"Age verification is an impossibility, and an impossibly terrible idea with impossibly vast consequences for privacy and the open web..." - @pluralistic
"Object permanence": the ability to understand that things still exist, even if you can't see 'em. Kids acquire a thorough sense of object permanence by the age of two. But when it comes to technopolitics, object permanence eludes full-grown lawmakers. These motherfuckers would lose a game of peek-a-boo.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read/share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Will the age verification era kill anonymity? More countries are passing age verification laws, now also for social media apps as seen in Australia and upcoming in the UK, France, Spain, and Turkey.
This morning, representatives from Meta, TikTok, Snap, Google and Microsoft are lobbying Ireland's members of parliament at the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Children and Equality on the topic of "Safety and Well-being of Children Online" [sic].
You can watch along with this Boring Circus at the link below (select Committee Room 2), or watch back later:
Unfortunately, I think this letter will fall upon deaf ears. As we've learned from their response to the OSA repeal petition, their response to any criticism of these laws is to 1: Glaze said laws 2: Imply critics of the laws are sex pests/pedophiles/etc. and 3: Enact even more fascist legislation.
The UK Government (and I'm sure plenty of other governments) is willing to die on the hill of these thinly veiled mass surveillance/censorship laws. They won't stop unless the courts/a future parliament/a general strike forces them to. Because enacting a fascist police state is just too good to pass up.
I would be glad to be wrong and they actually listen but I don't think that will be the case.
There’s something ominous about the speed with which the entire world has marched to require identification on platforms and, as I expected, begin the process of banning anonymous VPNs.
