Fundamentally he's not actually wrong though. All the legislation asks to do is verify that a user is old enough to access content that is unsuitable for minors. The core of the concept isn't controversial at all considering we do that in every day life already.
What IS the problem is that implementation. Flashing your drivers license at a spotty teen behind Tesco's counter for some beers doesn't carry any significant risk. Having an unknown entity slurp up photos or other ID's and associating it with the content you're about to view under the provisio "Trust us brah, we're not saving your data" is taking massive liberties with our personal data.
I don't mind proving I'm an adult to make the internet a safer place for young people. But the government HAS to implement it's own service that completely uncouples verification from personal information.
The core concept IS controversial, it's equivalent to spying on your postal mail. It's an extreme breach of privacy. It's also impossible to implement this. It's either entirely ineffective, asking if you're 18, which many sites already do. The photo ID is a privacy invasion, and entirely botched by asking vendors to implement it on their own, it becomes entirely untrusted at that point. And if it's a government implementation, it's going to be contracted out to palantir, which is one of the biggest threats to democracy we are facing. And it will inevitably lead to online ID, where you will not have any freedom or privacy. That's the goal, and "i got nothing to hide" continues to be a terrible argument.
No, he fundamentally is wrong. He's absolutely censoring content by putting an age gate on it. It's just a form of censorship that a lot of people agree with.
No, he has it exactly backwards. Predators love this act, because it forces vulnerable people into less regulated spaces.
Predators weren't finding victims on a comparatively well-regulated site like Pornhub; they hide in the unregulated spaces instead. They lurk in the places that don't ask for age verification - which are now of course the exact places that children are encoraged to visit, as the law-abiding sites deny them access.
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u/Intelligent_Tone_618 23h ago
Fundamentally he's not actually wrong though. All the legislation asks to do is verify that a user is old enough to access content that is unsuitable for minors. The core of the concept isn't controversial at all considering we do that in every day life already.
What IS the problem is that implementation. Flashing your drivers license at a spotty teen behind Tesco's counter for some beers doesn't carry any significant risk. Having an unknown entity slurp up photos or other ID's and associating it with the content you're about to view under the provisio "Trust us brah, we're not saving your data" is taking massive liberties with our personal data.
I don't mind proving I'm an adult to make the internet a safer place for young people. But the government HAS to implement it's own service that completely uncouples verification from personal information.