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Im a bit out of the loop on this one. Does anyone know why so many western governments are pushing for some kind of legislation towards age-id-verification? They say it's to protect the youth, but I don't buy our governments suddenly turning into altruistic patrons. So.. what's the real reason? What's the hidden agenda? Data Acquisition? Survaillance? Chat Control?
There's a political movement that gained steam in the EU to make social media companies responsible for the content they deliver.
This would have meant they'd have to implement robust age verification on their platforms to comply with EU youth protection laws (including fines per child that could access unsuitable content).
So they lobbied for delegating the age verification to the OS level instead.
That way they can continue to push harmful, addictive slop to children without being legally responsible.
They can just say "we check the age provided by the OS".
What? No.
Age Verification should be handled by the OS, otherwise they all will implement their own verification system which would be a nightmare for privacy. Every single implementation would need to verify you as a person before it can tell if you are the right age.
1 single implementation that sends nothing more than a yes or no when asked if the user is old enough is much better for privacy.
With verification on service level, I can simply not use that service if their implementation isn't privacy-oriented.
Or skip the verification if I don't need to access adult content.
With government-mandated verification on the OS level, I have no choice.
I have to provide my ID just to use my computer online.
Which make sense since the same social media companies want the right to moderate what they want.
What happen is that the social media companies on one hand say "the network is ours, so we can remove what we don't want" and on the other hand say "we are not responsible for what the user write" but you cannot have both.
Or simply say "look we are not touching anything is published, we are a medium. That content is illegal ? Fine, here the data we have to identify the user and if a judge say so, we will remove it since it is illegal". Nobody think to accuse or fine a telephone company because a pedo uses a their network to commit crimes.
Maybe, but if the OS say that the user is a minor and they show the content anyway they are responsible.
Because the single most important thing to centrist governments is apparently to create controls and legislation that will later enable an easy transition to tyranny under a populist leader.
Adding to what Pommes_fur_dein_Balg said.
Political movement originally pushed for responsibility of social media platforms over content they show, when such content is moderated by them. For example if you subscribe to crackpot theorists rambling about secret vampire society controlling the world that's on you, but if social media shows you this content without subscription or annotation that this is misinformation as "recommended", that is on them and they should be penalized by the law.
But of course money wins over people and lobbyists managed to re-scope the idea into "systemic age checks", pushing responsibility from companies onto consumers and topic from misinformation to protection of minors.
In the end one can either assume it's a honest advertising agenda to show people more targeted ads (showing twice the amount of toys to kids) or you may form suspicions about why rich and powerful want to know who online is a minor after their precious island got busted.
Censorship.
IP addresses already reveal the identity of most people, especially if they log into facebook or google. What the govrnment can't do is silence the opposition. So far everybody can buy a cheap phone, go to a cafe with wlan and publish on the internet.
With age verification, every service where people can publish freely is under control of the government. The government can reject the age verification of critical people and they can't log in anymore and cannot make themselves heard.
I can't read Gizmodo but if it's the EUID app, this has been in the works for years.
As for why it's suddenly accelerating? Age verification = ID verification. The gov wants to know who everyone is. They want unparalleled access to information.
Also companies like Meta are seeing the writing on the wall, and instead of pushing back, they're pushing forward, but steering it away from them.
US media companies cannot sell advertising if the users are bots so they ~~purchased~~ lobbied useless Ursula and her cronies to find a solution. Age verification is the outcome. If they really wanted to protect the children they'd outlaw crypto currencies, online gambling and loot boxes.
My piece of cake? it's not a lose-lose situation for them, but a win-lose situation. They win safety for children at the cost of freedom and privacy of the rest, and they are convinced this doesn't hurt the good people. How come they believe such a different thing than the rest of us? It could be that they're evil and want to stay in power at all costs, but i believe there is a also a huge lobby of companies that can earn money: for them it is a win-win, safety for their children and wealth for mommy and daddy. This is why vocal public protest is so important, because it can act as a counter balance to influencial individuals who whisper in the ears of politicians in private.