To be clear, I’m not advocating for online age verification. I’m very much against it in any form. I’m just curious from a technical standpoint if it’s possible somehow to construct an accurate age verification system that doesn’t compromise a user’s privacy? i.e., it doesn’t expose the person’s identity to anyone nor leaves behind a paper trail that can be traced to that person?
Could tie it to something like a biometric. That and storing it on a write-only device would keep it from being shared too wide. The trickiss to tie it to a true multi-factor and not just something you have (if unencrypted) or something you know (if ASCII armored).
Then it adds barrier to entry. If it costs money it will be a problem for the more vulnerable population. If it is free and you can have as many as you want it is gonna be abused, if there is a limit it again starts to be a problem.