EU chief calls for a bloc-wide push on an age verification app to protect children online. If enforced, users will have to prove their age to access legally restricted sites.
You don’t need to show ID to enter the store just because they sell cigarettes at the front counter. The staff person checking the OD at the front counter isn’t memorizing the information on the ID and using it to track every other purchase you make in the store, or to piece together what you’re doing once you leave the store.
Locking individual content behind age verification (and it entirely depends on how they are handling the age verification), is different than a blanket identification check to use the platform at all. Age verification is used to prevent children from buying cigarettes from a store while under aged, but it’s up to parents to prevent them from getting cigarettes other ways.
But let’s separate the technical/privacy discussion of age gating from the discussion about age gating social media platforms.
If I go to a Scottish distillery website and buys chocolate, they are not going to age gate me. If I buy whisky they will. That’s not age gating at the door, that’s age gating for a specific product that we, our democratic society, have decided, through democratic means, should not be available to minors.
Regulating social media age gating is a different discussion altogether. The discussion is about whether we want to be able to anonymously check (again, the EU standard requires anonymity) someone’s age online.
Stop moving the goal posts. Also, no one has convincingly shown they can do that anonymously, but lots have shown they CAN’T. You can’t divorce the privacy implications because they are intrinsically linked right now and there is no evidence supporting the ability to unlink them.
You don’t need to show ID to enter the store just because they sell cigarettes at the front counter. The staff person checking the OD at the front counter isn’t memorizing the information on the ID and using it to track every other purchase you make in the store, or to piece together what you’re doing once you leave the store.
Locking individual content behind age verification (and it entirely depends on how they are handling the age verification), is different than a blanket identification check to use the platform at all. Age verification is used to prevent children from buying cigarettes from a store while under aged, but it’s up to parents to prevent them from getting cigarettes other ways.
But let’s separate the technical/privacy discussion of age gating from the discussion about age gating social media platforms.
If I go to a Scottish distillery website and buys chocolate, they are not going to age gate me. If I buy whisky they will. That’s not age gating at the door, that’s age gating for a specific product that we, our democratic society, have decided, through democratic means, should not be available to minors.
Regulating social media age gating is a different discussion altogether. The discussion is about whether we want to be able to anonymously check (again, the EU standard requires anonymity) someone’s age online.
Stop moving the goal posts. Also, no one has convincingly shown they can do that anonymously, but lots have shown they CAN’T. You can’t divorce the privacy implications because they are intrinsically linked right now and there is no evidence supporting the ability to unlink them.