Yes, and simply logging does nothing to prove your age. Nothing stops a teenager from creating an account with a fake age. So then the next step "to protect the children" will be requiring logging in with an account verified by a government issued photo ID so they can track you much more effectively. That seems like where we're heading with this crap.
Yep. This is about discovering what kind of n00dz you like.
Thankfully, there's alternatives to google image search, like Brave or DuckDuckGo which at least pay lip service to the idea that you're not tracked. (Who knows if they actually do avoid gathering and selling your data?)
They might use your Google Pay to see if you have a credit card attached and use that to confirm you are over 18. This is one of the age verification methods YT does.
They could if they cared about actually verifying age. But they don’t.
In fact, I would guess that Google can predict your age with good accuracy without you logging in.
I’ve had kids under 13 create Google accounts that said they were 75 or whatever. Google doesn’t care. They just want you logged in and selling “targeted” ads.
I expect there will eventually be some sort of smoking class action suit that gets damages from emails knowing that accounts are 5 years old and not stopping it because of revenue. Of course I’ve been waiting a long time.
> In fact, I would guess that Google can predict your age with good accuracy without you logging in.
My Google account is almost 20 years old at this point, and they still ask me for credit card verification every time I want to see an "age-restricted" video in YT (and "age-restricted" topics apparently includes Verilog programming).
They know your age. They just want your creditcard and a confirmation that it exactly you ( else they need to trigger the profiling algorithm for a new person).
You may not have come across this yourself, but Google requries verified ID to watch age-restricted videos on Youtube in EU, EAA, Switzerland or UK. It just hasn't hit US in the same way. Louisiana set a dangerous precedent though, legally.
