Sorry Andrew but I have to disagree with you on this one. It’s just one more insidious intrusion by government into control of our lives. It’s a step too far.
How is this “insidious government intrusion”? As Andrew MacDougall states, there are numerous examples of governments requiring age verification before granting access to products and services. How is this any different? Because it’s online?
I find people’s concern about government collection of data almost hilarious. Private sector companies, such as Google, Facebook, and others, gather far more data about us without any of the controls on their use that governments have. I might add that, as MacDougall demonstrates, governments do not even need to be involved in the verification. They simply need to establish the framework in which private sector companies verify age.
The LCBO doesn't actually record your driver's license with each purchase and make it available to the federal government on request without a warrant. Nor is buying whiskey a matter of free speech. Otherwise your analogy is good.
While we may not like or trust Google et al, they have no way to put us in prison. The government, with its new internet censorship bills, is explicitly authorizing itself to do so.
Clearly, not all government intrusion is bad. Think prohibitions against driving drunk. I think it more reasonable to suggest that government intrusion into the lives of Canadians needs to justified by weighing the bad (government intrusion) against the good (in this case, harm done to children by social media). As a society, we can decide if the good outweighs the bad and move ahead.
The difference is that while drunk driving affects third parties besides the person doing the drinking and driving, the under-16 age bans are not regulating dangerous behaviour by individuals but rather purporting to protect children against themselves.
The legislation is also premised on the idea that the under-13 age ban that is typically stipulated by social media is somehow too young, and that the honour system of trusting user self-identification on purported age is a flaw that specifically needs government as opposed to parental intervention.
Social media harms are well documented, but so are social media benefits. Should all 13-15 year olds lose the benefits of social media because a minority of them are harmed by it?
Would most of the social media users in the 13-15 age range be actually using social media if most of them were not actually benefitting from it?
As a society, we consider pre-18 persons to not be rational enough to be trusted with the discretion to drink, and the implicit argument is that social media should be treated the same. But the difference is that while young people rarely drink more responsibly than older people, young people often are more Internet-literate than their older counterparts.
"Would most of the social media users in the 13-15 age range be actually using social media if most of them were not actually benefitting from it?"
Yes.
These words define the harm. The "net" is not a benefit; it's a harm, and significant, documented. Both physical and mental health deterioration, and progressive.
I’m not sure moving the age from 13 to 16 will solve any problems given that the experience in Australia so far indicates two-thirds of kids still find ways to cheat the system. I prefer the approach taken by Apple that allows parents to set the phones in a fashion that limits kids’ access.
You're almost certainly wrong about this being nefarious conspiracy. It's probably just that the government is over-represented with people who did not grow up with social media or the Internet and who therefore have the prejudice that the kids of today need to have more of the same Internet-free experiences. They just don't understand that the kids of today are more Internet-literate than themselves!
That's still easily explainable by being over-populated with boomers. Never attribute malice if incompetence is plausible!
On that note, I am not sure that it best describes most of the relevant legislation to call it "Internet censorship". More like, "consumer privacy-removal legislation". But you might be thinking of a particular piece of a Bill that I have forgotten about.
Andrew just assumes everything is going to go right here and this actually will protect kids. What’s a “safe” platform anyways? Is Telegram or Signal safe for kids? Do I need to age verify for that now? Any reasonably smart kid is going to vpn their way out of these constraints by the age of 10.
There’s an old expression, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Critics of age verification keep criticizing proposals on that kind of basis. They basically say, you’re swinging a hammer, and the problem isn’t a nail.
Now that may be fair enough. But as a parent, I want better tools to control my children’s access to various things online including but not limited to social media. Age verification is one option. If the incredibly rich tech companies don’t like that options, they should darn well come up with something else. Their persistent refusal to do so makes me think… maybe we ought to try hammering the problem down like it is a nail and see how that goes.
Or to put it another way, you can’t beat something with nothing. Opponents of age verification should suggest a better solution, because a growing majority of people find the current state of affairs to be a problem.
Don't give your children phones then. It's not about just keeping children safe--which can be accomplished by not letting them use potentially harmful technologies at all--but whether your desire for your children to use certain tech automatically outweighs privacy and speech concerns for adults. Far from self-evident.
But I don't want to control what they do on their devices, I want to limit their access to social media. There is nothing that stops them from opening a browser on someone else's device and creating a Facebook account.
Nor will there be. All they need is someone willing to let them use their access and they are able to proceed. Why would that helpful person not just let them use their device? How did you think age verification will work? Facebook isn't going to send a person to visit you and check your id every time you log on.
And, seriously, what good is a Facebook account you can only access from someone else's device?
A proper age verification system will undoubtedly have limitations, and be subject to circumvention by a suitably motivated and technically competent individual. That doesn't mean it's useless. Jen had some astute observations about this on last weeks podcast.
A proper age verification system will nonetheless also materially reduce use of social media by children, which is the goal.
Adults have more speech (and privacy) rights than kids and any functional society recognizes this. It's not a small thing to restrict adults from communication (what makes media "social media"), but all sides already agree kids can be banned in some form.
Arguing otherwise implies kids have some right or strong interest in using phones all while trying to also ban them from the most common uses. Incoherent.
But adults aren’t being restricted from engaging in speech. They’re just being asked to prove that they are adults. If they can’t or won’t do that, why should they be entitled to those additional rights you tell me they are entitled to?
As far as phones go, that’s a red herring. The position is that children should be allowed phones and parents should be able to control what children do with them. Including restrict access to social media. Since tech companies are unwilling to facilitate this, it seems regulation is required.
The bill isn't about allowing parents to decide! You already have those controls whether you choose to use them or not. You will not be able to choose for your kids to be able to use social media (legally).
You're right to a degree, this bill isn't about parental choice. What it seems to be doing is codifying something that a lot of parents want to see.
But you're absolutely wrong that the tools exist to enforce such controls. To the extent they exist, they are trivially circumvented. If robust, easy to use tools existed to manage these things, the general advice to monitor what children are doing online might be treated as a serious solution. Since in fact the tools are porous, easily bypassed, and require an excessive degree of technical proficiency to manage, "just monitor what your kids do online" is rightfully widely viewed as a wholly inadequate answer.
They're being forced to identify themselves (not just "prove they are adults"--we don't have tech to do this anonymously), which is a major restriction. Not an "additional" right, a very basic right in a free country.
First of all, the large social media companies know exactly who you are, whether or not you have uploaded your ID to them. That's why they routinely are able to identify accounts to law enforcement and courts on request. As currently constructed social media is simply not anonymous, even though they don't overtly advertise that.
And as a practical matter, there are a variety of means to verify things anonymously. This is an age-old problem in cryptography and entirely solvable if so desired. Which brings me back to my core point: if the tech companies don't want this, find me a better solution. It is entirely within their power to do so, but they refuse.
Anyone who says "adults will have to prove their age" is being dishonest. Say "adults will have to give, and have recorded and available to the government, their government-issued identity every time they go on line".
And then compare that to the actual effects. Parents can keep their own kids off social media now. And they won't be able to keep other people's kids off social media by giving their identity.
Did you read the article about how other countries have handled it? Your concern is a red herring, not necessarily reality. There are many ways that don’t involve government.
Credit cards, bank accounts, and other government IDs are all required to be stored and available to the government under current Canadian Internet legislation. Solving the problem of age verification while retaining privacy is actually technically difficult, none of the proposed methods achieve this, and no government is showing any interest in achieving age verification with true privacy - because that would not meet their actual goals.
Exactly right. That's why there is zero concern in any of this legislation to elevate privacy as primary. Just the opposite: privacy is a problem the legislation overcomes. And I can't wait to see and hear the pseudo-outrage from the gullible when important platforms leave Canadians to stew in their own mess out of fear of being held financially liable for impeding government control of their products and services to the ridiculous tune of a percentage of global revenues. I cannot believe just how far the average Canadian's ability to think things through to their logical conclusions has fallen to be so gullible as to think this kind of legislation is reasonable. It's not. It's the opening bell to this regime's national gong show. And people who assume themselves patriotic are giving away their rights and freedoms while cheering!
Yes it is too much!!! Digital id, then CBDC and carbon footprint.
We have already seen this government shut down bank accounts. It was Carney’s idea per Globe and Mail. So yes, they will control your money too. That’s the plan.
As well as kill anonymity, which directly undermines the ability to be a whistleblower. 'Protect the children' is always the reason used and the expansion of the power always guaranteed to go far beyond this simplistic justification. 'Safety' generally is code for reducing your rights and your freedoms and your legal protections accompanied by a sanctimonious smile. Those who don't understand this intention revealed by the multiple bills recently rammed through a false majority Parliament - that also, oh by the way just so happened to shut down important related committees - without any meaningful oversight or amendments is intended to eliminate our privacy from governmental view.
That people actually believe these bills are for the 'good' of Canadians should be but no longer is surprising. All are for the 'good' of government to better access whatever they want from whomever they want whenever they want. And look at cheerleading Canadians thinking this, finally, will 'protect children'. I guess we're all 'children' then. Great. What could possibly go wrong?
Adults weren't even willing to sacrifice to protect kids uninterrupted educations. We didn't happen to become a child-centred society overnight, it just happens that internet ID suits a lot of other interests.
Of course, this is ignoring that the best way to protect young children online is to just not give them smartphones in the first place, not to gerrymander categories of harmful apps. The piece also puts too little weight on the fact that any uncircumventable check makes online privacy impossible, it's not just about verification "as an adult".
I was in Australia not long ago and required age verification to access *this very site*.
I tried using a VPN but they found ways to defeat it - something to do with the pattern of my usage that indicated I was in Australia. I tried a few other things but there was no way around it. Curious as much as anything, I did it their way. I had to turn on my camera while a third-party website scanned my face while I turned my head from side to side and moved back and forth. I didn't have to give ID (that was another option) and it insisted it wasn't keeping anything (uh, sure), but the whole process had a deeply dystopian and heavy-handed vibe.
Apparently kids get around it by wearing an "old man" latex mask.
The policy choice that should be applied here makes enforceability the problem of Facething: no-one under 16 allowed, and if we find any, punishing fines just like if we find a corner store selling ciggies to kiddies.
For me, this is an addiction issue and is doomed to failure, unfortunately, because parents (and most of humanity I suspect) are addicted to their phones and social media.
That's just how it is. It saddens me that humanity was brought low by folks like Elon Musk and that creepy guy who invented Facebook.
Keeping children safe is the primary purpose of parents but it is time consuming, difficult and exhausting. "It takes a village to raise a child", is a sophisticated way of saying I am busy and someone else, the state for example, should protect and raise my child.
Thanks Andrew. Well written and argued. If me having to verify my six decades helps reduce potential harm to but one child the value is readily apparent.
There will always be those with tinfoil headwear being overwrought about any government program, almost makes me think they have something to hide?
To be clear, the problem with this legislation is not that one will need to provide more ID to government, but rather that one will be forced to provide ID *to corporations*.
If Facebook would prefer *not* to receive images of your driver's licence, but they are forced to collect it because legislation requires that they verify your ID, and now there's a database of personal information that needlessly exists that can potentially be exploited, who is really benefitting from that?
They don’t have to collect your driver’s licence. Instagram uses a service called Yoti to estimate age - send a selfie, it gets checked against a database of other images, and then deleted (and not added).
But there is no perfect digital method of age verification, Yoti included. There are going to be adults/persons of age who are not going to be approved by Yoti due to technical error, and then the necessary fallback option for those specific users might be showing a driver's licence.
But ultimately, even if Yoti works well enough it's still basically the same problem that I described: increased personal information is being distributed to a private corporation and being stored in the cloud where it otherwise would not need to be the case. If the end impact of the legislation is that Yoti holds more personal information, then that is a newly-created opportunity for a consumer privacy breach (even if the image storage of IDs is temporary, it can still be breached and other personal information there is still collected).
Please feel free to tell me if this information from Google AI is incorrect:
"ID Document Images (Passports/Drivers Licenses): Deleted immediately after your verification check. In rare cases requiring a manual review (manual fallback), images may be *temporarily* stored for up to 28 days before being deleted."
Most of the arguments for keeping a 15 year old from social media (impressionability, inability to tell true from false information, vulnerability to being scammed or exploited) also apply to many seniors. I for one would be happy for all boomers to be banned from social media if it prevents even one little old lady from getting scammed out of her savings, or even just reduces the impact of fake news. In it together!
Don't follow the logic, V, because that will give the next wannabe ruler a good reason to similarly 'make boomers safe' and the lemmings will line up supporting yet another stealth bill through a one man parliament to make it all 'legal'.
I’ve seen 3 year olds playing with Laptops,IPads. Then the child runs away and mutters “Mom gonna be mad!” A voice calls out “Hello? Hello?” I walk up to the unit,sitting on the floor and say “A 3 three old called you and I’m hanging up!” A lot of people go thru life with blinders on,then when something goes terribly wrong they blame everyone,including the government,but themselves. Look after your own biscuits,I’ll watch over mine
We struggled but persevered with our children’s screen time,TV. What I insisted on was sitting at the dinner table to eat,all meals in my home. With the TV off.Simple request. Now,no cell phones at the table,please and thank you. Simple request. Parents have an obligation to monitor their children till they are 16. And what is wrong with that thought. I’m not talking about making them wear a helmet when they go outside,if any do anymore. Go outside to play I mean. Walk the dog they asked for
Sorry Andrew but I have to disagree with you on this one. It’s just one more insidious intrusion by government into control of our lives. It’s a step too far.
How is this “insidious government intrusion”? As Andrew MacDougall states, there are numerous examples of governments requiring age verification before granting access to products and services. How is this any different? Because it’s online?
I find people’s concern about government collection of data almost hilarious. Private sector companies, such as Google, Facebook, and others, gather far more data about us without any of the controls on their use that governments have. I might add that, as MacDougall demonstrates, governments do not even need to be involved in the verification. They simply need to establish the framework in which private sector companies verify age.
The LCBO doesn't actually record your driver's license with each purchase and make it available to the federal government on request without a warrant. Nor is buying whiskey a matter of free speech. Otherwise your analogy is good.
While we may not like or trust Google et al, they have no way to put us in prison. The government, with its new internet censorship bills, is explicitly authorizing itself to do so.
Google absolutely has ways to put us in prison, lol.
I stand by what I said as it’s just one more example of government intervention into our lives.
Clearly, not all government intrusion is bad. Think prohibitions against driving drunk. I think it more reasonable to suggest that government intrusion into the lives of Canadians needs to justified by weighing the bad (government intrusion) against the good (in this case, harm done to children by social media). As a society, we can decide if the good outweighs the bad and move ahead.
Agreed but with the caveat thatvwe have to be very careful with how much government intrusion and control into our lives we want to allow.
We can agree on that.
The difference is that while drunk driving affects third parties besides the person doing the drinking and driving, the under-16 age bans are not regulating dangerous behaviour by individuals but rather purporting to protect children against themselves.
The legislation is also premised on the idea that the under-13 age ban that is typically stipulated by social media is somehow too young, and that the honour system of trusting user self-identification on purported age is a flaw that specifically needs government as opposed to parental intervention.
To clarify... is a law to prevent your 5 year old from handling a Glock an "insidious intrusion" and "a step too far"?
Wondering if there's any justification, and where the line might be for you.
The SM harms and causes are very well documented.
If it was implemented by requiring me to send my id to a govt website every time I lifted up my legally owned Glock, yes, that would be going too far.
If it was a law that said,
"If we inspect and find any Canadian children under 16 on your site, you are fined $1 million", that wouldn't be necessary would it?
You know that a website isn't actually a room and there's no way to tell who's "on" it unless you collect id, right?
I think we understand how to make policy differently lol.
Yes. I have some regard for what's actually possible in the real world. Unlike Mark Carney and his supporters.
Social media harms are well documented, but so are social media benefits. Should all 13-15 year olds lose the benefits of social media because a minority of them are harmed by it?
Looks like we disagree about how harmful and for how many.
There's a lot of evidence to suggest the balance is not even close, and SM accounts are net harmful by quite a margin.
(There's also the problem of parents who, having a serious problem with SM addiction themselves, projecting their own insecurity on the issue.)
Would most of the social media users in the 13-15 age range be actually using social media if most of them were not actually benefitting from it?
As a society, we consider pre-18 persons to not be rational enough to be trusted with the discretion to drink, and the implicit argument is that social media should be treated the same. But the difference is that while young people rarely drink more responsibly than older people, young people often are more Internet-literate than their older counterparts.
"Would most of the social media users in the 13-15 age range be actually using social media if most of them were not actually benefitting from it?"
Yes.
These words define the harm. The "net" is not a benefit; it's a harm, and significant, documented. Both physical and mental health deterioration, and progressive.
Yes.
I’m not sure moving the age from 13 to 16 will solve any problems given that the experience in Australia so far indicates two-thirds of kids still find ways to cheat the system. I prefer the approach taken by Apple that allows parents to set the phones in a fashion that limits kids’ access.
This obviously preferable solution is not preferred by the government, because it doesn't achieve the goal of censoring the internet for adults.
You're almost certainly wrong about this being nefarious conspiracy. It's probably just that the government is over-represented with people who did not grow up with social media or the Internet and who therefore have the prejudice that the kids of today need to have more of the same Internet-free experiences. They just don't understand that the kids of today are more Internet-literate than themselves!
The extensive suite of Internet censorship laws just brought in by the Canadian government indicates otherwise.
That's still easily explainable by being over-populated with boomers. Never attribute malice if incompetence is plausible!
On that note, I am not sure that it best describes most of the relevant legislation to call it "Internet censorship". More like, "consumer privacy-removal legislation". But you might be thinking of a particular piece of a Bill that I have forgotten about.
C-9, C-22, and C-34 create quite a combo. Given that most of the regulations have yet to be written, I think we can expect pretty extensive impacts.
If it’s for the kids then how can I refuse!
Andrew just assumes everything is going to go right here and this actually will protect kids. What’s a “safe” platform anyways? Is Telegram or Signal safe for kids? Do I need to age verify for that now? Any reasonably smart kid is going to vpn their way out of these constraints by the age of 10.
There’s an old expression, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Critics of age verification keep criticizing proposals on that kind of basis. They basically say, you’re swinging a hammer, and the problem isn’t a nail.
Now that may be fair enough. But as a parent, I want better tools to control my children’s access to various things online including but not limited to social media. Age verification is one option. If the incredibly rich tech companies don’t like that options, they should darn well come up with something else. Their persistent refusal to do so makes me think… maybe we ought to try hammering the problem down like it is a nail and see how that goes.
Or to put it another way, you can’t beat something with nothing. Opponents of age verification should suggest a better solution, because a growing majority of people find the current state of affairs to be a problem.
Don't give your children phones then. It's not about just keeping children safe--which can be accomplished by not letting them use potentially harmful technologies at all--but whether your desire for your children to use certain tech automatically outweighs privacy and speech concerns for adults. Far from self-evident.
That answer goes both ways - if you don't want to provide your ID, why don't you just stay off social media yourself?
There are many tools that let you control Internet access on your kids' devices. Nothing is stopping you using them.
But I don't want to control what they do on their devices, I want to limit their access to social media. There is nothing that stops them from opening a browser on someone else's device and creating a Facebook account.
Nor will there be. All they need is someone willing to let them use their access and they are able to proceed. Why would that helpful person not just let them use their device? How did you think age verification will work? Facebook isn't going to send a person to visit you and check your id every time you log on.
And, seriously, what good is a Facebook account you can only access from someone else's device?
A proper age verification system will undoubtedly have limitations, and be subject to circumvention by a suitably motivated and technically competent individual. That doesn't mean it's useless. Jen had some astute observations about this on last weeks podcast.
A proper age verification system will nonetheless also materially reduce use of social media by children, which is the goal.
Adults have more speech (and privacy) rights than kids and any functional society recognizes this. It's not a small thing to restrict adults from communication (what makes media "social media"), but all sides already agree kids can be banned in some form.
Arguing otherwise implies kids have some right or strong interest in using phones all while trying to also ban them from the most common uses. Incoherent.
But adults aren’t being restricted from engaging in speech. They’re just being asked to prove that they are adults. If they can’t or won’t do that, why should they be entitled to those additional rights you tell me they are entitled to?
As far as phones go, that’s a red herring. The position is that children should be allowed phones and parents should be able to control what children do with them. Including restrict access to social media. Since tech companies are unwilling to facilitate this, it seems regulation is required.
The bill isn't about allowing parents to decide! You already have those controls whether you choose to use them or not. You will not be able to choose for your kids to be able to use social media (legally).
You're right to a degree, this bill isn't about parental choice. What it seems to be doing is codifying something that a lot of parents want to see.
But you're absolutely wrong that the tools exist to enforce such controls. To the extent they exist, they are trivially circumvented. If robust, easy to use tools existed to manage these things, the general advice to monitor what children are doing online might be treated as a serious solution. Since in fact the tools are porous, easily bypassed, and require an excessive degree of technical proficiency to manage, "just monitor what your kids do online" is rightfully widely viewed as a wholly inadequate answer.
They're being forced to identify themselves (not just "prove they are adults"--we don't have tech to do this anonymously), which is a major restriction. Not an "additional" right, a very basic right in a free country.
First of all, the large social media companies know exactly who you are, whether or not you have uploaded your ID to them. That's why they routinely are able to identify accounts to law enforcement and courts on request. As currently constructed social media is simply not anonymous, even though they don't overtly advertise that.
And as a practical matter, there are a variety of means to verify things anonymously. This is an age-old problem in cryptography and entirely solvable if so desired. Which brings me back to my core point: if the tech companies don't want this, find me a better solution. It is entirely within their power to do so, but they refuse.
Hammer the companies!
Anyone who says "adults will have to prove their age" is being dishonest. Say "adults will have to give, and have recorded and available to the government, their government-issued identity every time they go on line".
And then compare that to the actual effects. Parents can keep their own kids off social media now. And they won't be able to keep other people's kids off social media by giving their identity.
Did you read the article about how other countries have handled it? Your concern is a red herring, not necessarily reality. There are many ways that don’t involve government.
Credit cards, bank accounts, and other government IDs are all required to be stored and available to the government under current Canadian Internet legislation. Solving the problem of age verification while retaining privacy is actually technically difficult, none of the proposed methods achieve this, and no government is showing any interest in achieving age verification with true privacy - because that would not meet their actual goals.
Exactly right. That's why there is zero concern in any of this legislation to elevate privacy as primary. Just the opposite: privacy is a problem the legislation overcomes. And I can't wait to see and hear the pseudo-outrage from the gullible when important platforms leave Canadians to stew in their own mess out of fear of being held financially liable for impeding government control of their products and services to the ridiculous tune of a percentage of global revenues. I cannot believe just how far the average Canadian's ability to think things through to their logical conclusions has fallen to be so gullible as to think this kind of legislation is reasonable. It's not. It's the opening bell to this regime's national gong show. And people who assume themselves patriotic are giving away their rights and freedoms while cheering!
Yes it is too much!!! Digital id, then CBDC and carbon footprint.
We have already seen this government shut down bank accounts. It was Carney’s idea per Globe and Mail. So yes, they will control your money too. That’s the plan.
As well as kill anonymity, which directly undermines the ability to be a whistleblower. 'Protect the children' is always the reason used and the expansion of the power always guaranteed to go far beyond this simplistic justification. 'Safety' generally is code for reducing your rights and your freedoms and your legal protections accompanied by a sanctimonious smile. Those who don't understand this intention revealed by the multiple bills recently rammed through a false majority Parliament - that also, oh by the way just so happened to shut down important related committees - without any meaningful oversight or amendments is intended to eliminate our privacy from governmental view.
That people actually believe these bills are for the 'good' of Canadians should be but no longer is surprising. All are for the 'good' of government to better access whatever they want from whomever they want whenever they want. And look at cheerleading Canadians thinking this, finally, will 'protect children'. I guess we're all 'children' then. Great. What could possibly go wrong?
Adults weren't even willing to sacrifice to protect kids uninterrupted educations. We didn't happen to become a child-centred society overnight, it just happens that internet ID suits a lot of other interests.
Of course, this is ignoring that the best way to protect young children online is to just not give them smartphones in the first place, not to gerrymander categories of harmful apps. The piece also puts too little weight on the fact that any uncircumventable check makes online privacy impossible, it's not just about verification "as an adult".
I was in Australia not long ago and required age verification to access *this very site*.
I tried using a VPN but they found ways to defeat it - something to do with the pattern of my usage that indicated I was in Australia. I tried a few other things but there was no way around it. Curious as much as anything, I did it their way. I had to turn on my camera while a third-party website scanned my face while I turned my head from side to side and moved back and forth. I didn't have to give ID (that was another option) and it insisted it wasn't keeping anything (uh, sure), but the whole process had a deeply dystopian and heavy-handed vibe.
Apparently kids get around it by wearing an "old man" latex mask.
The policy choice that should be applied here makes enforceability the problem of Facething: no-one under 16 allowed, and if we find any, punishing fines just like if we find a corner store selling ciggies to kiddies.
Honesty, I trust some of the tech companies to safeguard my digital identity documents more than some government-organized repository.
For me, this is an addiction issue and is doomed to failure, unfortunately, because parents (and most of humanity I suspect) are addicted to their phones and social media.
That's just how it is. It saddens me that humanity was brought low by folks like Elon Musk and that creepy guy who invented Facebook.
The toothpaste is out of the tube.
Keeping children safe is the primary purpose of parents but it is time consuming, difficult and exhausting. "It takes a village to raise a child", is a sophisticated way of saying I am busy and someone else, the state for example, should protect and raise my child.
Thanks Andrew. Well written and argued. If me having to verify my six decades helps reduce potential harm to but one child the value is readily apparent.
There will always be those with tinfoil headwear being overwrought about any government program, almost makes me think they have something to hide?
To be clear, the problem with this legislation is not that one will need to provide more ID to government, but rather that one will be forced to provide ID *to corporations*.
If Facebook would prefer *not* to receive images of your driver's licence, but they are forced to collect it because legislation requires that they verify your ID, and now there's a database of personal information that needlessly exists that can potentially be exploited, who is really benefitting from that?
They don’t have to collect your driver’s licence. Instagram uses a service called Yoti to estimate age - send a selfie, it gets checked against a database of other images, and then deleted (and not added).
But there is no perfect digital method of age verification, Yoti included. There are going to be adults/persons of age who are not going to be approved by Yoti due to technical error, and then the necessary fallback option for those specific users might be showing a driver's licence.
But ultimately, even if Yoti works well enough it's still basically the same problem that I described: increased personal information is being distributed to a private corporation and being stored in the cloud where it otherwise would not need to be the case. If the end impact of the legislation is that Yoti holds more personal information, then that is a newly-created opportunity for a consumer privacy breach (even if the image storage of IDs is temporary, it can still be breached and other personal information there is still collected).
Yoti does not store the images it receives
Please feel free to tell me if this information from Google AI is incorrect:
"ID Document Images (Passports/Drivers Licenses): Deleted immediately after your verification check. In rare cases requiring a manual review (manual fallback), images may be *temporarily* stored for up to 28 days before being deleted."
The Yoti checks can be selfies, not ID documents. See this case study: https://cdn.aws.yoti.com/wp-content/uploads/Onlyfans_Case-Study_120623.pdf
Most of the arguments for keeping a 15 year old from social media (impressionability, inability to tell true from false information, vulnerability to being scammed or exploited) also apply to many seniors. I for one would be happy for all boomers to be banned from social media if it prevents even one little old lady from getting scammed out of her savings, or even just reduces the impact of fake news. In it together!
Don't follow the logic, V, because that will give the next wannabe ruler a good reason to similarly 'make boomers safe' and the lemmings will line up supporting yet another stealth bill through a one man parliament to make it all 'legal'.
💯 agreed
I’ve seen 3 year olds playing with Laptops,IPads. Then the child runs away and mutters “Mom gonna be mad!” A voice calls out “Hello? Hello?” I walk up to the unit,sitting on the floor and say “A 3 three old called you and I’m hanging up!” A lot of people go thru life with blinders on,then when something goes terribly wrong they blame everyone,including the government,but themselves. Look after your own biscuits,I’ll watch over mine
We struggled but persevered with our children’s screen time,TV. What I insisted on was sitting at the dinner table to eat,all meals in my home. With the TV off.Simple request. Now,no cell phones at the table,please and thank you. Simple request. Parents have an obligation to monitor their children till they are 16. And what is wrong with that thought. I’m not talking about making them wear a helmet when they go outside,if any do anymore. Go outside to play I mean. Walk the dog they asked for