We know it isn’t about the “children” or whatever.
It’s a tool of online censorship.
The ban for under-16s (and how it will affect people 16+)
(Please note a lot of this information comes from “Papers, Please: A First Look at Age Verification on the Web”)
Australia implemented an under-16s social media ban last year. It did not work.
“Three in five (61%) Australian 12-15 year-olds who had accounts on restricted platforms before the ban came into force still have access to one or more accounts. Major platforms have retained a majority of their child users, with 53% of previous TikTok users, 53% of YouTube users and 52% of Instagram users still able to access an account on these platforms.” (Molly Rose Foundation)
But how does it affect people 16+?
The *data stealing age verification systems. Lots of them decide to take more information from you than just your face. For example, Yoti is known to:
- Take device information
- Geolocate you
- Leak data to third-party APIs
- Shares your verification data to 9 third parties
- Retain that data for 6+ months after saying “it is deleted as soon as the check is complete”.
Will the UK Censorship Unit (Ofcom) slime me for this?
Maybe. I don’t know.
They could take this down. Well, they could try. It wouldn’t work.
If they did, I’d just move to I2P.
Conclusion + Announcement
VPNs shall prevail. Tor and I2P will see more hits.
This is going to backfire big time.
Announcement
I will be shortly releasing some encryption software to assist you in covering your communications. It will be Java and GPG-based, and I will implement my own encryption algorithm at some point.
I didn’t want to write this. I have been drafting a much nicer post. But this is more important.