Claude is only available to people over 18 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#411

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #318

win311fwg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You (somewhat) trust your bank For what reason? > Since you know, they have your money. You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with anything else. Principle of least privilege, if you will. Anthropic has your chat data, which in many ways is more valuable than money, so if the only bar for free lying giving out your personal details is trusting a business with something of yours th…

> You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with any other personal information. How do you expect that they will give you your money when you walk in to a branch and ask for a withdrawal? Or that they'll replace a lost card? Surely you'd expect them to verify your identity.

They could verify your identity if you've given it to them.

But it would also be completely reasonable to authenticate the customer exclusively using mechanisms other than government ID. You can already make a withdrawal using your bank card and PIN. If you lose your card you could sign into their website using your password and request a new one etc.

Consider what happens if you lose your government ID. Your bank has much better ways to authenticate you at that point than the government does. Government ID has a major bootstrap problem, whereas patronizing a service doesn't because a new account with no money in it belongs to whoever is signing up for it regardless of who they are, and you can at that point give them a bank card and have them provide a password and email address etc. that allows you to identify them in subsequent transactions without ever needing their name.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#412

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

asadotzler wrote: post #407

stravant wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a silly reply. Imagine telling a kid to chisel what they want out of the marble line by line with a straight face when they can clearly see people appearing entire programs into existence in minutes.

Imagine telling a kid they have to learn arithmetic while there's a kid next to him with a calculator. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to paint the barn with a brush before they get to use the $12,000 spray rig. Imagine telling a kid they have to learn to wash mom's car with a sponge and bucket when there's a drive-through car wash down the street. Imagine telling a kid they have to master a Walmart 20" bicy…

The kid that learns, by the end of their education, to use the more advanced tools is going to economically out competed as an adult by the kid that got stuck learning how to do things the old fashioned way. Amish communities exist snd are productive, but they aren’t competing with graduates from Chinese universities.

I totally agree with the progression though. Learning the old ways (or cheap ways) can help understand the new ways, as long as you eventually progress to the new ways. China, for example, still tests a lot of Euclidean geometry on the gaokao (national tests) even if it is basically obsolete compared to trigonometry, but they have no better way of testing proof skills.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#413

Post by cobolcomesback » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:08 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #376

cyanydeez wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you think knowing whether a user is 18 or older is more valuable than browser/cli/network finger prints? Truly naive is the mirror you're looking into. We agree these are useless contrivances, but positing constantly that "this is just some great surveillance game" as opposed to the offloading of government responsibilities to private industry in the hope of removing all social regulatory liabilities? Naive is how yo…

> you think knowing whether a user is 18 or older is more valuable than browser/cli/network finger prints? Why have this sort of argument/"come back" become so popular on HN? Where you learned to reply/debate, reddit? Did I ever make such a claim anywhere in this submission? Maybe try actually responding to something I've said rather than just creating your own imaginary arguments no one said.

Considering you began this thread of discussion by cherry picking a single phrase from the GP and then contributing nothing to the discussion other than “you’re hopelessly naive”, perhaps you are the one who needs to read the HN posting guidelines.

If you post slop, you should expect slop replies.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#414

Post by throw310822 » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:10 PM UTC

sam-cop-vimes wrote: post #185

embedding-shape wrote: post #33

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…

This seems like a lazy snipe. They clearly state that they receive only an age verification result and none of the personal data. It would take collusion from both sides to silently enable transfer of user data while publicly stating that they don't. I have used these KYC services before. There is the option to get access to all user data - but unless there is evidence to the contrary, we have to take their word for…

80% of comments on AI-related stuff are lazy snipes now. Feels more and more like a forum of know-it-all teenagers.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#415

Post by skybrian » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:11 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #202

skybrian wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost right, but it shouldn’t be “is a child using the device?” It should be “is this a child-locked device?” There should be a children’s Internet, just like there are children’s libraries, and child-locked devices should give access to it. Adults should be able to use the children’s Internet to see what’s there and children should be able to use the adult Internet when supervised by parents and teachers. T…

> It should be “is this a child-locked device?” No, that leaves vulnerable adults unprotected. It should be "Is my thing in one of the categories of things that this device says this user is not permitted to do? If so, I shall not permit this user to do the thing.". Nothing stops software authors from providing pre-built bundles of categories that they believe fit certain types of vulnerable people [0], but the fine-…

Sure, the categories can be expanded. For example, movie ratings aren't just "children" and "adults." But explaining the simple case seemed like enough for one comment.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#416

Post by blurbleblurble » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

They should have waited until after they fixed Opus to do this.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#417

Post by putlake » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:13 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #33

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…

From TFA: Yoti is an independently audited age verification provider for SOC2 compliance. Your selfie, document images, and any personal data are deleted by Yoti as soon as your age is checked. Anthropic never sees your ID or image; we receive only a pass/fail result and do not process or store any personal data from the verification.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#418

Post by Retr0id » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

Valodim wrote: post #238

mayhemducks wrote: post #195

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. 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.

The tobacco, alcohol, and gambling industries want a lot of things, but it doesn't make those things bad by default.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#419

Post by win311fwg » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #313

win311fwg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You (somewhat) trust your bank For what reason? > Since you know, they have your money. You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with anything else. Principle of least privilege, if you will. Anthropic has your chat data, which in many ways is more valuable than money, so if the only bar for free lying giving out your personal details is trusting a business with something of yours th…

> You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with any other PII. This doesn't really make any sense and it feels like it's just an attempt to be contrarian. Banks by law require substantial PII in order to even do business with you.

> Banks by law require substantial PII in order to even do business with you.

That is technically true, but keep in mind that in the early days of banking banks expected you to provide that information without the hand of the law requiring it. The laws you speak of came into effect after the fact to normalize across the industry what the banks were already doing. History is repeating itself in tech, and we already know lawmakers are waiting with bated breath to do their thing all over again just as they did in banking once critical adoption is there.

I expect what you are trying to get at is that you are willing to trust a bank because giving them your life story was already normalized before you were born, so you have never thought to question it. Whereas tech doing the same now feels new and scary. However, that's a funny way to look at it as the kids born in the future, who never knew the world where you could use the internet anonymously, will see giving tech their ID as being no different than how you see giving your bank your ID.

Although I can understand why you would now question why any business that does little more than store numbers on a computer needs a comprehensive profile on you by law or otherwise. Normalized does not equal sensible. That is a fair point.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#420

Post by win311fwg » Fri, Sep 11, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

dpkirchner wrote: post #318

win311fwg wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You (somewhat) trust your bank For what reason? > Since you know, they have your money. You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with anything else. Principle of least privilege, if you will. Anthropic has your chat data, which in many ways is more valuable than money, so if the only bar for free lying giving out your personal details is trusting a business with something of yours th…

> You may trust them with your money, but does not equate to trusting them with any other personal information. How do you expect that they will give you your money when you walk in to a branch and ask for a withdrawal? Or that they'll replace a lost card? Surely you'd expect them to verify your identity.

Well, how do you expect a website to know that you are 18+?

The technical solution offered earlier was to have a trusted third-party only be willing to answer the "is this person 18+?" question. Of course, the same works for banks. The trusted third-party can answer "does this person own this account?" without needing to reveal to the bank any other information about you.

Now, that still leaves open the question of who you can trust. If you can trust a business run by people then that allows you to trust a bank, sure, but it also allows you to trust a tech company, so why not just give the tech company your ID and skip all that technical complexity? Understandably the broader idea presented earlier was that you cannot trust businesses operated by people, but then that includes banks, so...

For the sake of discussion, if we accept that technical solution and the need for a trusted third-party that is a business run by people, surely it should at least be a business that does nothing but offer profile trust to minimize the blast radius? For what reason would we want that business to have their hand in other activities like chat or banking?