Age verification processes are dangerous to Canadians ⚠️🧵

Unfortunately, there is no magical solution: A ban of social media for children necessarily means a requirement to identify every adult using social media. This means that intrusive age-verification processes would have to be put in place by social media platforms, therefore collecting an immense quantity of very sensitive information from every Canadian adult using social media.

This is dangerous in many ways.

First, it means many (if not most) platforms will delegate this task to private for-profit third-party vendors with little to no incentive to protect this information properly. We have already seen data breaches of sensitive information in this process. This would increase the risk of Canadians becoming victims of identity theft and fraud, and would diminish the value of Canadian identification documents over time.

Secondly, this can create a permanent record of legal identities tied to social media accounts. This would endanger users who rely on pseudonymity online for safety, such as victims of domestic violence, trans and gender diverse people (for whom the legal identification might not match the name used on social media), performers using stage names online, and other people that are part of marginalized groups regularly targeted online (women, people of colour, 2SLGBTQ+ people, etc.).

All these vulnerable groups would only be one data breach away from incredible harm with the implementation of mandatory identity checks to access social media.

Furthermore, risking to link every social media account to a legal identity can have a silencing effect for activists, journalists, and whistleblowers. This can lead to self-censorship of topics important to discuss publicly in a free democracy.

(2/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

A ban does nothing to address the harm caused by social media 🧨🧵

The things that harm children on social media also harm adults. A ban of social media for children sadly does nothing to reduce the harm caused by social media, it only reserves it to adult, and postpones it for children.

The addictive and manipulative black-box algorithms, the privacy-intrusive data collection, the harmful violent content and misinformation, are all hurting adults as well.

Moreover, children who do not go around the ban before the restricted age (other implementations have shown that most children will attempt to circumvent the ban) will find themselves completely ill-equipped to protect themselves from social media harm once they come of age, and will be made even more vulnerable by our own legislation claiming to protect them.

A true solution to this is to regulate corporate platforms to forbid addictive algorithms, targeted advertising, intrusive data collection, third-party data sharing, violent content, weak moderation, manipulative tactics, and other abusive mechanisms used by certain platforms to prioritize profits over the safety and sanity of its users.

This would not only help children, but adults and society as a whole as well.

(3/9)

#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada

PRIVACY ALERT!
Please boost for reach! 🚨👇

The Canadian government is planning
to introduce a bill on Wednesday, June 10th, to mandate identity surveillance of every adult using social media in Canada! 👁️‍🗨️

globalnews.ca/news/11894610/ca…

A ban on social media for children
does nothing to reduce the harm caused by commercial social media. Instead, it means mandatory ID scans for every adult using social media.

We must stop this authoritarian proposal,
and demand our government focuses instead on reducing the harm for everyone using social media.

It has been explained by experts over and over that bans of social media are shortsighted lazy measures that do not help in the end, but in fact harm everyone, including the children.

Stop ID surveillance in Canada! ✊⛔️

Contact your MP and our Prime Minister TODAY to voice your opposition. Here's where to find their contact information: ourcommons.ca/members/en/searc…

If you aren't aware of this issue yet, here's more information on age verification: eff.org/issues/age-verificatio…

#AgeVerification #Privacy #Canada #HumanRights #CanPoli #StopIDChecks #StopIDSurveillance