When No ID Means No Internet

DASD

Title shortened from : When No ID Means No Internet: Age Verification and the Right to Access Information

ndriscoll

Fortunately, the Internet consists of more than antisocial media, gambling, and porn sites. Many (most? all?) of the "social" media laws also focus on specific user-hostile functionality too, which these companies could always not do. Or they could have a little toggle switch in the user settings to enable dark patterns, surveillance, and targeted propaganda, and only require ID to turn the switch on. Meanwhile I expect that e.g. MIT OpenCourseWare will not be affected by ID laws. People can also self-publish. Windows used to come with a personal web server back when people saw computers as a means of empowering individuals instead of enslaving them. You could make your webpages in a WYSIWYG editor and just put it in your web folder. How about we bring that back instead of pretending that having ~3 companies in control of worldwide speech is somehow empowering and that their entrenchment makes them so important that we mustn't regulate them?

CodeWriter23

Welp, gonna piss everyone off. Child access to the internet is a parent problem, not an ISP problem. And if someone doesn't have documents to prove their identity, it's the result of either not attaining or not affirming their legal status within their locality.

Grimeton

>The analysis finds that age verification laws have serious human rights implications and ironically harm the very individuals they deem to protect. I wonder how expensive the mental gymnastics are that bring you from "no access to pr0n for kids is good" to "no access to pr0n for kids harms them". Or the line: >Unfortunately, age verification systems foster unequal access to information and provide an asymmetric solution to find essential information, build community, and weigh in on public discourse. As governments and companies increasingly require users to prove their age before accessing online services, these individuals risk being excluded from large parts of the internet altogether. Yeah, that's the whole purpose. You're under the age of 18, no pr0n information for you.

DingleDodies

Here is my take on it: I have a facial deformity, lots of kids have facial deformities, and anyone who wants to scan them can bugger right off. Respect existence or expect resistance, etc.