The Age Verification Mess

It seems that online discourse recently is dominated by the topic of age verification laws in progress or being passed in the United States specifically. I know the UK, Canada, and Australia are also exploring it but I’m mostly interested in what’s been happening in the U.S.. Thanks to the success of books like The Anxious Generation, politicians are now antsy to look like they’re doing something for their constituents to protect the heckin kids from depressing algorithms and pedophiles talking to their kids online. Rather than exploring the philosophical implications of technological progress or telling the big tech companies to go fuck themselves, the best that most state governments can come up with is proposals for implementing “age verification” checks at various levels. Most notably in California where they want you to enter some dummy date of birth when you want to start setting up your operating system to “prove” you’re not a minor. Some other states have you scan your ID in if you wish to view a porn website (shouldn’t be watching that stuff anyway). All in all, this leads to various areas of concern. How far are states willing to go to enforce these checks on average citizens and should people just go along with it?

The answer would ideally be no, the internet should remain a free and open space. The current domination of social media websites like Facebook and Twitter is obviously a threat to the existence of free, open speech and information. They’re the ones lobbying the most for these age verification checks since it would mean they’d be able to pay less or no fines if the feds find that they’re violating child privacy laws. Age verification is an easy thing a corpo could point to and say “look we did our due diligence! Pass the buck onto the consumer for violating your law!” and thus the problem that these age verification laws are supposedly solving stays unchecked and festers. No kid should be allowed unfettered access to these algorithmic and data hungry websites, and parents have a fundamental responsibility to discipline their kids on what is and isn’t safe to do on the internet at their age. Of course, the reality is that this doesn’t happen. Most parents are clueless about the internet and are content to let them scroll and stare at a screen for hours while other pressing things have to be attended to. You can’t ignore the current state of the masses when taking into consideration why all these surveillance and data collecting laws are put into practice. People just don’t understand why they should care about who has access to all of this online data they’re creating. Hell, it’s hard enough putting enough food on the table and making sure your kids have everything they need without worrying about what they’re seeing online or who’s talking to them on social media.

Politicians are unconcerned about the consequences of technology or seeking to lead on those topics. All they care about is having some sort of legislation under their belts to show off why they should be re-elected. Even if they truly cared, the massive ratio of constituents to one representative prevents any sort of meaningful communication between them. Thus they cannot be relied upon to prevent this maelstrom of invasive verification laws. So what can you do if you disagree with what’s happening with age verification? Personally, I would advocate civil disobedience. If a law clearly violates something intrinsic and beneficial to society (i.e. your privacy) it’s clearly within your bounds and means to disobey it. Workarounds can and do exist and anything that prompts you to verify your identity should be avoided at all costs. The Zuck probably fears anything FOSS and would give anything to have people avoid it or unable to access it. Hell, even staying offline would be better than having to deal with this privacy nightmare unfolding. Kids do better offline and have healthier childhoods than if they were forced to keep scrolling and watching content. The United States continues to fail its children by allowing this exploitation online to keep happening. It doesn’t have to keep being this way if we can merely look up and dream up better alternatives for this ongoing tech disaster.