New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.
If that ID is only verified by an underpaid store clerk, that means the system is already a nonstarter. That person is ripe for corruption.
This sort of idea always rolls back up to the government being directly involved if you game it out.
No system is perfect. The “show us your face so we can guess your age” thing we have in the UK (i think its an American company anyway) can be tricked by showing it the guy from Death Stranding, and i assume any other sufficiently realistic game.
The underpaid clerk already sells booze and cigarettes.
The age token would be free at the time of acquisition (paid by taxes of course).
Yes, you’d get the “buy me a porn token please!” request behind the 7-11, but I’d bet it would be far less frequent than requests to buy booze.