this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2026
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Online threats to children are real, but the headlong pursuit of age verification that we’re seeing around the world is unacceptable in its approach and far too broad in scope — and we simply can’t afford to get this wrong.

To be clear, parents’ concerns are valid and sincere. Few people would argue that kids should have unfettered access to adult material, to self-harm how-tos, to social media platforms that manipulate them and expose them to abuse.

But it’s the very depth of those worries that is being cynically exploited. Age verification as is currently being proposed in country after country would mean the death of anonymity online.

And we know exactly who stands to gain: The same tech giants who built the privacy nightmare that the internet is today.

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[–] BigMacHole@thelemmy.club 4 points 1 month ago

Which is WHY I SUPPORT it!

-Proton CEO who Endorses the Politicians MAKING this a Reality!

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

https://proton.me/blog/anonymity-vs-privacy

These guys are such clowns. They stop just short of saying anonymity is bad by saying things like you can't use your logging if you anonymously log in (duh) and bizarrely you may be more secure without it.

"A good example of this is Proton Mail‘s optional authentication logs feature. Enabling this prevents you from logging into your account anonymously, but it improves your security by allowing you to detect suspicious logins (for example, a login from another country).

For most people, privacy is a great deal more important than anonymity'

They won't provide it with their own service and instead push it onto the user. For instance, most recently they have been known to log credit card data. A company really concerned with security would not store this data on their own servers and there are practical ways to accomplish this.

This company makes its money on security theatre. I swear they are a honeypot for criminals actors and they know it hence why they downplay anonymity.

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 month ago

Is there anything stopping me from uploading an ID for Shrek or something? I foresee an explosion of popularity of fake IDs.

[–] moonburster@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's been fun lads. Let's make agreements for where we will touch grass together when this happens. Follow-up events will be decided on location

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[–] krispyavuz@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago

Shocking news! The sky is blue

[–] MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I'd argue that most things that are currently in the crosshairs for exclusion under age verification are also harmful to at least a third of the adult population and to society in general.

Actually maybe that's just for profit algorithm based social media and / or mass scale surveillance and personal information gathering and advertising.

The point being, if you're going to make a case for something being harmful to kids, you need to also make a case for it's being OK for adults or maybe it just needs banning outright for the good of society, see also smoking. Personally I'm in favor of leaving this in the hands of the individual and parents, and perhaps making easy tools for less technically adept parents to use.

TLDR: If Facebook is bad for kids, why isn't it bad for adults?

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