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The Age Verification Trap... Verifying user’s ages undermines everyone’s data protection (spectrum.ieee.org)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by Beep@lemmus.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Hacker News.

Social media is going the way of alcohol, gambling, and other social sins: societies are deciding it’s no longer kids’ stuff. Lawmakers point to compulsive use, exposure to harmful content, and mounting concerns about adolescent mental health. So, many propose to set a minimum age, usually 13 or 16.

In cases when regulators demand real enforcement rather than symbolic rules, platforms run into a basic technical problem. The only way to prove that someone is old enough to use a site is to collect personal data about who they are. And the only way to prove that you checked is to keep the data indefinitely. Age-restriction laws push platforms toward intrusive verification systems that often directly conflict with modern data-privacy law.

This is the age-verification trap. Strong enforcement of age rules undermines data privacy.

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[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 6 points 5 months ago

The end of the anonymous web is nigh. We may not like it, but it's probably the only way. We used to joke in the 90s about requiring an internet driver's license before allowing people on Usenet. It might actually be happening.

[-] OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

The end social media maybe. It's fundamentally broken anyways. They can keep breaking it worse for all I care.

We're not meant to be ruled by algorithms. It was a stupid idea to listen to antisocial neckbeards selling the world on how they could master sociology with graph theory. These are the same geniuses who deride soft sciences as not real science.

[-] Cherry@piefed.social 7 points 5 months ago

TBF in recent years there’s little of it worth visiting.

[-] DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 3 points 5 months ago

And it might be a good decision in the dawn of the bot-internet. It forces even bots to be traceable to some real person or getting no access to the mentioned platforms. May be even bot-free platforms

[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 months ago

Hypothetically: Lemmy instances where every user has to have physically met an admin and proved that they're real or something. And they'll only federate to other instances following the same rules.

It'll almost be like the early 90s dialup BBS small communities, with FIDOnet ;)

this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2026
506 points (100.0% liked)

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