This is the first part of a three-part series about age verification in the European Union. In this blog post, we give an overview of the political debate around age verification and explore the age verification proposal introduced by the European Commission, based on digital identities. Part two...

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly expresses that minors have rights to freedom of expression and access to information online, as well as the right to privacy.

These rights would be steamrolled by age verification requirements.

  • seeigel@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    12 hours ago

    I don’t fully get the part about selling adult products directly.

    The verification service doesn’t need stolen accounts.

    There is a maximum number of unsuspiciously requestable tokens and people can sell their unrequested ones. There will be a black market and no ability to investigate unless privacy is lifted.

    It’s still inhibiting children, but so does telling them not to do it.

    Since foreign services do not need to comply, porn will still be available. So a firewall is needed. But then, why not give children an age appropriate vpn for their devices and accounts and leave the internet to itself?

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      5 hours ago

      There is a maximum number of unsuspiciously requestable tokens and people can sell their unrequested ones. There will be a black market and no ability to investigate unless privacy is lifted.

      Such a thing would work as with credit cards. An unusual pattern of use would flag the card as potentially compromised and cause it to be blocked, not the volume of requests in itself. It wouldn’t be quite so easy to avoid detection.

      Making porn, alcohol, or other such things available to minors is a criminal offense. Being flagged multiple times would probably be enough for a conviction if one couldn’t provide an explanation.

      An age verification service would need to determine your age. It’s not strictly necessary for them to keep your identity on file, but I think the likelihood is that it would be required precisely to prevent such abuse.

      I don’t fully get the part about selling adult products directly.

      Such a service would be illegal in itself. It would have to exist on the darknet beside offers for mail-order drugs, stolen passwords, and so on. Might as well offer mail-order alcohol or adult media downloads with no questions asked.

      Since foreign services do not need to comply, porn will still be available. So a firewall is needed. But then, why not give children an age appropriate vpn for their devices and accounts and leave the internet to itself?

      Good question. Part of the answer is that law-makers in Europe have no idea what they are doing. Why there is no one capable of giving them technical advice is something I simply don’t know. Some tech regulations are so absurd that you’d never believe me they are real.