Age-verification mandates create barriers along lines of race, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, immigration status, and socioeconomic class. Here’s 10 (not so) hidden ways how. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/10-not-so-hidden-dangers-age-verification
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@eff In other words, it repeats the same problems created by the post-9/11 "KYC" laws that adversely impacted access to financial inclusion, this time with access to information and freedom of speech.
Politicians are so out of touch that they never learn.
@eff Bluesky just this afternoon starting blocking my access to my account. I am in a state where there is no age verification law. I use a VPN. It doesn't matter which server I connect on, they demand my birthdate - which means whether I give them that or turn off my VPN to get through, they're violating my state's privacy law.
@eff Lawmakers who draft/enact Age Verification and similar policies insist that said policies are about "child safety." But anyone with even rudimentary critical thinking skills knows that is not true
The true purposes of these policies are as follows:
-Make organizing protests virtually impossible
-Erase marginalized groups from the internet
-Make accessing vital resources much harder, if not impossible
-Erase anything that dilutes the state's ability to brainwash the populace (Palestine, Environmentalism, LGBTQ+ rights, Voting Rights, Reproductive Rights, Immigration, etc.).
-To "return" sexuality and expression in general back to their "proper" place in society and make adult art, sex work, etc. more precarious, more exploitable, and with less recourse to any law or institution
-General petty spite towards people who don't treat lawmakers like deities
Overall, de-anonymization won't make kids safe and it won't result in a more polite internet (just look at Facebook and LinkedIn).
Anyone who advocates for these policies shouldn't complain when their ID/Credit Card/Biometric data is inevitably leaked to the dark web and they have to deal with ID theft and such for years/decades.
They also shouldn't complain when they can't access a vital service and/or get jailed because either 1: The government didn't approve of what they said or 2: The extremely error prone AI that scans their messages thought the innocuous pic of their kids/pets was CSAM/Bestiality.
#Privacy #DigitalRights #FreeSpeech #Censorship #Internet #SocialMedia #US #UnitedStates #EU #Canada #Australia
@eff Most points assume that the system can only be built on selfies and the transfer of all data about oneself. But the system can only confirm "yes, the person is over 18 years old and has this name" and that's it.
Anonymity no longer exists if you use social networks without Tor (in Chrome). Social networks should not be anonymous.
We must protect data privacy