So, you’ve hit an age gate. What now?

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

VPNs and Circumvention

  • Many commenters see “use a VPN” as the obvious way around age gates, and are surprised EFF doesn’t foreground it.
  • Others note VPN IPs are widely blocked or degraded (Cloudflare-fronted sites, USPS, Imgur, Netflix in some regions), and can trigger “suspicious” flags.
  • There’s concern that widespread use of VPNs to evade laws will be used as justification to restrict or criminalize VPNs or Tor; some US state bills already target circumvention tools.

Cookie Banners vs Hard Gates

  • Several people compare age gates to cookie banners they already block with tools like uBlock Origin.
  • Others respond that, unlike banners, real age gates are server-side and tied to authentication; “zapping” them means losing access entirely if they become ubiquitous.

Weaknesses of Age Checks: Fake IDs, AI, and Game Screenshots

  • Commenters discuss using borrowed or leaked IDs, stock photos, game screenshots (e.g., Gmod, Roblox, Discord) and potential AI-generated selfies to fool face-based checks.
  • More advanced systems demand live video with guided head movements, but people point out virtual cameras and future AI tools will likely erode this.

Platforms’ Motives and Data Hunger

  • Many distrust Google/YouTube age prompts, arguing they already know user age but “really want your face” to enrich biometric datasets and advertising profiles.
  • Some think large platforms mostly want to comply “cheaply,” not specifically harvest faces; others say data-sharing with governments and data brokers is inevitable.

Kids, Parents, and Harm

  • Several parents describe kids refusing Roblox face checks or working around them with stock photos; they see photo-based age gates as training children to give away sensitive images.
  • One camp insists age verification is an important tool to protect kids from porn, social media, and predators; another says it’s ineffective, normalizes surveillance, and shifts blame from bad parenting and bad platform design.

Privacy, Breaches, and Phishing

  • Strong worries about uploading IDs or faces to innumerable third parties: data will leak, be subcontracted, and abused, often without users even knowing who holds it.
  • Age-gate flows are also seen as perfect phishing training: “update your details here” emails and lookalike domains can vacuum highly sensitive identity data.

Comply, Lie, or Walk Away

  • Some advocate always lying, using circumvention (VPN, Tor, fake images), and never accepting such checks.
  • Others say EFF can’t openly instruct people to break laws; it must focus on minimizing harm and changing legislation.
  • A minority argue for simply abandoning any service that demands ID or face scans—even if that means losing major platforms.

Alternative Age-Verification Schemes

  • Multiple proposals surface:
    • Government-run, privacy-preserving digital IDs or tokens that prove “over X” without revealing identity (with some pointing to existing national e-ID models).
    • Offline “age verification cards” or scratch/gift cards sold like alcohol/tobacco; codes used online without sharing identity. Critics worry about traceability, resale, and real effectiveness.
    • ISP- or network-level attestation (age-based IP ranges or segments), which others dismiss as overcomplicated and misaligned with how the internet works.
    • Third-party identity providers (Auth0-style) issuing signed “over X” assertions, ideally in a way that doesn’t let sites or governments correlate logs.

Deeper Policy Disagreements

  • One side believes age-gating is politically inevitable (“like checking ID for alcohol”), so energy should go into making it privacy-preserving.
  • The other side questions whether meaningful, enforceable, and non-abusive online age verification is even possible—and worries the real agenda is control, censorship, and eroding anonymous/pseudonymous access for everyone.