What the politicians get: A smug feeling of satisfaction, having done something they were told was good.
What the children get: Anxiety, incentive to cheat the system and to keep their Internet use secret from parents, a new reason to feel that the world is unfair to them.
What the budding “age verification” industry gets: Amazing new business opportunities.
What Facebook gets: A regulatory barrier to entry high enough to keep out any competition from some hypothetical new form of social media that would respect its users, since that is now illegal.
What spies and hackers get: Amazing new opportunities to steal everyone’s personal data.
What those of us too stubborn to ever submit to “age verification” get: We’ll be unable to use regulated social media and will have to make do with the Fediverse, possibly moving to instances hosted in whatever distant corner of the world still allows free use of communications media.
What the politicians get: A smug feeling of satisfaction, having done something they were told was good.
What the children get: Anxiety, incentive to cheat the system and to keep their Internet use secret from parents, a new reason to feel that the world is unfair to them.
What the budding “age verification” industry gets: Amazing new business opportunities.
What Facebook gets: A regulatory barrier to entry high enough to keep out any competition from some hypothetical new form of social media that would respect its users, since that is now illegal.
What spies and hackers get: Amazing new opportunities to steal everyone’s personal data.
What those of us too stubborn to ever submit to “age verification” get: We’ll be unable to use regulated social media and will have to make do with the Fediverse, possibly moving to instances hosted in whatever distant corner of the world still allows free use of communications media.