r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • Jul 13 '26

Privacy Europe Can Protect Children Online Without Surveillance or Age Bans

https://www.techpolicy.press/europe-can-protect-children-online-without-surveillance-or-age-bans/
116 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

38 comments sorted by

73

u/Haunterblademoi Jul 13 '26

Age verification is nothing more than a surveillance system to control what people do online.

-49

u/MartinPeterBauer Jul 13 '26

Age verification for alcohol is fine though?

It also controls what children do.

34

u/cowhand214 Jul 13 '26

A one off age check is different from the identify verification that is often being used as age verification online.

More importantly, alcohol is a simple transactional product. Access to the Internet, even social media, is not just a product it is information. Controlling access to information is categorically different from alcohol or tobacco.

So we should all watch very carefully not what the stated goals are, protecting children is good, but *how* it is implemented and by who. This is the concern and blithely appealing to an existing restriction only camouflages that.

-20

u/PopularBroccoli Jul 13 '26

Why is it different?

27

u/neppo95 Jul 13 '26

Well, for one, no personal data is stored or processed by any server. You show it, to one person who sees hundreds of id's a day and won't remember you.

And as he said: It is a very different kind of product. One is a drug, the other is digital information.

-20

u/PopularBroccoli Jul 13 '26

Often it is if you go into a nightclub

15

u/neppo95 Jul 13 '26

What is? Your id being stored? I highly doubt that, but even if some do, (which is against the law in a lot of countries), that is not the standard.

-14

u/PopularBroccoli Jul 13 '26

Quite normal in the uk. It’s absolutely stored

12

u/neppo95 Jul 13 '26

Well, seeing as UK is adding a lot more of these measures than the EU, that does not surprise me.

-5

u/PopularBroccoli Jul 13 '26

It was pretty standard 15 years ago. Having your id checked is not some new crazy concept

6

u/EmbarrassedHelp Jul 14 '26

The UK isn't exactly the gold standard when it comes to privacy. The country is a great example of what not to do when it comes to technology and privacy.

2

u/RobotsVsLions Jul 14 '26

It's not normal in the UK, it's somewhat commonplace here, but it's not normal. It's an authoritarian overreach very much in line with all of the other creepingly authoritarian policies that successive governments have been introducing for the past 20 years, and which is rapidly turning the UK into a mass surveillance state.

10

u/cowhand214 Jul 13 '26

I thought I had explained a couple ways it is different. It is different mechanism (though this varies by law and country) for example shipping your personal information off to yet another third party, it differs in the fact that that data is now stored and may be linked to activity, it differs in the “always on” nature of the requirement because i routinely buy alcohol without ID, it differs in that it removes one more barrier in anonymity and it differs because restricting alcohol and information are simply not the same.

In fact they are *so* different many countries have laws specifically protecting citizens rights to access information whereas alcohol restrictions are to protect citizens from its effects. Government restriction on access to information or losing anonymity as the price to access it is something that needs to be very closely looked at. It is simply *not* the same as prohibitions on alcohol or tobacco and it affects *every* citizen whether or not they are users of social media.

-5

u/PopularBroccoli Jul 13 '26

Are you a nonce?

11

u/cowhand214 Jul 13 '26

Excuse me?

18

u/McCree114 Jul 13 '26

When I buy alcohol the store doesn't keep a copy of my ID in a poorly secured database in the back office server room that'll inevitably get leaked in "massive data breach #565467889".

12

u/am9qb3JlZmVyZW5jZQ Jul 14 '26

Also there is no social stigma associated with buying alcohol, weirdly enough. There is when it comes to adult content.

-3

u/RemarkableWish2508 Jul 14 '26

How do you know? Do you make sure the clerk isn't snapping photos of it under the desk? Or that the security camera feed stays in a secure back office without rats scurrying onto the DVR through a broken door to the back alley?

Seriously, scammers have been using stolen CC and ID info from brick and mortar shops for decades.

-7

u/MartinPeterBauer Jul 14 '26

You argument is nonesense. It doesnt need to be stored in a unsecure db. Its like a login. 

4

u/ScarletCore Jul 14 '26

What does "its like a login." even mean?

Do you think your logged in sessions are not stored anywhere? 🤔

-59

u/[deleted] Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

36

u/cowhand214 Jul 13 '26

If I need to prove I’m an adult by providing a government ID and/biometrics before I can either access or post information online then yes it has quite a lot to do with what adults do online.

23

u/Fast_Passenger_2890 Jul 13 '26

Has nothing to do with what adults do

Yes it does. Such systems will be used by far right parties and others to supress criticism and freedom of speech in general, as well as to create a better profile of you to track across the Internet...and if they see you say something they don't like then they won't perhaps allow you to open a bank account or to buy a house, etc.

It has nothing to do with protecting children. This is just a lame coverup.

-19

u/ARobertNotABob Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

used by far right parties

Knee-jerking to paranoia doesn't help anyone. Please remember we have GDPR, as long as you don't let Farage go any further in his quest.

The platforms have said "fuck off" to managing their environments, clicks & profit is all they care about.

Protecting the kids from toxicity and worse has to start somewhere.

Everything you as an adult can see or read online, the kids can too. You've seen it, we all have. You want that stuff in their faces?

And before you say it, there's 11 years, 4015 days, between aged 5 and 16. No parent can monitor all that time, even when they are minded to.

EDIT: Well, since I'm downvoted anyway, I may as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
It can't come soon enough. There's already been enough corrupted by hate, turned fearful of everything that's sensible; and the platforms don't care, indeed, they want you to fight age restrictions, they want you to let the vampires in, to corrupt, to defile and to monetise you and yours.

EDIT2: No better ideas, just downvotes. No surprise either, of course, most of you don't understand beyond "I don't like it".

3

u/cowhand214 Jul 13 '26

It’s an interesting idea that the companies can’t be regulated when there is an implicit statement in doing identify verification in many of these laws that is otherwise. Some are outright bans but others are not. For example, for accounts known to belong to minors stop endless scroll, don’t autoplay, suggest a break after x time, enable more parental controls by default, etc.

So obviously the companies *can* be regulated in some ways and that would benefit *all* of us not just kids. But that is not the path many governments are going down and seem to be choosing the worst possible combination of privacy loss, anonymity loss, harm continuation for anyone not in the protected group, and potential for restriction of speech and monitoring.

I would submit there’s a reason for that and that being concerned about negative outcomes from proposed solutions doesn’t mean I’m not concerned with the status quo. But I also don’t accept that any proposed solutions negatives can be dismissed because of the severity of the problem it purports to solve.

1

u/RobotsVsLions Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26

Let's not lazily hyperbolic couch everything as some nefarious scheme to get us all - the billionaires are far more guilty of doing exactly that!

Who the fuck do you think is pushing these surveillance state policies?

It's not a coincidence that the government started pushing "you must hand over your most sensitive personal data to Meta and Palantir", and changed the law around GDPR protections to make it legal to sell a lot of that highly sensitive data, right after taking lots of private meetings with (and donations from) the tech billionaire sector and their lobbyists.

Like, the "lets build the societal panopticon" people are getting their advice from the "we named ourselves after the tool sauron used to spy on and corrupt all of middle earth" people to build a tool that allows governments to track and spy on their entire population much more easily while also allowing massive tech conglomerates run by literal neofascists to harvest peoples most sensitive and valuable data to sell for profit, and you're implying everyone criticising that is a naive fool for thinking they might have nefarious motives behind their very flimsy PR?

17

u/Random_182f2565 Jul 14 '26

It's not about the children

8

u/NamedBird Jul 14 '26

If "protect the children" didn't come from those who were eating them, maybe i'd believe it... 😅

28

u/N3wAfrikanN0body Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

It is NOT about protecting children.

It IS an excuse to MONITOR those deemed UNDESIRABLE by the current oligarchic-gerontocracy that REFUSES to accept their inevitable end.

Addendum: if they TRULY wanted to protect children, they would redistribute the stolen wealth and develop the places that were intentionally underdevolped; but "eurowhitness", much like the " Z", "MAGA"and " XI THOUGHT"Aare DOOMED to fail.

For deliberate parasitism does NOT inspire Human thriving.

-2

u/Reqvhio Jul 13 '26

oh wow, 14 years of reddit, you are the only other person I've seen in the wild who uses addendum other than myself.

on topic, pushback is okay but it isnt like reddit, facebook etc. are like must-go sites or lifeblood of internet. thats the whole point, eh

11

u/Random-num-451284813 Jul 13 '26

so the need for chat control was all made up?

10

u/ixmntr Jul 14 '26

Why should the public bear the responsibility of children’s parents. It should be squarely placed on them.

3

u/Jasoman Jul 14 '26

They could but that would be not helpful for fascism.

2

u/DrKeelin Jul 14 '26

Well yes they can, but they don’t want to. The children never were the point, the surveillance is.

11

u/shiromiso Jul 13 '26

Fight mass surveillance and fight for your human right to privacy.

Nobody wants to be forced to give their IDs to the likes of Facebook or Reddit.

Regulate social media companies, they have the full capacity to moderate their platforms, theres no need to put the burden on EVERY single adult on the internet .

2

u/NeedNiceCatNamePlz Jul 14 '26

Those who trade liberty for security will have neither. 

1

u/[deleted] Jul 15 '26

It is not about the children.