Age Verification Danger

Verify Device, Not Platforms

One the dangers of technology is the failure to understand how it works and the inherit consequences within. People want perfection, particularly when it comes to protection of minors, there will be trade offs.

There has been this growing effort to force social media, sites and platforms to require age verification. Florida has just passed such law (https://reclaimthenet.org/florida-gives-tech-platforms-deadline-for-age-id-checks). Florida could go bankrupt suing company after company as new social media platforms are born everyday. This is why I keep on referring to what X has been advocating: device-based age verification ( https://x.com/GlobalAffairs/status/1905297118534754707 ). Since so many are worried about clicking on links, or too lazy to do so, I have other problems, I post the text here.

Yet, insisting all these platforms collect government identification ends up making the industry a target for scammers. Social media Discord has done age verification and collect government IDs……. and those government IDs were breached (https://reclaimthenet.org/discord-support-breach-exposes-over-70000-government-ids). This is the problem with expecting websites, social media, and platforms to do age-verification processes. Anyways, the Reclaim the Net organization (https://reclaimthenet.org) is worth following to inform you of the challenges of keeping the internet free and safe.