Starting August 13, 2025, we’ll begin rolling out an age estimation model to determine if a US-based user is under the age of 18
If we determine you’re under 18, you’ll be notified. As always, you’ll have the option to verify your age (through government ID, selfie, or a credit card)
This impacts, among other things, your ability to watch age restricted videos.
As a reminder, you must be 18 or older to watch age-restricted videos (determined by us or verified by you).
So I guess the takeaway is that we can’t just protest upcoming laws … we need to demand that our governments make age checks illegal on general internet sites. An even more uphill battle.
I’d go a step further and say age checks should be illegal, period, but how do you effectively fight a form of discrimination that’s so widely accepted most people don’t even realize its a thing? Racism and Sexism are hard enough to fight and most people actually acknowledge those are bad, and while nationalism isn’t denounced as often as it should be, most people at least are aware of it as a concept. I feel like most people aren’t even aware ageism is a concept, much less that it’s about as ubiquitous as all the other forms of discrimination combined.
I’m following this thread because I’m interested in updates on how the Online Safety Act might impact the IF Archive, but if the discussion is going to turn to “is it ever appropriate for content to be age-restricted?” then maybe that should be a separate thread?
Agree with Adam, with the proviso that political science (= debating the ageism as phenomena) is different that politics (= debating how to fight ageism & like…), so if the moderators think that can handle a borderline debate, I think that is feasible a separate debate.
first and foremost, the WP page about the “ism” alleged being behind the age check trend:
as one can easily glance, is a matter much more complex than age checking, so let’s discuss the latter, from an Italian perspective, starting from mine (class of 1969, so 18th birthday in december, 1987):
first and foremost, back then the main pr0n interest was the paper-based one, from Playboy down to “dirty comics” (it. fumetti porno) and trust me, all these was available to me since 1983-4. Calculating the age, the obvious trick is clear: the newsagent (which is a peculiar figure here: see Newsagent's shop - Wikipedia ) “misread” the age warning (which indeed was never too evident, often a “V.M.1X” printed somewhere on the cover) which in italy was either 14 (“V.M. 14”) or 18 (“V.M.18”) (forgetting for forgetting, often I “forgot” the change…) and this was not the lone technique: every US people know the “send the elder brother/cousin” booze trick ? same here, but of course in more variety; In Italy HS is five years, covering the, uh, “interested” age range. and taking into account the year repetition, the two senior class have a good share of youth of age. which tends to forgot their “toilet readings” in the bathrooms… for the enjoyment of the three junior classes, of course
Enough HS reminescences; As another reminescence posted elsewhere noted, in Italy, law enforcement is based on prevention, often thru the immense social prestige of the Carabinieri and really petty “crimes” are often overlooked (and, if one thinks well, ignoring pushing porn to underage people allows concentrating to the more serious matter of pushing drugs to underage people…) so, basically we decided that war on drugs is infinitively more important that war on porn. 'nuff said.
now, dunno about today’s HS milieu, but I will not be surprised that there are “shared passwords” into porn sites, extending the “toilet sharing” concept of yore. but in general, never ever underestimate youth’s creativity and ingenuity. This is the core point, age checking IS a lost cause. This is why I’m unfazed about this issue.
I can’t speak for HS today, but when I was in highschool(2001-05), I had no trouble whatsoever accessing adult content on the internet as a minor, not even on school computers(though only in the dorms where students weren’t under constant direct supervision and I had no qualms about burning DVDs of video or CD-ROMs of pictures for my less tech savvy peers… And I doubt the average Gen Alpha or whatever the current batch of youths are called would even need the help of a nerd given the tendency for level of comfort with modern technology to increase with youth… and if anything, I expect most age verification systems to either be trivial to circumvent or more likely to lock out middle-aged folk who barely know how to use a computer than the people they are supposed to stop.
Also, I’ve always used ageism in its broader sense of any discrimination based on age, though its true that senior citizens are probably the second largest group, at least in the US, to be on the short end of such discrimination more often than they benefit(miners being the largest, about 25% of Americans are under 18 compared to about 16% over 65)… not that 18-65 year olds are immune to discrimination based on their age.
I’m in still in high school and while I don’t access adult content it’s not really difficult to. The school network has a blacklist, but obviously there’s so many sites that aren’t on that blacklist.
However—and this is a major issue with technology today—because technology is getting more “user-friendly”, and because people are assuming that we have an inherent knowledge of how a computer works, arguably our internet savviness is less than those of people who didn’t grow up on devices. In freshman year of high school, we had a brief typing unit as part of our Life Skills class. People were impressed that I was touch typing at all. People were also surprised by my ability to altdelete to delete entire words and even with ctrlX to cut (delete and copy).
In any case, I have issues with YouTube’s only method of age verification being to provide a government ID, driver’s license, etc. What an invasion of privacy.
@Mewtamer I expect most age verification systems to either be trivial to circumvent or more likely to lock out middle-aged folk who barely know how to use a computer than the people they are supposed to stop.
Since most of the most popular internet content is hosted by a few big companies, using a VPN etc. to bypass geoblocks isn’t likely to last.
If there’s more of a compliance (and/or financial) incentive to block access to certain regions than there is to provide it freely, it will be incredibly difficult if not impossible to use a VPN etc. to access content.
Basically, major sites will whitelist compliant countries. If you’re not in the US or one of the handful of western countries with an approved age check regime, sorry, no YouTube/Facebook/Reddit for you. (Sure, there are other websites, but having a huge portion of the internet work like this would not be a good thing.)
This is already the case when you sign up for a credit card or try to rent a digital movie from Amazon or Hulu. Geodetection is so aggressive that sometimes you’re blocked even if you’re in the right country.
Right now, that sort of geodetection is tied to payments card locations, but there’s no reason it can’t happen with free services and ID cards.
Whether this is a byproduct of age checks (or the intent behind it, if companies are secretly or quietly pushing for this beyond what’s going on with regulations) doesn’t really matter. I can only see it escalating either way.
@hidnook In any case, I have issues with YouTube’s only method of age verification being to provide a government ID, driver’s license, etc. What an invasion of privacy.
It’s the only way you can verify yourself if it’s demanded. However, YouTube can also verify your account based on its age and viewing patterns, which it seems is what will happen in most cases.
It’s the only way you can verify yourself if it incorrectly verifies your account. People have been age-restricted even though they have fifteen-year-old accounts. Evidently, whatever system YouTube is using isn’t working properly.
This is obviously not about age verification at all, but about getting you all to “log on to the internet”. Something they’ve lusted over from the start.
In any case, VPNs aren’t going to help you because, many many sites now block use of a VPN at all. They don’t actually say “go away!”, they just do not work. YouTube is a major one. It will either say, “log on to prove you’re not a bot” (or something) or it will make me click on fire hydrants, cars, traffic lights, bicycles, motor bikes, buses etc basically forever. Or until i give up. Totally on purpose of course.
I’m obviously some sort of deviant using a VPN. But I like to travel and I don’t really want to access my banks and other important sites through the untrusted hotel network.
Older people sometimes become aware of ageism as they apply for jobs or are laid off to be replaced by younger (and presumably cheaper) new hires just over 6 months later.
