Age Verification Laws: The Unwanted Makeover Turning Privacy into a Punchline
Age verification laws: a backdoor to surveillance, have morphed from protecting children online to demanding your ID for skincare, dating apps, and diet pills. These laws pose serious privacy threats, turning basic purchases into a data collection nightmare. Let’s push back and ensure the internet stays a place for learning and creativity, not surveillance.
Hot Take:
Age verification laws: the Swiss army knife of surveillance! What was once a tool for protecting kids from the darkest corners of the internet has now become a full-fledged privacy invasion party. From skincare to dating apps, we’re all on the guest list, but nobody’s feeling celebrated. Instead of saving the children, we’re just making Big Brother’s job easier—one age-verified purchase at a time!
Key Points:
- Age verification laws initially aimed to protect minors from explicit content have expanded to include various everyday products, raising privacy concerns.
- These laws require extensive data collection, inadvertently creating surveillance systems that affect all users, not just minors.
- Examples include California’s skincare product regulations, New York’s dating app requirements, and Washington State’s diet pill restrictions.
- There are no foolproof age verification methods, all come with significant privacy and security trade-offs.
- Advocates argue for less invasive measures to protect online users while maintaining privacy and free expression.