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Claude is only available to people over 18 years

support.claude.com

451–460 of 626 posts

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you have Bill Gates money, you don't have access to a mental health professional (much less your mental health professional who knows your life situation) when a girlfriend dumps you over text at 1AM. And that's when you may need one most. People want to talk to their therapist after an argument with their husband or when their boss fires them, not Friday after next.

>> Unless you have Bill Gates money, you don't have access to a mental health professional I'm not sure where you live. I know almost all colleges in the US have walk in free mental health counseling, along with free telesupport. My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time. There are free mental health clinics all over my city. There's mental health professionals who did…

"My company has onsite mental health professionals who you can talk to or call at any time."

Can't see that coming to bite you.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd told me 15 years ago that people would be running freely-distributed software originating from research labs in China on computers self-hosted in their own house as an alternative to authoritarian overreach and control by the US in internet-based services, I'd have told you that you were smoking some good reefer. The irony is that the authoritarian control hasn't gone away in China either, if anything it's e…

> If you'd told me 15 years ago that people would be running freely-distributed software originating from research labs in China on computers self-hosted in their own house as an alternative to authoritarian overreach and control by the US in internet-based services, I'd have told you that you were smoking some good reefer. It’s a lot less surprising when you understand the tactic of economic dumping, which China has…

> They’re doing it as a way to undermine the industry leaders and attract people to their brands.

Isn't that just how competition works? Codex and Claude are both widely speculated to be sold at a loss (at least compared to API pricing), so why isn't their tactic also considered dumping? OpenAI and Anthropic aren't stealing IP and subsidizing model inference because they love freedom either. They're doing it to undermine industry competitors and attract people to their brands.

The US government deliberately chased a strategy of denying China access to powerful Nvidia hardware. Shipping efficient and cheap LLMs is their only option, just like Jensen Huang warned would happen. And now that China's smaller models are reaching the frontier, everyone cries foul.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Age verification is not (should not be) the same as ID verification / storage / etc; the US needs laws similar to EU ones where companies can only get the minimum required PII. In the case of age verification that's zero, or a boolean value "yes this person is over 18" that they get from a trusted party like a bank.

It's just like cookie banners: they shouldn't exist, but people's bonuses rely on never admitting that, so here we all are.

EU parliament gets bonuses?

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I really wish we could leave these types of decisions up to parents and parents only. Leave the companies and governments out of it. If you'd like to advocate for this position for a living, the tobacco, alcohol, and gambling industries will all be happy to pay you.

I don't have a problem showing an ID, I have a problem with an ID being recorded so it can be leaked.

Unless you think they are outright lying, the press release does say it will be immediately deleted.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole purpose of law is to be a uniform system of justice. At best it could offer guidelines for how to evaluate people: perhaps level of education attained, demonstrated ability to take responsibility for themselves, etc. But the evaluation under those guidelines would still have to be made by humans. There is precedent for such a system, e.g. minors can petition to be emancipated which allows them to be treated…

> perhaps level of education attained, demonstrated ability to take responsibility for themselves, etc. Yes, that is what I meant. Choosing some arbitrary magic number like 18 and declaring that anyone under that age is too dumb or too irresponsible to decide is about as stupid as declaring that anyone over 65 is incapable of decision making because they might have Alzheimer's.

Ok, but this doesn’t scale well. It takes a nontrivial amount of time to evaluate each person, and it would have to be done repeatedly as they age. You would need an entire government bureaucracy devoted to it. Then people will want an appeals process for when decisions don’t go their way—both parents and children.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#457

Claude Executive: Damn, we hardly know who our users are, can't we just force them to say their full name or ban them? Claude Product Manager: No, that'll piss people off too much, and sadly we can't just ask for ID either... Claude Executive: There must be some way we can force people to link their government IDs with our platform so our analytics get better and more accurate? Claude Product Manager: We could limit…

I don't think "we hardly know who our users are" is a problem any AI company is having lol

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#458
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if minor data or chat sessions are mishandled without explicit parental consent I know this isn't what you meant, but I can't help but laugh at the thought of a parent consenting: "I consent to the mishandling of my child's data" As to your actual point, yes, I assume they are trying to reduce liability, especially if they're gearing up to an IPO.

Since I see so many small kids with FB, Insta and TikTok accounts made for them by their parents - I find "I consent to the mishandling of my child's data" only funny in a very dark way.

Well, yes. Amusing might have been a better word than funny.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#459
post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In theory the LLM will escalate or recommend professional help if they're out of their depth. Given there have been multiple suicides driven by LLMs. I really doubt that.

Fascinating perspective - any technology that has caused >0 deaths is a dead end and has no chance of improvement.

I'm sure the Torment Nexus can be improved.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#460

Need we remind Anthropic of the 153 million drirvers licenses available for sale on the dark web thanks to a 3rd party ID verification service? https://krebsonsecurity.com/2026/09/fbi-probes-service-selli... The fact that Anthropic only receives a result, not the data itself, does not make me feel any better about this. I really wish we could leave these types of decisions up to parents and parents only. Leave the co…

> I really wish we could leave these types of decisions up to parents and parents only.

And if your parents suck? (Mine did.)

I think the power for parents to have free reign over everything in a child's life should be reduced if the parents are abusive, but of course there is no way to do this short of infallible and invasive surveillance. All to say, there is no easy solution here.

Abusive parents are not going to "think of the children" either way, no matter what arguments the well-meaning parents give. They will not see a problem with their own behavior. So assuming the parent is a sacrosanct figure that always knows what's best is unworkable.

I understand that no parent wants to be accused of being abusive, but just because it is taboo to say it out loud, does not mean these people do not exist. They're out there. They will fuck up their child's minds and cause long-lasting damage, Internet access or not.

It's no wonder children react poorly to the Internet when the two people they have to depend on for their literal survival don't support them at a good enough level. They seek out comfort when they can't get it elsewhere and now it's supposedly a tech CEO's fault they're addicted. My life could have been different if one single adult I could trust had supported me, but I didn't get one. Not all children will, either.

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