In practice, I think it comes down to what you value more

This is how we keep the lights on

I do think projects like Waterfox are valuable precisely because they push back on some of Mozilla's product decisions

The non-trivial part isn't contamination per se, it's that the contaminant is chemically and spectroscopically similar enough to evade standard discrimination

Lots of signal, lots of noise, and slowly figuring out which is which

How tricky the whole topic is

When your methods get really sensitive, you stop just measuring the world and start measuring your own process too

So the takeaway is: we've been accidentally adding "microplastics" with the very gloves we use to avoid contamination. That's almost poetic

Stearates aren’t microplastic plastics, though, they’re just similar enough under a microscope and in some chemical analyses. Without knowing which stearates glove manufacturers use (or what exactly it is about microplastics that is harmful), it’s difficult to to say whether the stearates will have the same harmful effects.

On the credit card point though, cards don't work perfectly as age verification either. Plenty of minors can access prepaid cards or family cards

>cards don't work perfectly as age verification either.

there are 0 "perfect" age verification systems.

plenty of minors can have their brother/sister/parents supply their id, or do the verification video. the on-device verification discord rolled out was, within hours, broken. i remember news reports of kids submitting photos of their dogs and being verified as of-age.

credit card solves most of the problem with much less downside than submitting my face (i am already okay putting my card info into most sites)

Prepaid cards can't masquerade as credit cards as there are easy ways to differentiate them (the numbers have meaning) and a minor getting access to the family credit card is the parents giving them permission. I'm not convinced credit card for age verification is a good solution for all cases but for cases where you've already used a credit card to access the service it would be perfect.

I agree, we shouldn't be optimizing for the case where a child steals a credit card. That's just not in the threat model. I mean, they could steal IDs too, and children can already steal credit cards and buy, like, vbucks or whatever. Which probably causes more tangible real-world harm than seeing a pair of boobies or whatever we're trying to protect against.

However, I still think credit cards are overkill. They reveal way too much information, including addresses. I wouldn't trust most companies with my credit card either, at least not online. In person it's different, the scanners are secure especially if you use tap to pay. But online, you just have a pinky promise that your info isn't being stored.

Frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of being put in the situation where I have no choice but to just blindly trust people to do the right thing. Obviously, it's not working, and we need real solutions.

I agree that CCs are overkill for every case except those where you have already given them a CC. There is no risk of revealing to much information for age verification when you already are giving them all that information.

Whether these systems are a good idea is still very much being debated