> give out anonymous time-limited tokens from the gov site, with no logging
Awful idea.
This gives the government the power to deny you access to mass communication by deciding that you're no longer allowed to verify with these platforms.
"Been protesting the wrong things? Been talking about the wrong war crimes? Been advocating for the wrong LGBT policies? Failed to pay child support? Failed to pay back-taxes? Sorry you're no longer eligible for authenticating with social media services. You're too dangerous."
That is not beyond the pale for the Australian government.
You're also at the mercy of them to actually adhere to the "no logging" part, with absolutely no mechanism to verify that. And it can be changed at any time, in targeted ways, again with no way for you to know.
A better idea would be to sell anonymous age verification cards at adult stores, liquor stores, tobacco stores, etc. Paid in cash. An even better idea is to not do any of this and spend the money on a campaign to educate parents and institutions on how to use existing parental controls.
> This gives the government the power to deny you access to mass communication
They already can in the ID scenarios. Since they issue IDs.
> You're also at the mercy of them to actually adhere to the "no logging" part
That's part of the equation. To be tracked, two parties have to fail: the issuing side needs to log the details and the verifying side needs to log the details, and then agree to share them when they don't have to. There are existing laws that would enable this in simpler ways.
> to sell anonymous age verification cards at adult stores, liquor stores, tobacco stores, etc. Paid in cash.
What you mean is: share your ID details with those places repeatedly and require people to travel to them from remote areas (there's lots of places where that would mean a day trip at least). I'm not sure that's better. Also making that process time-limited would be really costly.
> An even better idea is to not do any of this
Sure, but that's not the scenario we're in anymore.
Awful idea.
This gives the government the power to deny you access to mass communication by deciding that you're no longer allowed to verify with these platforms.
"Been protesting the wrong things? Been talking about the wrong war crimes? Been advocating for the wrong LGBT policies? Failed to pay child support? Failed to pay back-taxes? Sorry you're no longer eligible for authenticating with social media services. You're too dangerous."
That is not beyond the pale for the Australian government.
You're also at the mercy of them to actually adhere to the "no logging" part, with absolutely no mechanism to verify that. And it can be changed at any time, in targeted ways, again with no way for you to know.
A better idea would be to sell anonymous age verification cards at adult stores, liquor stores, tobacco stores, etc. Paid in cash. An even better idea is to not do any of this and spend the money on a campaign to educate parents and institutions on how to use existing parental controls.