Why do websites even bother with age limits?

[LongRunner]

They seem rather useless to me when anyone can just lie their way around them…

[c_hegge]

I agree, but it's probably just for legal reasons.

[LongRunner]

COPPA to be exact.

But frankly, it seems to be approximately as helpful as RoHS is. (i.e. not at all)

[Behemot]

The root of the problem is many ppl are lazy morons who give their personal freedom for bare promise the regime will care after them. So when even minor problem appears (or somebody creates it deliberately), politicians must "solve" it. That's how 99 % of today's laws came out. Mostly they are stupid and harming vastly more ppl than they help. Sometimes they are just stupidly annoying like with this age limit stuff. But for lazy morons, "problem solved", at least for a short time. So such idiotic laws will never be cancelled no matter how stupid they are, at least as long as these democratolity regimes will be standing.

[LongRunner]

Basically, you're right about the flaw with democracy (i.e. "mobocracy", or more formally ochlocracy): It's rather like capitalism, in that it's the best of the basic models by a huge margin, but still far from perfect.

I really can't think of a good (or even tolerable) solution to that particular flaw. The only thing I can think of that might barely work (in theory) would be to design an intelligence test, that citizens must pass in order to earn the right to vote; but I can very clearly foresee such a measure being severely abused, and would therefore only ever consider it as an absolute last resort (should the only visible alternative be imminent disaster).

Anyway, such a test would be incompatible with mandatory voting, as used in Australia (anyone who didn't want to vote could just refuse to take the test – unless taking the test itself was forced, which I'd have even less desire for).
(In principle, I very much prefer optional voting – albeit on the understanding that it does have weaknesses.)