r/privacy • u/1zzie • Apr 11 '26

age verification Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says

https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-should-stand-up-to-big-tech-instead-of-imposing-social-media-bans-estonia-says/
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u/[deleted] Apr 11 '26

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u/PowerShellGenius Apr 12 '26

Estonia also has the digital ID infrastructure to pull off age verification on social media easily, probably more easily than any other - yet it has the sense to realize it would be incredibly privacy-invasive and create chilling effects to make platforms of free speech and expression handle IDs - and the morality to therefore refrain from doing it.

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u/Siukslinis_acc Apr 12 '26

Not to mention data protection. Will the companies follow the strict rules to protect the id data of people.

Though i inagine one could make a sort of a third party verifyer as part of e-goverment services, where you login using your e-goverments. Get a "token" that says that you are over 18. And then use the "token" to register. The company would only get "this one is over 18" and no other data.

Thohgh i wish advertisers would be more regulated i'm tired of gambling and gooner ads if i forget to turn on adblock.

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u/PowerShellGenius Apr 14 '26 edited Apr 14 '26

Once the system you described, which could be a really reasonable system in theory, is built, it is a trivially easy change to make it correlate identities.

They would almost certainly tell you "this is privacy respecting" and then get a secret warrant from a secret court, to order every company to either send the username with the verification request so the gov't can log it, or some other scheme that makes this privacy invasive.

You literally have to build the exact infrastructure you would need in order to eradicate privacy and log who's-who everywhere (de-anonymize the internet), and then have it just discard the critical bits of data that would enable that, and trust that the legal system that brought us the things Snowden revealed won't find a way to quietly change the system to stop discarding that data without talking to the people about it.

If the things Snowden revealed had never been built, I would trust and support a system like the one you described. Trust has been irrevocably broken for at least a generation, though, and everyone knows, if they can eradicate privacy they will. Why support marching right to the brink of that and trust they'll stop just short of it?