this post was submitted on 09 May 2026
115 points (96.7% liked)
Privacy
9844 readers
79 users here now
A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy
Rules:
- Be civil
- No spam posting
- Keep posts on-topic
- No trolling
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
If kids are using VPNs, most of the time it will be because their parents made that decision for them; most aren't using their parents' credit cards to buy a VPN subscription to bypass blocks without their parents knowing. Age verification advocates argue that it puts more control in the hands of parents, but in the case of VPNs, taking that control away goes entirely against that argument.
It's not about giving parents control, or ultimately even about kids at all; people want to impose their personal morals on all of society via governmental enforcement mechanisms. Social media platforms are promoting it because age verification is beneficial to them as a legally-mandated anti-bot mechanism, increasing their advertising revenue by guaranteeing user suitability for advertisers.
Age verification is beneficial to social media because they get their grasping hands on our personal information. They allow bots on their platforms, they only take down the ones the government and the oligarchy tell them to.
I need a tshirt with that text