<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/03/01/even-after-its-own-data-protection-agency-said-theres-no-safe-way-to-do-age-verification-france-wants-to-do-age-verification-for-the-internet/>
"It’s become the
in thing to do everywhere, these days: try to institute age
verification for the internet. There’s been an ongoing, unsubstantiated, moral
panic that the internet is somehow “dangerous” for children, even as most of
the evidence suggests… it’s actually mostly good for kids and the evidence has
supported that for years.
And, for whatever reason, the terrified, panicked, political class has decided
that the answer to all of this must be to… age verify everyone on the internet,
and put the burden on websites to keep out “kids.” Of course, as we’ve
explained, age verification is a terrible idea that does not make anyone safer,
and can actually serve to make kids a lot less safe. This has also been known
for years, and that’s even in its weaker form, such as in the US were COPPA
(the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) seems to have a side effect of
teaching kids that lying is good, because it means that’s how they can get onto
services where they can communicate with grandma.
Of course, defenders of these new laws will say, but this is different, because
now we’re talking about actual age
verification, rather than what we have
today, which is more of a “self-certification” situation. Except, age
verification technology is terrible, a massive privacy nightmare, and not
proven to work particularly well. We’ve discussed how the largest age
verification provider is… Pornhub’s parent company. But also how other age
verification providers reached out to me to tell me not to worry about age
verification technology, because all they’d need to do is to scan everyone’s
face to visit websites (and not just images, they’d have to do video to make
sure you weren’t just holding up a photo).
At a time when people are (much more reasonably!) concerned about privacy,
demanding that every website scan everyone’s faces and store that information
does not seem like a move in the right direction.
But, don’t take my word for it. Why not take the word of the French data
protection agency, CNIL, perhaps the most strict data protection agency in the
EU (to a fault, I’d say). Even they said that there is no possible way to do
age verification that is reliable, and that every possible solution violates
user privacy rights."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
