Don't fall for the trap. The question isn't how we should technically force age verification on anybody. The question is why they're pushing it onto everyone. I did not consent to this, neither did you.
But it is needed to protect the children. The politicians say so, so it has to be true. Being against this is very dangerous to our children and democracy. There is no alternative.
Seriously, there is something tremendously wrong with governance when politicians keep changing the whole world around us, without us having any say in it at all. The threat this measure poses to the internet and society is significant, yet it is being pushed through without any substantial debate or push back. This just is not how decent and actual democracies should function. What messed up timeline is this?
When they run out of other rights to destroy, they will pipe videos of little girls crying from food poisoning into your e-verified telescreen during ChildSafe^TM viewing hours, and the result will be that you will get to choose between two state approved restaurants thereafter.
> Seriously, there is something tremendously wrong with governance when politicians keep changing the whole world around us, without us having any say in it at all.
That's where you're wrong. Most people actually do agree with age verification. Just because a decision is stupid it doesn't mean it's undemocratic. Trump was elected democratically, twice. Brexit passed through a referendum.
Most people are in favor of solving world hunger, poverty, the wars and climate change. Until you hand them the bill. Likewise most people will not agree with age verification when actually implemented.
It requires reason to understand the consequences of your decisions. Reason is something democracies have a shortage of. Thus, democracies structurally suffer from issues like this.
It worked great for the last several hundred years. The problem is that as government keeps expanding to control more and more of our lives, every decision it makes it necessarily imposes on everyone, whether they agree with that decision or not.
E.g. In a country of 100M people, if 60% agree with a bill and it becomes law, the country has imposed that law on 40M people against their will. That's just as true in a dictatorship as it is in a democracy. The more areas of our lives government involves itself in, the bigger this problem becomes.
Whether it's federal, state, or local, you're going to see laws imposed on the 40% of people who don't agree with it. From what I've seen it's the federal legislature that is interested in protecting my rights and the state and local legislatures that want to infringe on my rights. The governments we are under have never been particularly hands off.
This doesn't make it untrue, instead it just confirms it (I know you didn't say or mean to disprove it, just wanted to add my thoughts here).
People make dumb decisions and don't think about possible outcomes twice, or even once. But (unfortunately, in this case) this is a core principle in a democracy. People may be lied to, or at least they are fearmongered into thinking that age verification is needed and encryption needs to be weakened because they thing they have nothing to hide, but if in the end they elect the people that are pro-age-verification, it's perfectly democratic.
IMO the media (including, most importantly, social media) is the problem, not the politicians and/or the democracy or whatever. They all play their part, sure, but it's how people are influenced by the current state of media what's driving all these populistic forces.
> Social media is destroying children's brains! Do you want access to be delayed until a certain age?
> Do you want children under a certain age to be banned from social media, which means that you will now have to give your ID, only with Android or iOS?
Indeed, it is just as unfair no matter if 1%, 55% or 99.99% of the affected population has one. Your operating system should be a choice.
1. By doing this, the EU is killing any alternative operating systems for phones: no one will switch to one if they can't access online services. Banks are already making it extremely hard.
2. Google and Apple might be better regarded than Huawei, but they are not moral (or they are not guaranteed to remain so).
3. The very idea of a de facto state-enforced monopoly on operating systems is outrageous.
I don't think it's going to be any more convincing with that. At this point anyone I encounter in "normal" life already assumes that I and everyone else has and primarily uses a Google or Apple account.
Luckily, the EU's current structure was put to a referendum. That referendum then failed to get the votes needed, so they implemented it anyway. Much superior.
It's just like democracy. Without the "dem(b)" part. Much better now.
We have such warm feelings about it! What could possibly go wrong with doing such strong governance and extreme-right parties polling at record highs in more than half the EU countries? We have warm feelings now. Or maybe the warm feelings the result of 30 years of climate action in the EU. Luckily, the extreme right is hard at work defending our right to airconditioning!
The scope of the things we already do to "protect the children" is tremendous. None of them have, will, or could prevent them from continuing to use it as an excuse for things that should never be done.
You seem to have jumped from "protecting children" to accusing them of an unrelated war crime for not censoring things aggressively enough.
On top of that, the relevant law they would have to comply with in those countries would be the laws of those countries, and those are the governments committing the genocides.
The governments won't protect them either. The governments are the ones enabling these corporations to exist and facilitate harm towards children. Maybe they shouldn't be allowed to have those corporations.
They are doing something which is not a solution but can fake being a solution, so that the masses will accept it. An actual solution would be to regulate these social media, to prohibit addictive and manipulative algorithms.
Maybe OS vendors should stop trying to sell ads and instead fix their operating systems so that parents can responsibly monitor their children's online activity in a way that promotes both parental responsibility, and children's human rights ... but of course, that would require OS vendors to stop selling ads.
There’s a huge amount of stuff that the EU does that no one consented to, or had a realistic democratic avenue to influence.
I’m in the UK and very anti Brexit. But were we still in, I would have no idea how to influence what happens behind those closed doors at the European Commision.
Granted the current UK Labour/ Conservative pact on these issues show they’re completely out of control. But I still theoretically know how I could influence policy.
Theoretically, you vote for the Parliament, and they influence the Commission.
The Parliament and Courts keep the Commission in check, although their… misguided rule of majority is bound to allow some nonsense to pass. Especially since the Commission is, in my view, made up of people that do NOT want what the citizens do. You could argue they represent the majority of their specific countries, but even that is stretching things a bit given how many people actually vote.
So: the Parliament, the Courts (you can bring them issues), the European Citizens’ Initiative, and indirectly through your own country’s agencies (e.g. your local DPA).
It’s not that different from the high levels of indirection and bureaucracy in most democracies, I think. (Not that I’m defending the EU, there’s plenty to attack.)
> But I still theoretically know how I could influence policy.
I mean even in the EU there's theoretic ways to influence policy, it's just that the system is currently sabotaged and/or partly not strong enough to withstand politicians who want to actively work against it.
Not being for or against UK or Brexit, but I don't think this is a EU problem. These kinds of problems exist in all European democracies, at least this is what it feels like currently.
I and many others have been banned from Twitter for the last two weeks because of a new process[1]. I have to view all links in incognito tabs or hand over my biometric data to a trillionaire. Just don't use Twitter some may quip, well that would be a great group effort, but I can't do it alone.
I think that's trying to see something that isn't there, just to try and make some sense out of things. The reality is much simpler - they are elected parlimentarians, same as any regional government, and they vote without much thought based on quick brief summary. System to protect the children? Sounds great, let's vote yes - anyone who doesn't is a pedo, right?
I know this sounds bad, but when has consent mattered before? I agree with you wholeheartedly, but consent is simply not something these power structures value.
Some people consent to it, and they have a voice too. If they win and you didn't also consider the technical solution, you will find yourself not only with a law you disagree with, but also with a terrible technical solution.
So whatever you opinion is on the subject of forcing age verification, it is worth looking at the technical solution, especially if it is your domain of expertise.
Bruce Schneier goes on about this A LOT, and you’re exactly on point. If the knowledgeable tech people don’t get into policy, it will become law drafted by lawyers and MBAs. Man, I wish I knew how to get into policy…
Yes, I said it before and I will say it again: We should invest our energy in the discussion whether to implement it and not already wonder how to implement it.
Shifting this question benefits only those who want to force this upon us.
Doesn't the "how to implement" determine whether to implement it? A poor implementation shouldn't be done, but a good implementation could make it simpler for companies to verify the ages of users, limit information passed to companies, offer a quality of life improvement for users.
It's funny, concomittant all this chest beating about representing open societies, democracies, unlike those creepy evil authoritarian states which we don't like, that the EC seems hell bent on proving we can have a police state _just_ as intrusive if not more than say: Russia. This is not how we were supposed to prove that we are better.
I love how "they" wanting to know your age is a big conspiracy, but zuck &co hiring the best behavioral and addictions scientists to get yours kids into doomscrolling brain rot as soon as possible is a fact of life and we shouldn't do anything about it
'They' are not pushing age verification onto everyone. 'We' are pushing it onto ourselves. People want this. It is popular all over the world. If 'they' are doing anything, it is subverting what people want into something else. Which is the worry here, as people asked for age verification but didn't ask to be locked into the mobile phone duopoly. The system people want for age verification could be implemented as Firefox plugin. If it requires these attestation services for binary blobs provided by the government, it includes features someone else wants.
Seriously, there is something tremendously wrong with governance when politicians keep changing the whole world around us, without us having any say in it at all. The threat this measure poses to the internet and society is significant, yet it is being pushed through without any substantial debate or push back. This just is not how decent and actual democracies should function. What messed up timeline is this?