Banning children from VPNs and social media will erode adults' privacy

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516996-banning-children-from-vpns-and-social-media-will-erode-adults-privacy/

by hn_acker • 5 months ago

22 4 5 months ago

newscientist.com

hn_acker• 5 months ago

Archived version at [1].

[1] https://ghostarchive.org/archive/Y7bU0

7777777phil• 5 months ago

Always the same pattern.. you build an identity verification layer to "protect children," then that layer is there for everything else. The UK's Online Safety Act already showed how this works.

You can't verify age without verifying identity, and once the infrastructure exists, scope creep is a matter of when, not if.

Llamamoe• 5 months ago

And none of it has ever been to protect children. Almost everything nasty happening to children is facilitated by parental neglect if not directly by abuse, but no government body has ever cared to even try cracking down on it.

It's always the privacy and freedom that have got to go so we can protect children from the terrifying internet boogiemen that probably won't even get slowed down by the new laws while 99.9% of child abuse continues as it always had.

7bit• 5 months ago

You can't verify age without verifying identity, and once the infrastructure exists, scope creep is a matter of when, not if.

That's not true. But it's also not simple.

The German digital ID card system is able to anonymously do age verification.

Unfortunately, Germany fucked it up so badly, as a verifier, you need to register and connect yourself to their network, to be able to do so. I don't exactly remember how it worked, but the bottom line is: they made that so beaurocrstic and EXPENSIVE that it's typically only used by state authorities.

But. It's possible and the people should demand that their countries offer it, as it can have a lot of advantages, if this would be implemented so every company could do age verification without requiring any PII.

That would certainly stop governments from eroding privacy through the backdoor with things like: "but think of the children"

Banning children from VPNs and social media will erode adults' privacy

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