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.
Not being anonymous is not equivalent to broadcasting your personal information to everyone. Maybe that’s why people are so confused here. They think that they will have to post their addresses and phone number online?
That’s the best part, companies do that for you
Those are two different things. Being identifiable online is not the same as giving some company your personal information. People give companies their info all the time without online age verification. Age verification done the right way does not require providing any personal info. I 100% oppose forcing people to share personal data with private companies. This is not what we’re talking about here.
Handing your government ID and other personal data to private companies is exactly how current proposals for online age verification work. It could be done without this, but that’s not what governments and corporations are pushing for, because the goal is easier surveillance. Take a look at some of the problems with Persona, for example:
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/persona-age-verification-surveillance-biometrics-government-reporting-2026/
Not in my country. Spain and EU are proposing different system. I’m not talking about your country and your laws. I’m talking about mine.
This is, in fact, exactly what we’re talking about here. The assumption that de-anonymization has some foolproof implementation that only does a single identifying thing (like a limited signal that only says someone is “old enough”) is missing a lot of context. Even Von der Leyen’s “privacy respecting” age verification app has been shown to have major flaws in that regard. The assumption that it will simply end there also contradicts the evidence.
Privacy is a right of fundamental importance to virtually all notions of liberty. Like it or not, data rights are human rights. A society without privacy becomes a society without freedom. The discussions around abolishing privacy are actually always discussions about other problems which are better served by addressing them directly and honestly rather than promoting the idea that the answer is sacrificing essential rights. Our best approach is to address these ills with an honest assessment of their actual, specific causes (like social media algorithms, lack of accountability, and the many reckless, harmful and exploitative practices which have become industry standards, etc) and act from there.
No, we’re not. We’re talking about publishing content online. That’s the exact opposite of keeping things private. EU laws are clear here. Your data is protected and age verification does not overwrite those rights. We’re not talking about removing e2e encryption, https, VPNs and making selfhosting illegal. We’re talking about proving that things that are published (i.e. made public) on the internet are actually published by a citizen.
It’s baffling that people confuse anonymity with privacy. My Signal account is tied to my phone number yet my conversation are private. You somehow think that protecting this privacy means we have to protect russian bots creating Twitter accounts and spamming the platform with anti-EU propaganda pretending to be 25 year old single mother from Warsaw.
And we have the slippery slope argument. Because that’s the only argument people have here. “We need anonymity on social media because they will install cameras in our bedrooms next”. I’m not buying that. So far EU has a very good track record when it comes to protecting its citizens from corporations. The fastest way to lose this protection is to let russia backed fascists from AfD, Vox, Kofederacja and Fidesz destabilize and take over EU. Online anonymity is not protecting us from them, it’s the main tool they are using. And this is not some fantasy, we’ve already seen this in UK. Russia backed politicians did brexit and now UK is the most anty-privacy country in Europe. Seeing how toxic the topic of anonymity is I wonder how my russian assets are taking part in this discussion…