Fears of how Age Verification will Affect Me
Okay, I'm gonna be completely honest here but for the past several months, all this news about age verification laws spreading around the world has made me extremely anxious. I'm starting to lose sleep over it and have been doomscrolling news about it just hoping that there will be some sort of turn around like enough backlash and data breaches will occur that governments and corporations will realize how bad of an idea it is to dox and spy on everyone and say "fuck it" let's find another way to protect the kids... (even though we all know they don't care about that), or implement a less intrusive method like "zero knowledge proof" that I've heard of. I’ve written before how worried I’ve been about this in other articles but never talked about how I thought this would affect me on a personal level.
The biggest scare I had was when I heard of Discord's plans to roll it out and I felt relieved when the backlash was big enough for them to postpone it, though I wish it was just not coming at all. Discord is one of the most active places I am now socially. The last thing I wanted was to have features locked behind age gates for me. So yeah, I was relieved when they delayed the rollout but it’s only a matter of time.
So this is mainly a vent post and I'm gonna give a rundown of how I'm scared about this affecting me. As you know, I live in Canada so there's no law regarding it yet, but there are a few bills that tie to it in a way. The most recent is Bill C-34 which aims to ban minors from social media and make platforms safer. Don't get me wrong, safety is important and I do care about kids being safe, but kids shouldn't be barred from this, they should instead be educated on online safety and it scares me that it won't be long before this bill is law and what this means for me as an adult. This is being presented as child safety in other countries but it is enforced as surveillance for every legal adult when we upload our personal information and put it at risk in a database that isn't 100% secure.
Many of the people involved in this bill’s readings, and I’m sorry if I am being ageist here: but they’re all people old enough to be my grandparents who didn’t grow up with the Internet and don’t understand that showing your ID to a third-party vendor online is not the same as showing it in person at a casino. It seems countries around the world are rushing to put these laws through without giving it much thought about the consequences. Why is that? I think they are falling for the trope that we’re doing this for the kids” because there’s two things governments will make rash decisions about, even if the public doesn’t like it. Take any bill you want to become law and wrap it one of the two following categories: stopping terrorists or protecting kids. Yes both of those things are important but the question is, how do you achieve those things without it implemented as mass surveillance?
So here are my concerns and I'm sharing this here wondering if anyone else feels the same. I already tried to share this in a subreddit about privacy but it’s been several days, and then eventually the moderators removed it without explanation, so I am sharing it here instead. It'll be freezing in hell before I give my ID or my face to some shady third-party company:
1. I'm worried if it will impede my ability to create content. This is the biggest one. I'm not a creator with a large following and my content is just writing on here and AO3, I'm scared of age gates causing those sites to be shut down (especially AO3 which is nonprofit) or prevent users from continuing to make their content unless they verify. I would be devastated if I woke up one morning and logged into either here or AO3 and discovered I needed to verify my age to access certain features. My work that I do on these platforms is like if I had a child. So very dear to me and I don’t want to be impeded from it by being forced to hand over sensitive information to something I don’t think I can trust will delete afterward.
2. Losing access to my community. This is also important. Living with autism, social media has been a great outlet for me as in-person interactions can be challenging. (not impossible, but challenging), it's allowed me to meet people who share the same interests as me. In high school and college, there were no clubs I could join that say, were about things like heavy metal and Transformers for instance. I’ve made many online friends the two decades. Some have come and gone, and the ones that stuck around, I know what they look like and they’re not predators. One of my longest ongoing online friends I even met in person a couple of times, and he lives in France. I definitely don't want to lose contact with him.
3. Being falsely labelled as a child, I know we all hate this. It may not seem like a big deal at first because I don't even watch porn, which is the going to be the first place that will obviously be age-gated. I was so scared about YouTube expanding its AI verification into Canada that I purposely stopped watching cartoons I love out of fear of YouTube possibly mistaking me for a child when in reality, I am 32 and will turn 33 this May. I don't like false labels put on me, it's just a pet peeve you know. I would NEVER lie about my DOB.
They also don’t make it clear about how they will try to guess your age based on account behavior, but then again, many sites that do this make it vague as well. Some of it is account age. Well, my Facebook account is old enough to vote so I might be in the clear with that. As for Google, I had to make a new account a couple of years ago but my credit card is already tied to it, so that should be enough proof you need. Then they say it’s other things like when account activity occurs, but at what times would I have to be active to be classified as an adult? If I was online during school hours, does that make me a kid? They're not transparent enough and that just fuels the anxiety.
Basically they are planning to treat everyone like children until they dox themselves to prove they are not. This is why age verification doesn't work because it impacts everyone. Adults shouldn't have to struggle to access legal content just because they may value their privacy.
4. Being able to play my favourite games, my Steam account is almost 11 years old so I doubt that if Valve had to comply, they'd think I'm underage but let's just say when that Hellraiser Revival game is released, will I be forced to verify just to purchase it? Sounds hypothetical right now but still you get the point.
I think this one might be the most irrational concern because I saw a few videos that Valve is one of the companies that is fighting back against age verification along with Reddit (or so I thought) and 4chan. In the UK, Valve did comply with the law but only by asking users to have a credit card on their account if they wanted to purchase games with mature content.
And then there's general concerns that I'm sure everyone else has like: how often will we be asked to do it and where? Will it be taken advantage of to spy on us, even if we don't have a criminal record? I've given out personal information before like my credit card to buy things, but ID is where I draw the line.
On the surface, age verification seems like a decent idea so kids don’t accidentally go to places they’re not supposed to, but why should everyone else have to do it just because some parents don’t use the parental controls available to them? How many times must I say it? Child safety is something universally agreed upon, but it shouldn’t have to cost everyone else their privacy. It seems more like it’s about surveillance and censorship, and could be easily be used to block legal content.
Let’s use a similar example, one fellow blogger who is trans, wrote about how trans people in Kansas were banned using public washrooms that tied to their gender identity. The state's government claimed this was to protect women and girls, but in reality it was to oust trans people.
Age verification is no different, it’s being presented as protecting kids to get people to agree with it easily. But, it’s actually about the government having more control over the Internet and knowing exactly who we are behind the screen so advertisers can make even more money with our data. They don’t care if the sensitive information we upload becomes a honeypot for hackers, they got what they came for.
If age verification was done in a way that was privacy-centric, like I said, zero-knowledge proof, or it was done directly by the government instead of these third-party vendors and didn’t use invasive measures like ID and biometrics then maybe I would be more accepting of it becoming the way of the future. Unlike a password, you can’t reset your face. The last thing I want is to discover my face was used to train AI without my consent and then it was used in deepfakes or photoshopped onto some random female naked body. Or, my ID was leaked and then hackers break into my bank account or started one in my name.
Identity theft is something that should be taken very seriously and my government should know this risk that comes with scanning your face or uploading your ID to verify age, especially if it’s from a third-party company that isn’t clear about whether the information is deleted immediately afterward.
Maybe some of my concerns are irrational and maybe this is an excuse for me to touch grass more: and trust me, I do go outside. But the Internet is still a big part of my life, especially when it comes to making my written content and playing games so I don't want to have that taken away from me or limited due to being caught in the crossfire of age verification laws that are put in place under the guise of protecting kids. I'm preaching to the choir here but once again: I do want kids to be safe, but it shouldn't cost everyone else their privacy.
Is this also spreading around the world because of the lawsuits social media has faced the last few years from parents whose child took their life and that KGM case around a former social media addict? Yes, social media is addictive and negatively impacts mental health, but according to the scientists, there isn’t enough evidence that the youth mental health crisis rests solely on social media. In fact, there are positive benefits to children using the Internet such as forming connections and learning new things. We shouldn’t block them completely by installing age gates. Once again, use the parental controls. Look at Japan, instead of making age verification laws, they are making it mandatory for children to be taught online safety in school! Why can’t we do that instead?
Why not change the algorithms that make social media addictive instead like infinite scroll and suggested content for instance? I think the core problem here, if we go back to the issue with child safety, is not the fact that they are on social media, but social media is designed in a way to be addictive for everyone, not just kids. So instead of kicking kids off of social media, censoring the Internet for them, let's make changes to the way social media is designed and educate kids and parents about parental controls. No bans and no eliminating the right to be anonymous.
I have done all I have can to do my part against this: signed petitions, donated to Fight for the Future and EFF (OpenMedia may be next), I contacted my MP and several senators (including the one who has kept reintroducing the bill that pushes for this), and I may consider a VPN as that might be the only way to circumvent these rules should they come for my country. Some of my friends who live in countries that have already have this as law, complied anyway because they feel like they have nothing to hide, but I disagree. Maybe they don’t care what happens, but I’m different. I am drawing a line in the sand, and wish this wasn’t something happening at all. This not how the Internet should be. While I do agree something needs to be done about cyberbullying, predators, hate speech, and child safety, this is not the way the do it. It’s the parent’s responsibility, not the government’s, and not everyone else you’re making verify their ages either.
I feel powerless and I'm sure I'm not alone here. I just want to be able to keep making my content, have fun, and interact with my friends without restrictions or be forced to upload sensitive information to lift those restrictions. I would be devastated if I woke up one day to discover the bills that brought age verification to my country became law. I don’t feel safe being blocked from doing what I love unless I show my ID online. Again, it’s not the same as doing it in person. I have the right to privacy equally as children have the right to safety and the bill that proposes age verification in my country strongly violates Section 8 under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as well as Canada's privacy laws such as the Privacy Act and PIPEDA.
TLDR: I'm scared of what age verification will do to my ability to create content, socialize and do other hobbies online and I’m sorry if I keep repeating this, but I strongly believe that we shouldn't have to forfeit our privacy in the name of safety. If polticians really wanted it to be about safety, then it wouldn't be done like this. Digital privacy is a human right and age verification takes it away.
👽Emily
Source: Fears of how Age Verification will Affect Me
