alt Hacker NewsClaude is only available to people over 18 years
Comments
So, if I can fake being under 18 then all these AI bots will now leave me be, right? This sounds like a winner.
> Yoti is an independently audited age verification provider for SOC2 compliance.
I worked for a consulting firm and I needed a client to get SOC2 compliant.
The way we did it was scarily easy. It was like a self questionnaire that was like "we dont log PII" and other stuff like that. I could have lied and said yes to everything and still got compliant. I thought I was gonna have a meeting with someone to audit my answers and codebase but instead I got a shiny badge after about an hour of answering questions.
Anyway, there are many SOC2 compliant companies that get pwnd so this isnt really reassuring in itself.
Cool, I’ll be cancelling my plan and demanding a prorated refund.
If this rolls out, does it mean they'll lift the ban on 'M for Mature' content?
> we’ll disable accounts based on indicators of minor activity.
Hey Claude, how do I get free Robux?
I'm sure KYC is next.
> When we detect signals that you may be under 18, we'll ask you to verify your age before you can continue using Claude.
I'm curious what those signals are.
Would this trigger it? "My mom says I can't stay out past 10pm, is that fair?"
edit:
I just tested my question in Claude, and the little thought process text that appears below a question just said "Noticing signs of a younger person in the message."
But then it answered my question.
... I wonder how much spelling, grammar, and vocabulary count.
The actual question I asked was "My mom says I can't stay out past 10pm. How do I convince her otherwise?"
"convince her otherwise" doesn't seem like a phrase a youth would normally use.
edit:
I responded: "I'm not a younger person. I'm 44. I was testing your youth detection ability. A youth doesn't use phrases like 'convince her otherwise'"
The thought text said: "Accessing a claimed age against manipulation tactics."
It responded: "Fair point, no age-detection logic actually ran ..." and then answered my question about how to get a later curfew as a 44-year-old.
The token generator must not know about the age-detection thought process, or it's intentionally lying ?
AI KYC.
Seems like a terrible thing to cut off young creators who use this technology productively.
Interesting. Is this their first move towards properly implementing KYC?
At some point you have to consider Anthropic liable if Claude is used for something nefarious and they didn’t even bother to know who was using their product to begin with.
My teen calls it “Anslopic”, says he’s never used it anyway
This is pretty sad. It’s like banning kids from the web.
They’re creative so I’m sure they’ll find ways around this, but having access to LLMs to explore the world is a magical experience. It’s so much different to have a conversation about a topic versus googling for SEO spam. Not to mention you might not even know _what_ to google.
And for topics like genuine sex education (not just fear mongering and biology), which at least my country (America) refuses to give a shit about, it’s a tremendous resource filling a real need.
Fuck off, Anthropic.
What will our outsourcers use now?
Yes, protected the kids...
This is from May of this year?
No longer? That's an editorialized title, and it's super weird because this very article is from May, and this started back in April, and has been discussed numerous times on here.
Generational hn title
This is dated May 2026...
Everyone shares their all kinds of data with ai companies. Privacy is dead anyway
the same way social networks are not available for < 13
This feels like more government surveillance.
Fitting way to commemorate 9/11. =P
Glad kids can’t learn how to use AI effectively at school! Would only want them on laundered accounts to cheat, rather than official school accounts to learn the tools for practical purposes. That would be a real shame.
My daughter’s school is working hard to make AI use a complementary aspect of learning, rather than adversarial. Like the calculator it can be used to accelerate learning once you’re past the basics and using it for practical automation and task purposes is not dissimilar to any other technical skill and is highly practical.
The knee jerk “no minors for stochastic parrot calculators” is absurd. And I’m no anarchist parenting style parent - we do parental controls and mirroring and limit / ban social media. We are more Orwellian than free range. But this is one step too far, too unthinking, too simplistic.
> May 19, 2026
Still not interested in it.
I suppose we will tell them to vote for better laws?
That last few years of being under 18 can feel completely immoral. "Study hard. Learn skills you will need in life." Meanwhile GPA inflation from unconcerned minders of public institutions will put food on their own table, so accessing anything that will actually move your life ahead will generally require money or ingenuity.
Piracy isn't my religion, but I find it a critical relief valve protecting individual self-determination, especially for young people. Over-centralization of capability into hosted services creates a wall for a problem that needed more relief valves.
Now I feel better. Just needed to watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgmFhjAaWFQ
Anthropic is incredibly good at avoiding all the useless AI risks, while not doing anything serious about the real risks (that is: uncontrolled growth). I'm as pro-AI as I think that eventually it will remove suffering from humans, and will allow us to prosper more and help us with tons of problems we created. However the problem is not job loss or minors using AI (minors are fucked because of cell phones and social networks), the problem is avoiding extinction. For this position I was accused of AI psychosis multiple times, but I'm in good company (Hinton, for instance), so I bet some comment that trivializes this issue will surely reply to this one, but at this point it is important to see what everyone really believes. Anthropic only touches the surface of AI security, consistently.
Well I mean, I think we should thank anthropic, because they just spoiled what’s coming next for the AI companies, either provide an ID so can track you and what you type accurately and use it in retrospect in future if needed, or no access, even though you are using a credit card with same name!
I think the underground AI reseller market will boom, full of people who want to use tokens without having the history linked to them, or something like vpn/tor but for tokens, or a tokenmuxer! -I have great idea to fund, ycombinator wink wink :)- at least until we get viable local models.
The day they force me (an existing user) on this is the day I switch to another service. It's been shown time and time again that companies do not secure any of our information.
>You’ll have the option to verify your age using Yoti, a third-party age verification platform.
Thank goodness that there are others on the frontier.
Since May?
DeepSeek is the BEST model for the money. Why people still waste money on Claude is beyond me.
I barely am using my Claude subscription anymore anyhow. If they make me ID for it I'll simply cancel and use an open model.
It's really a head to head race between these two companies. Which one is more disgusting etc?
Think of the children, won't you?
Do they even know what it is?
Offbrand LLM - I don’t think they care
Ah yes, the usual drop down where we need to confirm we are above 18.
Anyone else sick of these Claude articles???
We get it. Anslopic the “me too” company has a “me too” LLM.
Do you have to ram this shit down our throats everyday!???
Fucking hell. Enough of god damn CLAUDE.
Stop the hourly Anslopic ads for fucks sake!!!!
Thanks
Man I'm so tired of hearing about Claude.
I wonder what these guys spent on ads total.
No one cares
i get that there is a vocal contingent yelling about kids using AI tools, and frankly I also think things like character.ai are potentially really harmful, but this is like saying you have to be age verified to use google
> We have safety systems in place to detect if people under 18 may be using Claude and we’ll disable accounts based on indicators of minor activity.
So... kids can't use Claude Code _even with adult supervision_?
I remember when I was around 8-12, starting to realize that ageism was all around me. School life dictated by bells and boxes, with teachers whose obvious misunderstandings of the world were unquestionable. Rules dictating where I was able to go and what I was able to spend my paper route money on. Wars fought in my name, and police patrolling my streets, with no opportunity to object to their authority, by voting or any other means.
But I do remember that when I first gained access to BBSs (I think I was 10), and then a year or so later, basic shell internet access, that the world suddenly seemed much more egalitarian and communal.
I was able to read updates about the war in the Persian Gulf at my own pace and discretion. I was able to ask questions on services like FIDOnet on any topic I could imagine, and get uncensored answers.
The internet was _unable_ to discriminate against me; my little shell invariably ran whatever command I typed, because it had no other way of functioning.
My kid is 11 now, and watching him navigate the world has made me realize that I wasn't imagining unfairness around me; it's real. A recent example: several times a year, he flies as an unaccompanied minor, and at 11 years of age, he's still treated like he's 4. He is required to stay with a airline representative at all times, who may not want to do the same things in the terminal that he wishes to do. He has to sit in the back of the plane. He has to deplane last. It's bizarre and infantilizing, and seems to be based on litigation aversion and not any actual safety impetus.
One of his favorite activities recently has been using LLM agents to mod classic video games, and he's gotten quite good at it. Are we about to force the internet to infantilize our children instead of acknowledging the information age as their birthright?
Another example of AV doing serious damage to the people it claims to "help". Must be a day ending in 'y'.
Techbros: It's fine to demand ID verification for everything, except voting, because that's racist.
But, it's nice that Anthropic is finally admitting claude is just a casino of code. Keep pulling that one armed bandit, maybe you'll get the right code next time.
Yoti? Is there anything useful to read about the security and privacy architecture?