Welcome to the age of online age verification. Are you ready to identify yourself?
Last Thursday morning I woke up to learn that I couldn’t access my messages on the social network BlueSky. “You must complete the age guarantee to access this screen,” a pop-up notification told me.
The local laws I live in mean that I need to make sure I am an adult to view mature content or send direct messages. I’m based in the UK and Bluesky was referring to the online safety law that came into effect on Friday.
The law requires that businesses prevent people under the age of 18 from accessing harmful content, such as pornography and material related to self-harm, suicide, and eating disorders. If the site chooses to allow this content, you must check the age of people using the platform to ensure that they are adults. Otherwise, you could face a fine of £18 million or 10% of your annual revenue.
“In the UK, prioritizing clicks and engagement for online safety for children is no longer acceptable,” Melanie Daws, CEO of the Regulator of Com, said in a statement. “The message to tech companies is clear. They either comply with age checks and other protective measures listed in the code or face consequences.”
Over the past few days, the free VPN shot to the top of the UK app store chart as they are looking for a way to bypass the requirements for verifying their age. Note that using a free VPN comes with its own risk set. Not recommended by online security experts.
Online Safety Laws may be UK-specific laws, but they will affect companies based in the US and around the world, including Blueski, Reddit, Discord, X, Porn Hub and Grindr. All of these promise to “age measurements” to prevent young people from stumbling over harmful content.
It also represents a greater change in Internet culture. This sees age verification becoming a mainstream practice around the world. More and more, adults who wish to access internet services, from mainstream social networks to porn sites, need to prove their age. In other words, hope that my Bluesky experience will soon come to the internet near you.
Earlier this month, European Commission In accordance with the EU’s Digital Services Act, we have published a prototype of an age verification app that will help keep young people safe online. Additionally, the ripple effects of UK and EU laws are beginning to be seen in the US, says Vaishnavi J, founder of online child safety consulting firm VYS. Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Texas law requiring porn sites to verify the age of all visitors.
“The state law, advocacy campaigns and the growing demand for parents in the US are all focused on the need for age guarantees,” says J, who previously worked for the Meta and Twitter policy team. “Combine that with the rapid advancements in the high-tech ecosystem. It’s not a question of whether the US is adopting age verification, but rather how and when it will be adopted.”
Safety vs privacy
The wild west nature of the Internet and its ability to be primarily anonymous often blurs the line between spaces occupied by children and adults in ways that do not occur in the offline world. This means that many people often think that they are inappropriate or harmful. According to Ofcom’s own research, about one in ten children in the UK between the ages of 8 and 14 watch online porn. This is designed to prevent new age verification rules.
Making the Internet safer for children may be necessary and commendable, but age verification policies are also being fired from digital rights and privacy groups.
I have covered the UK’s attempts to bring age verification since 2016. The government at the time decided that it was too difficult and ultimately that was the case. I decided not to proceed with the plan It will be Age Gate porn site in 2019.
The main objections to this law were the same as they were now. Requiring people to share government-issued identifications with private companies poses a threat to their privacy.
“UK citizens are forced to hand over sensitive personal data to unregulated age-guaranteed providers if they have full access to platforms like Reddit or Bluesky, or when using dating apps like Grindr.” In a statement Before the online safety law comes into effect.
“The threat and harm of phishing and hacking are very real and will cause online harm,” he added.
The Open Rights Group also criticized the fact that people are not given the right to choose how they validate their age. There are many validation methods, such as video selfies (age estimation via method game platforms) Roblox announced that it will introduce it Last week), bank or credit card checks, third party digital ID services, mobile carrier checks, or photo ID matching. The method you want to adopt depends on the individual service and can make people vulnerable to problematic privacy policies.
Like many internet rules, there is always a certain amount of trade-off involved in making the online world safe. In many ways, the idea of age verification is “common sense,” writes Mariana Olaizola Rosenblat, technology policy advisor at Stern Business School at NYU. In a blog post this week. At the same time, she added that age verification can introduce serious privacy, security and access risks, depending on the regulations and methods chosen.
“In some cases, the systems employed are so flawed that they fail to protect minors and exclude adults who should have legal access,” Rosenblat said. “Policymakers should understand and consider these trade-offs carefully before mandating an age-of-scale verification.”
Many critics of age verification argue that the verification is ineffective due to the wide availability of VPNs and the ability of teens to circumvent rules that attempt to limit internet use.
Whether age verification is really effective in keeping children safe online is a question that can only be answered in order to ensure that similar laws are enacted as the online safety law. In the meantime, I, and perhaps you, will need to prepare to prove our identity and age in order to continue using the Internet in a way that we have become accustomed to using it.