"Age verification mandates are spreading fast, and they're ushering in a new age of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion for everyone-not just young people. Age-gating laws generally require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious "estimation" methods, before granting them access to certain content or services."
"Lawmakers tout these laws as the silver-bullet solution to "kids' online safety," but in reality, age-verification mandates wall off large swaths of the web, build sweeping new surveillance infrastructure, increase the risk of data breaches and real-life privacy harms, and threaten the anonymity that has long allowed people to seek support, explore new ideas, and organize and build community online."
Age verification mandates are rapidly expanding and require websites and apps to collect sensitive information from every user, often via ID checks, biometric scans, or inference-based estimation tools. These mandates are promoted as tools for protecting minors, but they instead create pervasive surveillance infrastructure that can censor and exclude users of all ages. Centralized and widespread data collection increases the risk of breaches and real-life harms tied to leaked identity attributes. The resulting loss of anonymity undermines the ability to seek support, explore ideas privately, and organize or build communities online. Broad age-gating thus threatens privacy and free expression across populations.
Read at Electronic Frontier Foundation
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