What "Age Verification" Laws Are About
If the aim cannot be effectively accomplished, maybe the true aim isn't what it is called after
We've written quite a few articles about "Age Verification", but the key points can be summed up to avoid opportunistic misinformation and self-serving distortion of what "Age Verification" is (or what it is for).
"Age Verification" - as it is advertised - is about preventing children from accessing inadequate content online (violent movies, violent games, sexual Web pages etc). We know based on experience (even predating the Web) that kids will find workarounds, so such restrictions are difficult to enforce.In reality, "Age Verification" is about surveillance of all computer users (identifying, not merely verifying ages). We worry that some people already envision "Age Verification" done at a Clownflare level (i.e. CDN and cross-site), maybe even ISP level. The latter is already true to some extent, at least in the UK.
Why is "Age Verification" so bad? It can: 1) Curtail software freedom by mandating checks and forbidding circumvention (like DMCA), overstepping various concepts or tenets of Free software. 2) Be misused by authoritarian regimes against critics/dissidents.
It can be abused in lots of other ways. Imagine a system for recording every time you flip the page of a book in every library, with a compulsory digital sign-up any time you pick a book from the shelf.
Despite using GNU/Linux everywhere in their infrastructure, GAFAM wants to pass laws that harm the platform. In the case of Facebook, it keeps getting fined for not doing enough to prevent children from accessing inappropriate content (for their age group). The same goes for Google (YouTube) and Microsoft (e.g. LinkedIn, now Minecraft as well). In Facebook's case, accounts got banned or sites blacklisted for recommending GNU/Linux. The news about this went 'viral' not too long ago.
Both left- and right-leaning politicians play a role in promoting bills to this effect because all of them are funded - directly or indirectly - by GAFAM (at a party level). █
Last month: Microsoft Uses April Fools to 'Joke' About Inserting "Age Verification" (Surveillance) Into Linux
Image source: Paris France In The Future 1905 Public Domain