An important difference being the ID’s purpose being just to prove your age during for that transaction, not provide a mechanism to create a permanent record of your behavior.
Large numbers of states actively monitor (via swiping IDs) your alcohol purchase history. Many states have entire bureaus whose job it is to keep this information.
I believe that Utah is one of those places who do that. (I can't find a resource that they do, but it's too similar to the patronscan tech that near by states endorse). That's one of the things that turned me away from enjoying that state.
From what I did find, they are required to keep that info for at least 7 days. As a Chicagoian, required tracking of how much and where I drink at is super concerning.
Well, what is your plan? We can’t pretend that letting teen suicide jump 29%, and having 1 in 5 teens now having severe depression, is an issue that parents should be solely responsible for solving. And we shouldn’t pretend yet another social program could be as effective as slowing down the source.
That would be for Utah to solve. At a minimum, Utah should be providing the infrastructure for its people to be able to obtain a digital ID that has an API for websites to use which legally cannot have its history recorded.
If you have an intelligent problem solving governance:
1. Acknowledge the problem
2. Seek a root cause
3. Attempt to mediate this issue at it's root. My uninformed, and unasked for, opinion on this is this is due to the adjustment of living situation and social expectations of that age group pushes their developing social environment to go global rather than staying local. (People are scared of their kids in the local community hanging out and social, where they've been stuck in doors playing xbox/tiktok).
4. In doing #4 attempt to mediate this issue with the parents. Don't try to punish people in the situation, provide acceptable alternatives to help people be better.
On a surface level:
1. Demonstrate in public a way that live without social media is a workable thing for people at that age
2. Provide mental health outreach for the effected people (This costs money so it's never done)
I have strong support for the provisions that require certain features be built into social media sites themselves (e.g. "sites must support curfew scheduling" or "sites cannot have free reign on targeted advertisements") as it gives controls people want but currently can't easily get from most of these types of apps.
At the same time I'm not really a fan of the implementation being based on providing real identity for a hard age cutoff. Maybe I'm 20 years old and don't want my real identity to be tied to the social identity for privacy/coming out/political/other reasons as personal info uploaded seems to always get leaked. Maybe I'm 17 years old and having the same restrictions as a 7 year old that will disappear instantly in 3 months doesn't make any sense and I never had good chances to learn to make good choices on my own accord while I had the strongest support structures I'll have all my life available. Maybe I'm worried this is part of a slippery slope for all, as the ages keep rising on this type of legislation over time.
Overall I'd much rather put the tools (like curfew support or removal of targeted advertisements) in the hands of people and argue why they should want to use them. Similarly, with the tools made available, I'd rather trust parents are able to learn to raise their kid on this matter as they have every other matter so if kids are found to be working around curfews set by parents we don't need the government to step in. If one argues too many parents can't then I'm sorry to say you've done a horrible job convincing anyone what you think is good is actually so and relying on unpopular law creates more problems than it solves.
Alternatively I'd at least like a solution where the associated age verification identification is unrelated to your real identity (e.g. a one time proof at the DMV when you're getting your first 18+ license that gives you some identity token which identifies you as 18+ but does nothing else and is not stored or mapped with your real identity otherwise). It doesn't solve a lot of the blind application problems (and still lacks guarantee limitations you want to follow you into adulthood, if you so choose, can) but at least it prevents one class of issues.
It may sound like I fit in the small government camp for everything but I'd say I'm fine with government getting involved with what corporations can do a lot more often than when people are involved. Overall it also depends on the issue and the alternative outcomes with implementation. I guess what I'm saying is don't generalize because I argue for small government here I also argue for it in every case all the time, even if it is about people. There are some things I think it's great to centrally legislate but content consumption is one I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs on. It's certainly the most direct and probably has the largest impact but "we've waited so long to do anything about it that the problem to become really big" is a horrible reason to pick direct and largest impact approaches.
This was a long read, but I'm glad you wrote it out.
I too am in full support of zero trust tokens. However, I feel like society doesn't understand and would never support this. Corporations have no punishment for collecting and abusing people's information, that it's disgusting. Even when they're caught abusing it, theres no negative repercussions for the organizations. (Experian.. which should have been completely closed.. got a minor fine to continue leaking people's info)
Another point I wanted to make for you. I want to see anonymous identity tokens as that we're continuing on this path. For example: Hetzner is now requiring biometrics + id proof of who you are to pay them money for a server. I understand they want to avoid fraud and provide services to legitimate people, but that kind of info is insane to give to some random person at some corporation.
