BenMar 14
Electronic Frontier Foundation
What’s at stake in the fight against age verification is not just a single bill in a single state. It’s about whether “protecting children” becomes a legal pretext for embedding government control online that reinforces specific moral and religious worldviews. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-age-gating-isnt-about-kids-its-about-control
Rep. Finke Was Right: Age-Gating Isn’t About Kids, It’s About Control

What’s at stake is whether “protecting children” becomes a legal pretext for embedding government control over the internet to enforce specific moral and religious judgments—judgments that deny marginalized people access to speech, community, history, and truth—into law.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Mar 13 at 6:59pmTypefully
Show threadjkdelauneyMar 13
@eff protecting children has been the pretext for the removal of many rights, privileges, and just privacy in general for the whole of my life and I’m sure longer than that. Unless it’s about “protecting women” (almost always white women for some reason) which it is also never about.
Show threadSassinake!Mar 13

@eff

If you won't surrender your data to dubious 3rd parties on the way to (repressive) govt, you are kept back as a minor, or a child, with all the restrictions that implies.

Not just access to porn, but access to information, and eventually financial transactions.

you are infantilized... to protect children.

Show threadJanie Karma S 🏳️‍🌈🖖🏿Mar 13

@eff

https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/25/hackers-expose-the-massive-surveillance-stack-hiding-inside-your-age-verification-check/

In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.