The UK's Online Safety Act doesn't just age-gate porn; it blocks material deemed "harmful" to minors. Days after the law went into effect, reports of non-explicit content on social media getting blocked in the region started to crop up. Subreddits from r/IsraelCrimes to r/stopsmoking are now walled in the UK. Video games, Spotify, and dating apps have instituted or will institute age checks.
Given the SCOTUS age verification decision [June '25], Stabile fears that people [in the US] will go "mask off" in the fall and spring, when state legislatures start getting back together. "People are going to attempt to restrict the internet even more aggressively," Stabile said. "I think people are going to work to restrict all sorts of content, particularly LGBTQ content, but also content that is broadly defined as any sort of threat or propaganda to minors." Other experts Mashable spoke to agree with him.
"I'm going to jump to the end step," [Eric Goldman, law professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law] said. "The end step is that most online users are going to be required to age authenticate most of the time they visit websites. That's going to become the norm." In a paper he wrote, Goldman called these statutes "segregate-and-suppress" laws.
The stated reason behind these laws is to "protect children." But as journalist Taylor Lorenz pointed out, in the UK, age verification is already preventing children from accessing vital information, such as about menstruation and sexual assault.
"When we see crackdowns on spaces on the internet, we're essentially stripping away that potential for self-actualization," Goldman said. We've reached the dystopian stage of the internet, he added.
Age verification isn't really age verification: it's identity verification. And once you have given your identity to one or two websites, data brokers will ensure that all your other activity on the internet will eventually be tied to it. Burner devices and anonymous VPNs could help, but only until those become illegal too.
This will have a chilling effect on not only every kind of discourse the fascists hate, but also political organization and people's ability to resist. You won't be able to organize a protest online without the police knowing in advance who is likely to come and finding a pretext to intimidate or pre-arrest them.
That's the most insightful and chilling comment I've read in a while. I especially like the "it's not age verification; it's identity verification" part. (That messaging needs to be more commonplace.) The key(s) for organizing data about individuals online will shift from email addresses only to enough stable identifiers to impersonate someone or maybe even steal their identity. Data leaks and fraud will probably increase dramatically given the value-add of these data.
With the level of quashing dissent these days - eg UK police arresting hundreds of nonviolent people with placards denouncing genocide; military deployments in LA and DC - no wonder certain states/ governments support online identity verification laws.
"No Kings" protests are already a non-story in mainstream news today. Tomorrow, they can be prevented from happening in the first place! /s c/aboringdystopia
And one key thing. Fascists and fascist collaborators will claim, "everything you do online and already tracked to your real identity." But the truth is, if that were already the case, then there wouldn't be a push for these identity verification laws.
I agree. And I think this is the most important reason why big tech companies are either supporting, or not commenting on, age verification laws. Being able to reliably link all a user's online activity to their real identity is a big data wet dream.
And even if that's somehow protected, I'm really uncomfortable with the government having that data.
That's been true for a while. But it was "The FBI can put a pin in it" true before. And now it feels like "LinkedIn is going to have a second secret file on you" true.
Fun fact:
That was the plan all along.
The guy who founded LinkedIn... Paypal mafia
The guys who invested in Facebook. . PayPal mafia
The guys who founded YouTube.... Paypal mafia
The guy who founded Square .... Paypal mafia
The guy who ran doge and got all your us gov datasets, has literally half of all satellites in orbit sucking up your location and data... Paypal mafia
The guy who decides who attends the bilderberg group, is ceo of the ai that is used by nearly every police force in the USA, and has contracts with military, who funded trump and Vance... Paypal Mafia
These guys have literally created the techno society we are now slaves to.
They are just getting started.
Idk, man. Seems like they're wrapping up. Not a whole lot left to do when you're this far up on the board.
My friend, you have no idea of the hell that awaits... There's always a deeper layer...
Sure sure sure. Modern American politics is just the Shepherd Tone.
idk what that is. Also, I'm referring to the global state of things, not just North America; the identity-tracking mania, as far as I know, began with the EU, no?
Time to start making zines and locally organizing i guess
18+ to shop at Walmart. I don't want my children exposed to harmful things like books, my boys shouldn't be exposed to cleaning supplies or see women's garments and my girls shouldn't have to see that other girls are allowed to pick out their outfits or do manly things like play sports.
In the UK some supermarkets charge extra for children to buy products. You need to register an account for them to harvest even more data and if you don't then some products can cost a lot more. Children can't register as they can't collect that kind of data on children.
I shop at Aldi instead because they don't do this shit
Those store loyalty cards suck. When I'm forced to use one, I just enter my parents' number or something because I don't want yet another company to spam me with calls and texts.
And they dont even have any valid excuses, because its totally possible to implement anonymous age verification that cannot be fooled. These systems already exists and work perfectly, but it was never the plan to do it this way. It was always intended as a political tool of censorship.
What systems are you referring to?
The EUs eID system. https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/european-digital-identity_en
Depending on the use case, varying amounts of information can be transferred like only age or nationality or everything.
Ive used it for signing EU petitions but also local bureucratic things like residency stuff.
The eID system is kind of overkill if all that matters is age verification. You could build a suuper lightweight system just for that which would make checking the source code much easier.
Does the system know what service is requesting the age verification?