cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49729865
However you look at it age verification is a major change to the internet and our freedoms.
We’ve seen all kinds of legislation pushed through in the past, often even against major resistance.
What makes me suspicious this time is the speed at which some of the slowest bureaucracies in the world are adopting it and how it’s happening in 20+ countries in parallel.
It’s like they’re all in a group chat, fast-tracking this before resistance can even form.
The world is all doing this in a coordinated fashion because social media is causing many, well-evidenced problems.
There well-evidenced problems, sure. But what these governments think are the well-evidenced “problems” versus what you think they are, are two very different things.
Social media is indeed causing many probs.
Destroying privacy on the internet is not the way to fix those.
Their solutions suck, I agree. These are designed by people who don’t understand the role social media plays in people’s lives in 2026. They should use parental controls for age-inappropriate content and require age verification to get algorithmic recommendations (to discourage people from doing so, if nothing else).
But the problems are real, and that is the driving force behind this globally coordinated campaign of legislation. It’s not some shadowy cabal of malicious people, it’s a genuine worldwide crisis.
You’re dreaming. The reason they are doing this is surveillance of the population.
None of this is about online safety. It’s not age verification, it’s ID verification.
Exactly. As Louis Rossmann says, don’t accept the premise of assholes
It literally is.
IIRC a lot of big tech are lobbying for these laws. Raises barrier of entry for competitors, and makes it easier to harvest more accurate data from users.