Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

I am very much looking at the Apple Age Verification (AV) approach as the least bad way to do something terrible

AV itself is tantamount to Digital Identity, it is illiberal to deploy everywhere and it is misconceived to imagine that it solves social problems
The least bad way of getting AV is for people to be able to choose providers who can attest to the user’s age bracket; Apple is starting to provide this
Politicians & Security Services will be torn: it’s easier to have “one throat to choke” (like Apple) when surveilling / attributing speech, but they risk losing the rich control opportunities if this is done in a privacy preserving way; also the toxic extant AV industry will be lobbying hard to prevent competition from supposed “monopolies”
Yet big players like Apple have the best leverage to deploy a privacy preserving solution; the interests of civil society are best served by ensuring openness of Apple APIs and that other age attestation providers can plug into it