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> How does the OS know that you moved from the "13-15" bracket to the "16-17" bracket without knowing your DoB?

The OS has the birth date. Of probably 1-5 people.

> And this is the thin edge. Because in a few years there'll be a bill saying something like "too many children are lying about their age online. We need to verify their age" and then we're capturing IDs and storing them somewhere.

Those things are already happening. I see this kind of mechanism as significantly more of an alternative to privacy invasion than an enabler of privacy invasion.

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Requiring the central database is the scary part.

The political establishment used to be able to control what you read, through control of the media. Then 1995 happened and everyone got access to anything they wanted. The establishment have wanted to put that genie back in the bottle ever since. This is part of that effort.

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> Requiring the central database is the scary part.

Yes, agreed.

And this type of proposal has no central database, so it removes the scary part.

(Unless you're talking about the local accounts on each computer storing dates of birth for a single household as a "central database" in which case you're being ridiculous and please stop doing that.)

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