but the same is already true for the current age verification system.
Same way you prevent selling beer to kids. Impose harsh penalties for violators.
How do you prevent kids verifying as adults?
That's the same question.
Meanwhile apparently 70% of Australian under-16's retrained/regained access to social media.
See, even intrusive, surveillance and privacy-busting methods don't work.
I mean I think these laws are stupid and would happily lend my license to anyone in my family to bypass this shit. Especially since for most verifications they literally just need a picture of my driver's license—the very definition of publicly available info.