After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways
This is the only part I disagree with. Age verification is typically done via services like ID.me, Lexis Nexus, etc which do it via identity verification with documentation. The alternative method that most social sites have gone with is age prediction from a face scan, of which providers are more than happy to tout how they do it as differentiators. For the latter, there are even FOSS options.
I think what they mean is, with a black box we know the input, documents, and output, yes you can buy beer, but we don’t know the internals. How and for how long is the data stored, who is it shared with, who has access to it, how much meta data can they pull together to build a profile on you and so on.
This is the only part I disagree with. Age verification is typically done via services like ID.me, Lexis Nexus, etc which do it via identity verification with documentation. The alternative method that most social sites have gone with is age prediction from a face scan, of which providers are more than happy to tout how they do it as differentiators. For the latter, there are even FOSS options.
I think what they mean is, with a black box we know the input, documents, and output, yes you can buy beer, but we don’t know the internals. How and for how long is the data stored, who is it shared with, who has access to it, how much meta data can they pull together to build a profile on you and so on.