@Heinzenstein
Please don't act like the concern for child safety online is a recent fad and the old parental control methods are new things: they are the systems that currently allow children to suffer serious harms.
@markwyner

Children and adults have the right to peaceably assemble where they choose, without personal registration with some other party and without seeking government permission to do so.

The other things you list, @romli, are either unsuitable for children, or rightly require personal registration to track the person using it.

There is public interest in being able to identify the person who holds a bank account, or who drives a car.

If you think no one should smoke cigarettes, I'm not going to disagree. The solution is to put out of business the people selling cigarettes.

Just as, if the problem is a particular online platform is unsafe and addictive, the solution is to put that platform out of business.

If you believe use of social spaces on the internet should require personal registration for everyone, in the manner of holding a bank account or driving a car? I consider that position opposed to privacy for everyone, and we aren't going to agree.

@markwyner

@romli @markwyner Because all of those are SIGNIFICANTLY different.

Buying cigarettes: kids don't benefit from cigarettes. And for the adults who want them then it's a one-off check in person at the shop and you're done. Nothing tracked.

Driving cars: the driving license database is a trusted, well secured government database that isn't sold for tracking people. And you're proving you can be trusted with a heavy object that's dangerous to others.

Getting a bank account: Banks are in the business of keeping things secure! And the identity check is about preventing criminality and money laundering under false identities.

Voting: as with driving licenses, it's a trusted, well-secured government database. As with banking, it's preventing criminality and voter fraud.

Meanwhile, social media age checks are run by untrustworthy and unregulated identity providers who retain data even when they say they won't, who can track which sites you use and sell it with a perfect link to your identity, and who have repeatedly leaked data. All to delay the problems associated with social media until people turn 18 rather than actually fixing them.

It's a bullshit law focusing on the wrong solution to a wider problem, because screaming "think of the children" works worryingly well in modern politics.

@romli @markwyner the only one that list that is remotely comparable to online age verification is cigarettes. The rest aren't actually age verification, but are instead identity verification. The age limit is incidental.

For "you must be this old to X" situations, you typically only give your information out on a temporary, controlled, basis. The cashier checks your ID and gives it back. If they took a photo that'd be suspicious. If they took it out of your sight, that'd also be suspicious. You have no control in online contexts, the information leaves your sight the moment you hit submit and you can't know what the "trusted third-party" does with it.

@romli @markwyner

now extend those for permission to go outside at all - children are no longer allowed because we somehow can't make the roads safe and it is achieved by putting up guards from random private companies at everyones front door

that's what's being worked towards digitally

@romli @markwyner Those are not merely age verification acts, those are authorization acts.

The moment you get why that distinction is important, you’ll understand what “age verification” truly is and where the problem lies.