Then it's not a stretch to see the government requiring all good citizens to "check in" with the government every month like someone out on parole.
It would be exactly what they would love and like the frog that slowly boils, I believe they'll get it.
This comment was brought to you by the British Class System: Making Nanny Proud.
Can anyone suggest a better way of protecting kids, other than age verification?
People without teenagers often say that parents can restrict phone access and use parental controls. In reality most parents don’t do this because it’s very hard to get a teenager to accept something that is not “normal” in their friend group.
In a trade off between child protection and online freedom child protection will win.
> Ofcom will set out in the coming months different options for effective forms of age assurance for proving whether someone is over 16 that are accurate, robust, reliable, and fair.
The fact sheet doesn't actually specify how age verification will be done so it the title is bit speculative. However, it's concerning that there's nothing in description about preserving privacy.
So, to be clear, I have to tiptoe around cookies but eu-users will simultaneously do this so they can share pictures of their ...
"To enforce it, platforms must age-check their users. In practice that means anyone opening a new account will likely have to prove they're over 16 by uploading an ID or passing a facial age scan."
> likely
It could, of course, use a double-anonymous system like the French one.
Probably not, but I'd rather that they didn't state their guess as fact in the title.
Sure, as with everything, this ban ks circumventable. But more and more I don't see any social utility of these networks at all. It's the cigarettes or our time.
They're not even particularly social any more. Most posting is done by professional influencers and disinformation bots. And criminals, it seems.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/police-londo...
Fully expect pretty much all countries to follow suit though. The "think of the children" angle to force dystopian surveillance is just too neat of a trick to resist. It functionally can't be defeated. No politician is ever going to stand up against it because it risks "oh so you're in favour of harm to children".
The strategy is equal parts brilliant and evil
Anonymity online is of course a double-edged sword, but we've seen the authorities, particularly but not exclusively, in the UK use intimidating tactics against those with unfavorable political views. Even when those views didn't break the law (e.g. no calls for violence).
If you also look at how nearly all the existing "verification" systems work, it is just a giant data drag-net, that is absolutely used to associate your real-ID with their advertising analytics. It isn't subtle. Which is why "big tech" (e.g. Meta, Google, Palantir) aren't far behind many proposals.
At least people will realize that age verification is something everyone will have to do to prove they're >16 - not just something <=16yo's will run into.
I will get downvoted by people suspicious of handing over a lot of personal data, but we do have GDPR laws, and they're not getting me to install a proctopod (tm). Giving someone my email address to verify my age is not a big deal. They're getting my email address to create an account anyway.
The practicalities of implementing 'good enough' age verification, where the website can prove that they conformed to an acceptable approach, do not require giving up all or significant freedoms. Maybe we get to something similar to DNS verification where you need to create a dummy TXT record in an already verified account.