I’m old enough to remember when age verification bills were pitched as a way to ‘save the kids from porn’ and shield them from other vague dangers lurking in the digital world (like…“the transgender”). We have long cautioned about the dangers of these laws, and pointed out why they are likely to...
There’s an important distinction here: “is a good idea” is not “is the right way to do it”. You can also keep kids off of dating apps by banning dating apps, banning children from the Internet, or even just banning children. All of those are horrible solutions, but they achieve the goal.
The goal should be to balance protecting kids with minimizing collateral damage. Forcing adults to hand over significant amounts of private data to prove their identity has the same basic fault as the hyperbolic examples, that it disregards the collateral damage side of the equation.
There’s an important distinction here: “is a good idea” is not “is the right way to do it”. You can also keep kids off of dating apps by banning dating apps, banning children from the Internet, or even just banning children. All of those are horrible solutions, but they achieve the goal.
The goal should be to balance protecting kids with minimizing collateral damage. Forcing adults to hand over significant amounts of private data to prove their identity has the same basic fault as the hyperbolic examples, that it disregards the collateral damage side of the equation.