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> Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company w
by raincole 7mo ago
> Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
UK passed age verification law and people still find a way to blame the US.
- bogdan 7mo agoHis complaints are that Apple only supports credit cards for age verification. Please read more carefully.
- bdcravens 7mo agoWhat process are other companies using?
- bogdan 7mo agoAmazon Developer sent me an email about this recently. They supported: * Passport * Identity Card * Driver's License It rejected my Driver's License and I gave up after that.
- jon-wood 7mo agoAt least in the UK it would be entirely legal for companies to use account age as a proxy for verifying you're over the age of 18. If your Apple account is over 18 then you probably are as well.
- gmac 7mo agoApple verified my account that very way this morning!
- causal 7mo agoI kind of prefer Credit Card over anything else if I have to do it. I give out my CC pretty regularly already so not much new PII to lose there. But it does sound like Apple has bugs to work out.
- dmantis 7mo agoYes. The point in the post is that it's very American to assume that every adult has a credit card. I'm in my thirties and I never had nor plan to have a credit card. I always have had only debit cards. In countries I've been raised and lived it's a sign of a poverty and total dependency on the bank with additional tax on your living, not an everyday tool like Americans perceive it. Debit cards can be given to an underage, so I suppose they don't accept it for this reason.
- zeroonetwothree 7mo ago20% of Americans don’t have a credit card
- nine_k 7mo agoFor many, obtaining a credit card just for the purposes of age verification, and not using it for shopping, feels easier than giving away their legal identifying information to a random third party. In the US you're usually inundated with offers to open a credit card (often pre-approved) right in your mailbox. Even if you're a poor recent immigrant, or something.
- bandrami 7mo agoIs the credit card issuer not a random third party?
- nine_k 7mo agoBanks are subject to much more scrutiny (regulations, audits) than a random company. Or maybe even a highly established company which you'd rather not give your identity to, something like Pornhub.
- dmantis 7mo agoProbably, but making a non-used CC just for using your own phone sound a bit weird, don't you think? And I don't criticize US way of living here, but Apple is an international company and could do better adjusting to local cultural habits. But maybe they just punish people for this stupid law in the first place which is totally understandable.
- AndriyKunitsyn 7mo ago"My shepherd pokes me with a stick, but it's the tree's fault that this stick is so sharp".
- embedding-shape 7mo agoRight, Apple is a US company, with typical US culture, and they always try to "follow the letter of the law but not the spirit" when it comes to privacy and also when it comes to the age checks. In this particular case, they seem to have implemented the check in the worst possible way too, even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here? Is it surprising that people blame the company and the culture that fostered it, instead of the country that is trying to "protect itself", regardless of how misdirected that "protect itself" is?
- giancarlostoro 7mo ago> even the account age is above the age limit, what's hard to figure out here? I have a gmail thats old enough to drink anywhere in the world, and never used it for youtube, accidentally opened youtube, they asked me for my age. At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking.
- Swizec 7mo ago> At some point, I think its okay to just use account age instead of even asking Bet you there’s already a thriving grey market for old accounts with organic history.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- giancarlostoro 7mo agoPeople going that route dont care about filling a DOB on an account.
- CGMthrowaway 7mo agoWe need to start calling it identity verification. Because that's what it is, anything that requires you to hand over an ID or credit card. "Age" verification was a wonderful trojan horse that has fooled a lot of people.
- fsckboy 7mo agothere are laws that make sense that are based on age and not identity, so it's more "camel's nose under the tent" than trojan horse
- estebank 7mo agoA law can be bad and its implementation can be worse.
- dghf 7mo ago> Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, praised Apple for the decision, especially since it’s not required to implement age verification for the iOS or its App Store under the region’s Online Safety Act. https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verification-for-icloud-accounts-in-the-uk-115340237.html https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-introduces-age-verif...
- swiftcoder 7mo agoWhile Ofcom hasn't required it yet, they have indicated that they very much plan to[1]. Apple is pretty clearly getting out ahead of this, and simultaneously removing the burden of compliance off all of the relevant app developers (which seems in line with their overall privacy stance - I'm more inclined to trust Apple with my ID than I am some social network) [1]: https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/consumer/winter-2025/ofcom-seeks-evidence-on-age-assurance-measures-and-the-potential-regulation-of-app-stores/#:~:text=Concurrently%2C%20Ofcom%20is,under%20the%20OSA. https://www.rpclegal.com/snapshots/consumer/winter-2025/ofco...
- Levitz 7mo agoRemoving friction from a process that damages privacy is not a positive.
- rafram 7mo agoPassing a law that damages privacy is a negative. Complying with the law is an imperative. So mitigating harm from the law seems like a positive.
- swiftcoder 7mo agoIt's also not a net negative, if that process is going to be mandatory
- dghf 7mo agoThat mentions app stores, but I can't see anything about device-level age-verification there. Also, does Ofcom have the power under the Online Safety Act to mandate app-store verification (or device-level verification, for that matter)? Or would it require secondary, or even primary, legislation?
- bloppe 7mo agoIt's not about some American cultural attachment to credit cards. It's another classic Apple frustration move where they make the experience worse for their users in the hopes they'll blame someone else like the UK govt. They do the same thing with green bubbles.
- eimrine 7mo agoThey were expected to fight the evil, not to join.
- JollySharp0 7mo agoNone of these corporations are going to have their CEO / CTO / CFO go to Jail, face the huge fines or get kicked out of the UK for you. 4chan, KiwiFarms etc. can stick a middle finger up at the UK because tbh they probably don't have that many UK users and have nothing there for the British Government to go after, the best they can do is probably nab the owner if they ever land on UK soil.
- eimrine 7mo agoApple is too big to get kicked from UK, actually corporations are already having more power than most of the governments.
- JollySharp0 7mo agoCorporations are not powerful than the state. They wouldn't bother cosying up to various Prkme Minister and Presidents if that is the case.
- eimrine 7mo agoCorporations are soft power 2.0
- JollySharp0 7mo agoNo they aren't. I hate to make Game of Thrones references, but there is a scene where Little Finger said to Cersei "Knowledge is power" (in an attempt to blackmail her about her incestuous behaviour) and Cersei had Zombie Gregor choke him and told him "No power is power". Little Finger had lots of soft power and it meant nothing when comforted with hard power. It illustrates that a simple fact that people like you and other don't appreciate that the state has the monopoly on aggression and they have the real power. That is why corporations cozy up to governments. That is why every corporation will almost immediately implement any Byzantine bullshit that the State mandates. I am sure that you and others will point to a few exceptions where this didn't happen, but they rare and often done very strategically.
- isodev 7mo agoApple could’ve opted to use the same (open, portable, privacy respecting) mechanism the euID architecture offers for such cases but of course Apple doesn’t do privacy, portable or open.
- ap99 7mo agoIt's more out of convenience that credit card is used. There isn't some American principle that human = credit score. Americans just don't want their government ID required to do basic things. See discord age verification controversy.
- thot_experiment 7mo agoWhat are you talking about, have you tried to exist in America without a credit score? It absolutely is an American principle, just because it's not explicitly stated in the constitution doesn't mean it's not true.
- debo_ 7mo agoYou conveniently left this part out: > First it attempted to check my Apple Wallet, it failed even though I have five cards in it and am able to use the App Store fine. > Then it moved onto wanting me to manually add a card to verify myself. It failed with all my five cards. Four were debit cards, and one was a credit card from another country, cause you know I am an immigrant who has accounts still in my own original birth place.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- jmye 7mo agoThe credit score line is just about the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Some people desperately need to get off mainstream social media.