[zelse]

When I'm carded in RL, it is atypical for my ID to be stored, and I must be informed of the fact. A clerk examines the birthday line, and that is that. There is no record. The purchase is de facto anonymous; if I pay in cash, there is no record correlating me with the transaction.

As a gay man, I am profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of one or more private companies having a durable record of the content I look at, for what I would hope are obvious historical reasons. Additionally, age-gate laws will inevitably be used for oppressive purposes - remember, a substantial number of conservatives view ANY mention of the mere existence of LGBT people or families as inherently pornographic, sexual, or obscene, and those people would absolutely seek to have all LGBT content age-gated. Hell, even without such laws we see this in libraries and schools. The harm that would be averted from age verification online is not proportional to the evils it would give rise to, plain and simple.

The only form of age verification I would ever be OK with would be on the same basis as being carded in RL - something like, at a corner store I could buy a tag with an ID number on it that would count as proof of age for as long as I had it, for online purposes. The clerk would verify my age and then give me a tag in a sealed box with a random number, thus preserving my anonymity from both angles: the clerk would not know what number he sold me, and the state would not know who bought the number, only that the retailer averred that I had had my age verified.