this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2026
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the law is implemented to that it is useful for everyone to claim they are 3. It will be trivial for kids to change their age (via exploits that will spread like wildfire in schools), so it is useless for keeping kids from adult only content.
if you want a useful system you need cryptographic traceability to someone who leagally vouches for ages - this is a complex system that cannot be mades in a year.
Did... d-did we just accidentally find an actual valid usecase for blockchain technology?
oh, nvm then
Blockchain has some useful ideas, but it also has some ideas that fail my test. For starters the personevouching age needs to be identifiable so they face liability if a kid is found with an adult id. Real cryptographers will have a lot of work needed to get the idea workable.
Good thing that there will be systems willing to provide false verification of age
Not if it is tracable to you and you are legally liable for your mistakes. When is is some stranger who can't be persicuted it is easy to find someone verify any age you want. When they have a real risk though it is not so easy.
Try to enforce an American law outside of the USA and get laughed out of court
Most countries will assist investigations of their own citizens who break laws like this and send them to whatever country the law was broke in. Sometimes a country will decide some law is invalid in their country and so they do this, and sometimes the crime isn't seen as worth trying to bother with, but crimes are enforced in other countries all the time. This isn't just the US, the US also sends its own people to other country. Most countries figure if you would "hack" someone in a different country you will do that at home too so they don't want you. There are lots of treaties that outline this in great detail.
There is a reason most computer crime gets traced to Russia, North Korean, or Iran - those countries will protect their own from this type of crime.
It doesn't matter though. Countries can easially say who is trusted to provide age verification. Just like I can make my personal web server answer to google.com - but if somehow your computer connects to that it will warn you that it isn't a trusted site.
The goal is malicious compliance and undermining laws that are immoral.