Actually, what we need is a single chip system given to you when you are born and charge people for it. If they can't pay, put 'em to work.

The chip will hold all our info.

Then when we want to do something on the internet or IRL, a computer will read our chip and we will use the system.

It will have... no abuse or secondary consequences.

But it will perfectly protect minors from getting on dating sites.

I wonder what other historical characters/political systems would love such a system?

Actually, asking if you read the article was me being kind in my assumptions.

Alcohol is responsible 88,000 deaths per year.

You are literally comparing something with 0-10 deaths per year (if that) to almost 100,000 deaths per year. That type of grotesquely disproportionate comparison is part of 'outrage' culture. It's something I dislike and have no trouble calling people out on.

Not a single cost/benefit analysis. No consideration of the cost, just a wave of the hand (they will bear it). No discussion even of what type of age verification should be or any pros and cons.

The fact that tinder has revolutionized sexuality for a generation is... or made dating safer for women... or made dating safer for LGBT in places where it can be dangerous to date as an LGBT... better bury that in bureaucracy.

No care about privacy.

Doesn't matter if over regulation just pushes people to less regulated platforms like online classifieds, maybe hosted in a non-us country.

If you don't seem to consider the consequences of laws, or even the fact that the logic you use is based on grotesquely unbalanced comparisons, I see little possibility for dialectics.

> You seem to believe that the burden to verify age is too onerous for online dating apps. I think that we should require age verification for dating services across the board, and it should be up to the online apps to compete with offline dating services on equal footing.

It is a burden for the apps themselves but it's not something they can't overcome. The real issue is end-users wanting some degree of privacy and not wanting to submit their real identity to who knows what's on the other end. For example, a gay dating app, or an app for people into BDSM or whatever the thing might be that they're into, or someone who is already in a relationship but wants to see what's out there - a significant percentage of those people will never submit their ID and won't use the app. Even if it’s just some vanilla dating app, how do you know the operators aren’t just in it to easily skim tons of IDs in some vast identity fraud scheme? I certainly wouldnt submit my ID to such services. It also doesn't solve the original issue, since teens will find a way to get around the ID check - use someone else's account, use photoshop to alter an ID, get a fake ID, etc etc.

> Condoms aren't 100% effective. Why should laws be 100% effective?

Yes, nothing is 100% effective. Yet proponents of these laws try to push things to 100% without stopping to check how we're doing so far. The article says 60 cases of child sex offenses since 2015. So 15 / year, about 1 a month, out of how many hundreds of millions/billions of people using these apps? Also, the article counts 16/17 year olds as children, despite them being above the age of consent in the UK and in many states in the US, so who knows how many of those 60 are actually under 16 and not just 16 or 17. Sounds like we have this issue 99% solved with current enforcement methods. Do we really need to institute onerous burdens on apps and end-users for the sake of that last 1%? We can eliminate automobile accident deaths by instituting a nationwide speed limit of 10 MPH on all roads at all times but we don't do that because of the obvious cost/benefit concerns.

If you're concerned about your child going on these apps, give them a feature phone until they're of age. That's what I'd do.