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

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#631

Post by cheesecakegood » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:32 AM UTC

nekusar wrote: post #153

abirch wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say misuse AI for mental health advice. It's already difficult to find good mental health professionals.

I've yet to find anybody in mental health profession who is "good", aside psychiatrists and their drug prescriptions. And that's only cause of gatekeeping drugs, not because they're good either. The worst problem with mental health care is that there is no "you're better" metric. There is if your bone breaks and heal. There is for surgery of various things. But mental health seems to follow Parkinson's Law, and expan…

I’ve seen about 8 therapists and 3 coaches at various times in the last 15 years. 5-6/8 and 2/3 respectively were, I eventually realized, mostly in it for the money and didn’t actually care too much (if at all) about me making any positive changes permanent. It wasn’t all bad; having someone confidential to talk to is in itself valuable, but the cost/benefit ratio is not at all consistent.

With that kind of benchmark comparison, it’s not all that hard for AI to present some kind of favorable value proposition, even if also inconsistent but with a harder ceiling on the upside.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#632

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:34 AM 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.

> it feels like it's just an attempt to be contrarian.

You feel like it's an attempt to be contrarian not to inform your bank about everything that you do?

Society has reached a dangerous point.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#633

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:37 AM UTC

MisterMunchkin wrote: post #608

Dylan16807 wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the goal, it's using vast money reserves to sell at a loss and hamper competition.

Isn't that just called a startup? It's not like openAI makes a profit.

Losing money as a company is fine. Losing money on each sale is often anti-competitive.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#634

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:38 AM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #627

Dylan16807 wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to collect personal info might not be the motivation but it's not at all a crackpot theory. And what's the conspiracy aspect of calling a big company a liar? Your dismissal is so much weaker than the post you're replying to.

>And what's the conspiracy aspect of calling a big company a liar? the conspiracy aspect is alleging a conspiracy without providing any evidence, which is apparently how 90% of people function now. Calling someone a liar because you invented a conversation in your head isn't entirely sane

> the conspiracy aspect is alleging a conspiracy without providing any evidence

Nobody alleged a conspiracy.

> Calling someone a liar because you invented a conversation in your head isn't entirely sane

That's not why they said that. This is a ridiculous criticism of OP.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#635

Post by defrost » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:39 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #630

rnd0 wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So fucking what? Nothing wrong with that. Lighten up, francis.

If the word fuck isn't offensive, there's absolutely no reason to use it.

Yet every culture across the globe has and has always had swearing, profanity, taboo words, fart jokes, and gate keepers decrying such things.

While the reasons may elude, the ubiquity speaks to something foundational.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#636

Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:42 AM UTC

chrisjj wrote: post #601

Dylan16807 wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That specific link is basically just "having an account" if anonymity is turned off. If you include the anonymous version are you calling a basic cookie an "advertiser's dream"? Then that's not something new they would get if the cookie tracked age verification. And you can reset cookies every visit (or more often). The "that person" of a site-specific session cookie is not a big deal for privacy.

"user identifiers".

I'll say it again but simpler:

The "user identifiers" are just having an account. That's when it's not set to be anonymous in the first place.

When it is set to be anonymous, it doesn't do this.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#637

Post by dontreact » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:50 AM UTC

Surprised to see that something many people are clamoring for (age verification for social media and ai usage) in many countries (eg Australia passed into law) for a good reason (studies showing the negative impact to teen mental health) is seen as only possibly due to some nefarious desire.

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#638

Post by cheesecakegood » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:52 AM UTC

zanellato19 wrote: post #548

eikenberry wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * In a just society, your opportunity in life should not depend on being lucky with who your parents are. The vast majority of people are raised by their birth parents which means 0 luck was involved. You are here due to their actions and are who you are due to their combined genes and situation.

i.e., luck

If luck = something you didn’t choose or had no control over, sure.

If luck = it could have gone otherwise, that’s nonsensical; if you had different parents you wouldn’t exist to begin with, as you are literally a specific fusion of your biological parents. Similarly, if we take luck to mean something probabilistic, or something coincidental? Also meaningless in this case.

If luck = how your situation compares to others, I would argue “fortunate” is the better word here.

And of course there’s a parallel spiritual debate if you believe that identity to be separate (were you “assigned” to parents, was it deliberate or random, etc)

Re: Claude is only available to people over 18 years

#639

Post by therealdrag0 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 12:59 AM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #478

alt227 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> children with shitty parents deserve as much safety and support as they can get too. I know my opinion is not popular, but I do not agree that it is the states responsibility to pick up the slack for bad parenting.

Define bad parenting? Should the state do nothing about children not being sent to school? Should they go hungry when not fed? Should we just throw the kids in jail instead of programs that provide support? The libertarian "eh whatever" means of government has a lot of negative side effects too.

Whatever it is it should at least try to be data driven. And have a strong connection with harms and dysfunction. None of this 2% non-reproducible study BS.

More than 50% of boys admit to intentionally viewing poor, and most of them weekly.

Many think this is a slam dunk for a nanny state to step in. But surely we would have hard causal data on the need for it if that was the case? And I’m pretty sure we don’t.

Now let’s apply this simple bar to Claude, etc.