Online threats to children are real, but the headlong pursuit of age verification that we’re seeing around the world is unacceptable in its approach and far too broad in scope — and we simply can’t afford to get this wrong.
To be clear, parents’ concerns are valid and sincere. Few people would argue that kids should have unfettered access to adult material, to self-harm how-tos, to social media platforms that manipulate them and expose them to abuse.
But it’s the very depth of those worries that is being cynically exploited. Age verification as is currently being proposed in country after country would mean the death of anonymity online.
And we know exactly who stands to gain: The same tech giants who built the privacy nightmare that the internet is today.
I know, and I am vehemently in opposition to the nothing to hide argument. In fact, the reason I recently distrohopped to Artix was because some Arch package maintainer casually uttered the following on the developer adding the birth date field: “I appreciate the work ahead of time, and the law is the law.” Which is either remarkably naive, ignorant of history, or malicious. Homosexuality is still a crime by some law somewhere. So, yeah, utter nonsense.
That being said, if the majority of the Web just becomes a place for advertising, gambling, and predominantly fruitless discord due to rampant disinformation, misinformation, trolling, bullying, et cetera, then I think removing anonymity in some way, e.g., for some websites or specific services, could be a solution. Because if the Web goes where it’s going now, a cesspool of humanity’s worst impulses, I wouldn’t see a reason to keep using it and therefore wouldn’t care whether there’s badly implemented ID verification anyway. Obviously I’d prefer none of this is necessary, that people behave virtuously. But, they don’t, so… I also think there’s too many laws, and that laws mainly apply to the poor and the working class, and the rich—the perpetuators of most of the world’s problems—mostly get off scot-free.
Ugh, it’s all so complex. I don’t have the answer. Do you? Is what I’m saying as utterly nonsensical as what that Arch maintainer said? If so, I’d be glad to adjust my position provided civilized and proper reasoning—not that you didn’t before, @Disillusionist@piefed.world, but many do not.