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.
Encryption alone actually isn’t preventing as much data collection as you indicate. I would suggest looking that up.
You’re also pretty confident in the specifics of your own situation, like not using gmail, etc. While I would caution you that you may not be as secure as you appear to believe, I’d say that you do demonstrate that you have some awareness that there is a problem with the nature of how data can be handled in such contexts. That’s definitely a good start. But I also think it would be good to consider that even if what you’re personally doing is as effective as you believe, not everyone is going to take the measures you’re taking. Even if it makes you more secure, what about everyone else? How do they fit in?
You seem to be shutting out a lot of the info you’re being given. That’s understandable, strong opinions are often difficult to see past. But I’m noticing that we’re not meeting on some central facts, we’re kind of having two different conversations.
There is a lot to talk about here, a lot to address in what you’ve said. Productive discussion often requires being able to meet on facts, however.