New age-verification laws and tools are designed for child safety on social media and the internet, but adults are in the crosshairs, say privacy experts.

New U.S laws designed to protect minors are pulling millions of adult Americans into mandatory age-verification gates to access online content, leading to backlash from users and criticism from privacy advocates that a free and open internet is at stake. Roughly half of U.S. states have enacted or are advancing laws requiring platforms — including adult content sites, online gaming services, and social media apps — to block underage users, forcing companies to screen everyone who approaches these digital gates.

  • lmmarsano@group.ltEnglish
    1·
    20 hours ago

    Still unnecessary & less effective than less invasive alternatives that already exist & the government could promote. To quote another comment

    Governments have commissioned enough studies to know that education, training, and parental controls filtering content at the receiving end are more effective & less infringing of civil rights than laws imposing restrictions & penalties on website operators to comply with online age verification. Laws could instead allocate resources to promote the former in a major way, setup independent evaluations reporting the effectiveness of child protection technologies to the public, promote standards & the development of better standards in the industry. Laws of the latter kind simply aren’t needed & also suffer technical defects.

    The most fatal technical defect is they lack enforceability on websites outside their jurisdiction. They’re limited to HTTP (or successor). They practically rule out dynamic content (chat, fora) for minors unless that content is dynamically prescreened. Parental control filters lack all these defects, and they don’t adversely impact privacy, fundamental rights, and law enforcement.

    Governments know better & choose worse, because it’s not about promoting the public good, it’s about imposing control.

    • Kraiden@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      14 hours ago

      As I’ve said elsewhere, yes in a perfect world it would be on the parents to enforce this, but that doesn’t mean we should do nothing on the social media side. It’s also the parents responsibility to prevent underage drinking and smoking, yet we still restrict those at the point of sale.

      I’m for age restrictions on social media, and yes there are arguments against it, but I’m not really interested in having that conversation.

      less invasive alternatives

      This is exactly what I take issue with. It’s a false dilemma. The assertion that you can’t have age verification without the invasion of privacy and destroying online anonymity in the process IS FALSE. You CAN have both. THIS is the grift in my opinion.