Comment by urbandw311er
4 hours ago
The physical world has age checks when kids attempt to enter a premises with dangerous or unsuitable content - eg bars, casinos, strip joints. These seem largely accepted as a good thing. Why do so many seem to feel that the same protections are so outrageous when applied in the virtual world? Honest question, I can see both sides.
It's just a different game. A web site is much easier to instrument than a physical place.
Say I go to a bar, I show my ID to the bouncer. My identity isn't recorded (unless they scan it with a device that records the scan data). Maybe they have cameras, my image isn't immediately associated with my identity, somebody would have to do a bit of work to connect the two. Maybe I pay with a credit card, now my name is stored in the point-of-sale system.
But I can still go to a bar with no scanner, no cameras, and pay in cash, and it's not a problem. Not suspicious at all. None of the above record-keeping is required, nor should it be.
Now, if a web site says I need to be provably 18+ to view their content, that's fine. I can take it or leave it. I have a choice.
When the law tries to mandate the software that can or must be run on my device, or tries to limit how I can communicate with my friends and family, now I have a problem. I consider my rights to personal computation and personal communication to be sacred. And I also believe in my right to privacy in these matters. I never needed an ID to send a personal letter, and my right to privacy regarding such communication is protected by law.
Finally, I see gathering of access data by a central authority (which I assume would eventually happen if social media sites started requiring validated ID) to be a concentration of power, and a dangerous one.
It may be a right you want but it's not a right you have.
There is no need to track access beyond what is already tracked.
When you are age-checked in real life, the bouncer glances at your ID, checks the date of birth, checks the photo and lets you through, having not remembered a shred of that information. You are just one in a crowd of a thousand. If you're old enough, they may even wave you through without looking at any real data.
When you're age-checked on the internet, a scan of your ID goes on the website, then is likely forwarded to a helpful third party business. It extracts every bit of data, analyzes your picture, then carefully saves and catalogues everything, and returns True to the website, which may have also stored their own copy of this data, depending on how the process is implemented. This data is now in their hands forever. If, at any point in the future, you access another age-gated website that uses the same third party business, now there's nothing stopping them from correlating that private browsing data. How juicy. Adtech will love that. As you keep handing out your ID left and right, every single bit you divulge is recorded somewhere, forever. And at the end of the day, this is just moving data around, so there's nothing preventing your government, or the host's government, or all governments from passing a law that asks for that data to be shared with them - just in case, you know. Now there's many copies of your exact identity floating around, just one data leak or legal request away from revealing everything you've ever done tied in a neat little package. Real life ID is limited by constraints of practicality and our physical world, digital ID is limited by nothing.
And this is the best-case scenario I'm describing here. Imagine if they ask us to show our identities publicly, not just to the corporate all-seeing-eyes. Everyone would become doxxable by default, their whole life exposed and searchable, the mere idea of having secrets would be wiped away, communities made for marginalized or at-risk people would all fall silent.
Yes, there are ideas about zero-knowledge proofs and legislation about data privacy and whatever else. But these don't benefit either corporations or governments, and the average Joe doesn't care about putting his real name on everything, so we can pretty safely assume that this won't happen.
We don't talk about age verification like in a bar. We talk about age verification like in the internet, where every of your step generates data. So you don't verify your age, you verify your identity. It's like you step in a bar and someone writes down every word you say, every drink you order and every person or place you look at. And then he places your complete name and address on it and stores it in his closet to pull it out when he needs it.
Would you really enter a bar, casino or strip club when it would look like this?
We don't talk about children, we talk about everyone here.
Don't forget that the dossier about your visit is then photocopied and mailed to several other places in addition to being in the bar's closet. Each one of those places is staffed 24/7 by workers that organize incoming data, as well as people who tirelessly look at the growing personal file of every person that has ever done anything, and make accurate deductions based on what they see. Who you know, what you like, where you were, what you were doing, what you bought, who you speak to, what you're hiding, what you think. Everything. Those people then distill all of this into a scarily accurate report that is copied and sold or given to god knows who.
A decade ago I used to joke that Google should have it's own dating app. "NOTIFICATION: See that person at the other end of the bar? They share the same interests as you and like to frequent some of the same places. They share your political views. You even have some friends in common. They are recently single. Go over and say hi, here are some suggested conversation topics..."
It just seems too obvious now