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.
That’s the stupid part, it doesn’t matter what it will look like at the beginning. It might be the best written documentation now, they can even implement the app correctly. The thing is, the jump from “people can use the internet” to “in order to access the internet you need to provide your government ID to your smartphone” is a big jump, one that can cost a politician career. The jump from “you need to use version 1.4.412 of the govenment id checker” to “you need to use version 2.0 of the Government Id Checker Plus” is minuscule. That’s where you introduce a persistent database of the tokens, somewhere on page 5 of the changelog. And only nerds care about that and nobody listens to them.
It’s so fucking easy, Russia did this exact gambit in 2017, Kazakhstan couple of years before.
But that slippery slope, which it sounds like you believe us to be on, also applies to phone location tracking, credit cards payments, mobile phone train tickets, smart homes, smart cars, home CCTV etc etc.
Do you leave your phone at home, always pay with cash, don’t use any apps? Most people do these things on the basis that the government doesn’t wantonly have access to what we’ve bought online. Why is age gating so different?
That’s the stupid part, it doesn’t matter what it will look like at the beginning. It might be the best written documentation now, they can even implement the app correctly. The thing is, the jump from “people can use the internet” to “in order to access the internet you need to provide your government ID to your smartphone” is a big jump, one that can cost a politician career. The jump from “you need to use version 1.4.412 of the govenment id checker” to “you need to use version 2.0 of the Government Id Checker Plus” is minuscule. That’s where you introduce a persistent database of the tokens, somewhere on page 5 of the changelog. And only nerds care about that and nobody listens to them.
It’s so fucking easy, Russia did this exact gambit in 2017, Kazakhstan couple of years before.
Ok, so it’s the slippery slope fallacy.
But that slippery slope, which it sounds like you believe us to be on, also applies to phone location tracking, credit cards payments, mobile phone train tickets, smart homes, smart cars, home CCTV etc etc.
Do you leave your phone at home, always pay with cash, don’t use any apps? Most people do these things on the basis that the government doesn’t wantonly have access to what we’ve bought online. Why is age gating so different?