Age verification is creating an information desert.

The Online Safety Act sets every UK user to child as default.

Teenagers? Blocked. Adults? Content denied unless we do age checks with unregulated companies.

It's not just porn! News on Gaza and Ukraine is being scrubbed from view, threatening as well as

404media.co/uk-users-need-to-p

@openrightsgroup No, it's creating a different problem. Corporations have WAAAAAY to much access to our personal data and now governments straight up require THEM to literally hoard everyone's the most personal identifiable document, the personal ID or passport. By the most greedy, irresponsible corporations. How the F is this not literally the worst idea ever?!
@openrightsgroup It would be fairly easy for a neutral, intermediate age verification service to verify one’s age, securely store the supporting information, and provide only the age confirmation to third parties without revealing anything other than an email address. It does add a third step, but it’s a little bit like buying things through PayPal. Or Apple Pay where the end recipient never gets your credit card number. It’s going to happen.
@openrightsgroup this is, at best, a deflection of blame for bad parenting. If you don’t want your kids to access this content tell them no. You control the devices, you control the passwords, you control everything your child sees and does, say no. When they want to change the tv channel, you say no. When they want a phone with games, you say no. When they want to go to a friends house, you say no. You be the bad guy.
@openrightsgroup

This isn't isolated... they are trying to get similar "online safety" legislation passed in all countries, even in the U.S. -- Sorry, that can't be coincidence. No matter what label they slap on it, you can call it what it is: censorship. The next logical step will be for them to hobble VPNs, because they want to know who you are, where you are, what you are looking at online, when you are looking at it... they will make assumptions about the why part.

@openrightsgroup

I'm all for child safety, but in realistic practice for actual children, not "blow up all online culture because of fear." These measures to protect corporate "Children™️" who do not exist and are harmed by every single flaw and vice imaginable that real children have dealt with for years before and will continue to do so. Hell, most households kids run the Internet for their parents, so this is being used as a false equivalency for why overreach is needed.

This is how they will try to end social media, amateur websites and citizen ran news reporting in one shot. Propaganda will flow and facts will be sparse, as the Internet becomes a corporate and government ran feed for Billionaire and Political Party goals, not communication.

@openrightsgroup

I'm all for child safety, but in realistic practice for actual children, not "blow up all online culture because of fear." These measures to protect corporate "Children™️" who do not exist and are harmed by every single flaw and vice imaginable that real children have dealt with for years before and will continue to do so. Hell, most households kids run the Internet for their parents, so this is being used as a false equivalency for why overreach is needed.

This is how they will try to end social media, amateur websites and citizen ran news reporting in one shot. Propaganda will flow and facts will be sparse, as the Internet becomes a corporate and government ran feed for state-ran goals.

@openrightsgroup

Is safety ever the real intent, looking at the repression from UK Labour is it not more likely that restriction of information and further profiling is behind the so called online safety act.

It can scarcely be about kids safety and mental health as many in UK are living in horror and violence every day, in schools, on the streets and often at home.

.

@openrightsgroup

Same will happen in Australia soon with their teen social media ban.

Their connection to sports.
Connections to extended families
Connections to community
Connections to each other
Ways of expressing themselves
Being artistic
Being able to see official government information particularly in emergencies, when nothing else gets updated as much.

All censored and evaporated.