Em 14h ago

The horror of Age Verification is
arriving in Canada 🚨🇨🇦

Contact your federal MP and the office of the Prime Minister this week to tell them you strongly oppose the privacy-destroying and inefficient measure.

The time to push back is NOW: https://globalnews.ca/news/11797286/liberal-party-adopts-motion-social-media-ban-kids/

'Prime Minister Mark Carney said last month that the idea “merits an open and considered debate in Canada,” although he does not have a settled view on it yet and said there were good points on both sides.'

Share educational resources with them on the dangers of Age Verification: https://www.eff.org/age

We do NOT want this nightmare in Canada. Fight back for your privacy rights! ✊🔒

#AgeVerification #Privacy #DigitalRights #HumanRights #MassSurveillance #Canada #CanPoli #CndPol

Liberal party adopts motion to ban kids under 16 from social media

Federal Liberals voted in favour of setting 16 as the age of majority for Canadians to be able to use social media accounts.

Global News
Show threadAthro Rob
@Em0nM4stodon ban o. Social media for under 16s is good.
4:50pmWeb
Show threadEm 14h ago

@robriley Unfortunately, a social media ban is not good.

What this truly means, is requiring every adult using social media to provide official ID to a for-profit third-party company who will inevitably leak it or use it. This is really bad for users' safety. Breaches like this have already happened.

Additionally, it makes every account attached to a legal identity, allowing governments full control and censorship over their critics and opposition. It also endangers the most vulnerable and marginalized groups online, especially people of colour and the LGBTQ+ community. Age Verification leads to horrible outcomes for democracy, and for society as a whole. Moreover, it does not end up protecting the children. This is sadly only used as an excuse to convince people who are misinformed.

I invite you to read more on this topic using this excellent resource prepared by EFF: https://www.eff.org/age

Age Verification and Age Gating: Resource Hub

Age verification (or age-gating) laws generally require online services to check, estimate, or verify all users’ ages—often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “age estimation” methods—before granting them access to certain online content or services.  Governments in the U.S. and around the world are increasingly adopting these restrictive measures in the name of protecting children online. But in practice, these systems create dangerous new forms of surveillance, censorship, and exclusion.  Technologically, the age verification process can take many forms: collection and analysis of government ID, biometric scans, algorithmic or AI-based behavioral or user monitoring, digital ID, the list goes on. But no matter the method, every system demands users hand over sensitive and immutable personal information that links their offline identity to their online activity. Once that valuable data is collected, it can easily be leaked, hacked, or misused. (Indeed, we’ve already seen several breaches of age verification providers.) EFF has long warned against age-gating the internet. Age verification technology itself is often inaccurate and privacy-invasive. These restrictive mandates strike at the foundation of the free and open internet. They are tools of censorship, used to block people from viewing or sharing information that the government deems “harmful” or “offensive.” And they create surveillance systems that critically undermine online privacy, chill access to vital online communities and resources, and burden the expressive rights of adults and young people alike. EFF.org/Age: A Resource to Empower Users Age-gating mandates are reshaping the internet in ways that are invasive, dangerous, and deeply unnecessary. But users are not powerless! We can challenge these laws, protect our digital rights, and build a safer digital world for all internet users, no matter their ages. This resource hub is here to help—so explore, share, and join us in the fight for a better internet.

Electronic Frontier Foundation
Show thread1337 $#!+ I did that12h ago
@Em0nM4stodon @robriley meshtastic - not a universal answer but a useful local one. And less than $30 so...
Show thread❄️SnowyIn🇨🇦❄️13h ago

@robriley

Age verification is not a "good idea" for anyone.
It doesn't stop youngsters from accessing ' illegal" sites, they will find a way around it, but what these laws do accomplish is:

- Everyone, including you, will have to upload their official ID on the internet, thus exposing all *your* personal information to hackers via data leaks.

*Your ID* can then be used to do all sorts of fraudulent activities, and *you* will be responsible for untangling the mess -- it will take years , plus you will be forced to pay out all legal fees, not the website or the government.

Additionally, because the government can monitor every keystroke from your computer or other device, you could be penalized for your opinion....not to mention I don't want to live in a dictatorship like North Korea, China, or Russia --censorship is terrible for democracy.

-kids will learn how to become 'hackers' in order to circumvent law so, I ask you how does this improve the life of children or yourself?

@Em0nM4stodon

Show threadJessie Nabein 13h ago
@robriley @Em0nM4stodon kids will just find a way around it, they always do.
Show threadwbftw13h ago

@robriley @Em0nM4stodon It’s an incredibly myopic position that entirely ignores the root cause of the problem and shifts the blame to kids (who incidentally have little to no representation in Canadian politics and therefore present an excellent vector for introduction of draconian laws).

Whereas the problem lies *entirely* with the business model of attention harvesting with surveillance-based advertising at its base. The latter is not only a dumpster fire of privacy violations but the tools to support it are also profoundly anti-democratic; the whole thing should not be regulated but destroyed outright.

So, no, we should see this drive for age verification for what it is — an attempt to tie every user on the internet to a strong identity, a base for enabling mass-surveillance and mass-censorship.

Show thread❄️SnowyIn🇨🇦❄️12h ago

@wbftw @robriley @Em0nM4stodon

Good point!

Show threadwbftw12h ago
@SnowyCA @robriley @Em0nM4stodon The MP who introduced the legislation? (proposal?, not sure) said something along the lines of “a lot of kids I talked to are supportive of the idea”, and this sounds as fake as plastic Christmas trees.
Show thread❄️SnowyIn🇨🇦❄️12h ago

@wbftw @robriley @Em0nM4stodon

I nearly choked on a mouthful of water while reading "a lot of kids I talked to..."
The first time I read that line I thought, "Which kids? Ones in pre- school who will agree with anything if you offer a piece of candy?"

Show threadOyu F'ka10h ago

@wbftw @robriley @Em0nM4stodon Spot on - same bs going down in the UK - people don't seem to understand the point isn't to limit kids access...it's to create detailed ID records for all people over the age limit.

Look at trump's usa and their treatment of Francesca Albanese as a perfect example of how personal data can be misused to target an individual.

People say 'our government won't do this', and yes, they may be right....but what about a future one?

That's where all this is heading 😔.

Show threadℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖@world: /# ▯11h ago
@robriley @Em0nM4stodon
That's such a naive view to be honest. Instead of banning the use of addictive gaslighting algorithms by the large corpos and forcing them to moderate effectively, we are choosing to do damage by excluding young people from sometimes the last safe spaces they have, creating a huge attack surface for hackers, and giving governments a tool for mass surveillance and censorship. NOTHING about this legislation is a good idea. It's catastrophically dystopian.
Show threadℂ𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕖@world: /# ▯11h ago

@robriley @Em0nM4stodon
Instead of victim blaming the kids for being targeted by corpos, addicting them with predatory algorithms, we should blame the actual perpetrators: Meta, X, etc.

It's easy to kick down to an underrepresented group in politics. It's disrespectful and antidemocratic.

Plus, this was never about the children. This is about control. Surveillance. Tools for governments to control who is online. You just need one autocratic government (USA...) to use this to target dissidents