So-called age verification for social media is spreading across the world, framed as an effort to create a safer internet for children. In reality, age verification lays the foundation for a fully government controlled internet.
...if age verification is introduced, everyone will have to identify themselves either to the service/website they want to use or to a third party capable of linking them to their activity on that service/website. The correct term for age verification as it is implemented today is therefore identity verification. Given today’s internet infrastructure, it is unreasonable to assume that this information will not be shared through commercial agreements or with governments.
It will be interesting to follow the countries that pursue system-level control as they move further down the slippery slope toward open-source systems. Since open-source systems cannot be controlled, politicians would ultimately need to ban devices that are not controlled by the state. The end point: telescreens like those in Orwell’s 1984, devices that both monitor you and broadcast only the information approved by the state. One can only imagine the methods. Will the police stop and search people on the street looking for unauthorized phones? Prison sentences for buying a non-state computer on the black market? Charges of organized crime for smuggling in containers of open-source software on USB sticks? Welcome to a brave new world.
The age verification rush must be slowed down, and politicians who do not want a society in which citizens live under total surveillance need to recognize the consequences of different types of legislation.