I often say on Irreal that any time you hear the phrase “think of the children” you should check to make sure you still have your wallet. It’s a favorite locution of scoundrels who want to steal not your wallet but your privacy and freedom.
The EFF has an excellent post on age verfication schemes and how they metastasize. The schemes start out, as these things always do, as a plea to protect the children from, say, porn. It’s
simple and benign: we don’t want to stop you from looking at porn, we only want to protect the children. The next thing you know, you need to verify your age to order skin cream. Yes, really.
Take a look at the EFF post to see how age verification, once established, is expanded to monitor all sorts of behavior. The fact that you are an adult is beside the point. If you want to look at porn, or buy skin cream, or whatever else the nannies think you shouldn’t be doing, you first have to identify yourself to prove you’re an adult. Instant surveillance. All in the name of protecting the children, of course. The EFF post even points to a legislator admitting that “protect the children from porn” was a scam with the purpose of opening a backdoor to go after social media, his real target.
We should resist these nannies in every way possible. We can voice our opposition to age verification bills and we can certainly refuse to give them our information. Maybe if skin care companies notice a drop off in sales they’ll refuse to donate to the offending politicians. Or so we hope.