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?
It can. Zero knowledge proofs have been around a while and are ideal for this.
They’ll try not to have that because data gathering is what they’re after, not keeping little Timmy from seeing some tits.