mhoyeAge verification is a deliberate attack on system sovereignty, both for individuals and countries. There’s no “age verifcation”, there is only “identity verification that includes age”, and the system doing that verification is not just a privacy-invasive user tracking system but a remotely controlled off switch for anyone of any age.
There is nothing special about “age” as a differentiator. It’s just a data point, a condition and a branch. And if a system exists that can start from some condition of your identity and decide that you don’t get to use a computer today - meaning, talk to your friends or employer or read the news or get medical information or, you know, _participate in society_, then that system can use _any_ data to make that decision. Age, gender, race, credit rating, anything about you and anyone like you.
If this system exists at all, then everyone subject to it is one state-coerced software update from away from their computer working for them only at the whim of that state. Age, gender, race, disability, debt, credit rating, citizenship, neighborhood, search history, political affiliation, all of that plus the state itself is one breach away from no computer working - or only the _right people's_ computers working, you understand - at all.
Age verification is the footgun of public democracy.
At the implementation level data is just data, and in a democratic society, human privacy and state sovereignty are the same the same thing. You wouldn't think so, until you take a hard look into how to implement them, but they are the same thing. And both of them are national security issues.
Nobody will be made safer, by age verification. But everyone will be put at risk by the systems that have to exist to implement it.
can everything be outside now?@mhoye thank you for this, I've been kind of skeptical of this, and you've moved me significantly closer to your position.
I don't like any state mandated age verification, but I do think we need something along the lines of a consumer opt-in "naive Internet". For all the stuff you talk about that's necessary for daily life we should be able to do that as safely as we can walk down the street.
If people can put up a storefront that leads you into a scam or sex shop on the way to interacting with your local government or doing your homework or paying your utilities that's unacceptable.
Age verification isn't a fix, but ignoring these problems just leaves more space for bad laws and policing.
JoeHenzi@thesquirrelfish @mhoye Age verification is not a fix, but ignoring the problem isn't a fix either. People are addicted to social media and fighting to keep it, no matter who is dead.
@JoeHenzi @thesquirrelfish "Age verification is not a fix, but ignoring the problem isn't a fix either, so we're going to verify age" is silly, and this whole exercise is an attempt _by social media companies_ to push the burden of responsibility for age verification - and the liability for failure - away from the people who _should_ be verifying the ages of their customers: those same social networks.
@mhoye @thesquirrelfish sorry you're stuck in a loop - age verification is a red herring, you're going in circles on it
to the point, you're now saying social media companies should police themselves for some reason?
if there are products that are so harmful we need to protect people of certain ages then maybe, idk, we should get rid of those products
@JoeHenzi @thesquirrelfish bad news about how prohibition worked out, I guess.
Rosy@mhoye @JoeHenzi @thesquirrelfish prohibition actually worked very well, alcoholism rates lowered substantially and never rose back up. the "prohibition didn't work" is propaganda by the alcohol industry not rooted in reality
@lalah @mhoye @thesquirrelfish It's a real conservative mindset that protects companies rights to make money on harmful products as opposed to stopping the ability for them to cause harm. Kids died, we have a duty to stop it. Doing nothing is a choice, not the only one. But people get really upset when you point out there are kids dying and they are choosing to do nothing - but that's their decision.