I found this Apple Insider page with more information and an actual description of how it works, from someone doing journalism instead of soliciting donations and subscriptions: https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/02/25/how-age-verificat...

It's going to take some more searching to find an article that shows what age verification looks like for newer Apple accounts. According to that article if you have a long-standing Apple account and/or a credit card in your name in Apple Pay it might be enough to confirm you as 18+.

I am all for the ban of social media. But I am afraid that it will give us more government meddling and interfering on our devices. And that Apple and google are “forced” to do it. They of course have their own gains.

The article somewhat glosses over it, but you can buy a PASS age verification card at the local post office for 15£. That one is widely accepted and it doesn’t contain unnecessary information that might cause trouble if it leaked (like for example a passport does). And 1 in 3 adults (according to the article) have an Apple account that’s old enough so that they will automatically be unlocked, no further documents needed.

The article strongly accuses iOS of being a walled garden, but I don’t see that as a particularly strong argument after iOS being locked down for ~20 years now.

And as a parent, I know that if child protection is opt-in, there’ll be a huge fight about it, because some other parents won’t activate it, which then makes the situation unfair for the kids. I’d much rather have it on by default so that all kids are treated the same.

I’m not pleased with this move, but its implementation has me wondering. I barely keep up with anything these days so I was taken by surprise after I updated. And, probably due to the decrepitude, I was annoyed for a few days that my phone had been nerfed and I had to roll back, before trying probably the first thing any younger person locked out would.

I’m curious, if there’s anyone who hasn’t verified a spare account, if they would point their phone at things? It might take a moment, and there’s no real feedback until the phone accepts your evidence. People have said it takes other people’s credit cards and ID, but I’m wondering if it’ll accept a pet passport too, or really what the limit is.

While I'd love this hard-line approach, as it might make other countries think twice, the stockholders probably wouldn't love it.

> Laws like the Online Safety Act 2023 apply to websites and online services — not to entire phone operating systems.

Doesn't this go back to companies like Meta lobbying to push the responsibility to the OS instead of taking it on themselves? I read they did that in the US, I can only assume they did it in the UK as well.

Frankly, I'd rather have Apple qualify me as over 18 one time, and pass a simple boolean to a site vs having to upload proof (an ID, photos...) to every website I want to use. This may be the lesser of two evils.

Not long till complete authentication of the human at every level is required to use a computer.

I will vote for any party that promises to rewind this crap, I don’t care what other policies they have. Enough of the nannying.

Moving that to the phone makes it look cleaner, but mostly just pushes the mess into a layer people have even less control over.

Or hell, even "normal" content like MrBeast to me is infinitely more damaging to a kid's brain than porn or whatever other thing this policy bans. I'd much rather my kids regularly browse /b/ rather than consuming the brain rotting shit that MrBeast puts out.

Just sad that Western citizen are throwing hard earned privacy rights so easily out of the window. Giving in to the most trivial emotional blackmail.

For the moment, governments claim to want only she verification "for the children". Let's be honest: governments like the UK and Germany (to name two) are prosecuting people for posting unwanted opinions, or - heaver forfend - for insulting politicians.

To pursue those prosecutions they need identities. Age verification is the first step towards requiring your real identity in social media.

The issue is the parties taking a strong stance on this are not the ones I’d normally align with

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/126788

0. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfukJ6uVHXs

I will edit this to say, since I'm sure people are out there who will make this point: yes, I read the article. I disagree with it. "Not required by the OS" Well that isn't going to matter much when Apple gets hit with a big fat fine for "allowing" underage users on social media.

I think that’s what Apple is banking on. They sell privacy as a feature of their products, and I’m grateful for that.