Thing that was predicted to happen mysteriously happens.

“Child safety” has simply become the marketing department for a rent-seeking surveillance industry.

In shocking twist, "think of the children!" used once again as an excuse.

Every single time you mandate age verification, you are mandating the creation of a centralized database of extraordinarily sensitive personal information. Government IDs. Biometric facial data. The kind of data that, once breached, cannot be “changed” like a password. You get one face. You get one government ID number. When those leak—and they will leak—the damage is permanent.

Now do KYC verifications

these very firms are now lobbying for stricter age verification mandates. They’ve positioned themselves as protectors of children while actively working to expand the legal requirements that guarantee their revenue stream.

Lawmakers mandate an impossible task, VC-backed startups pop up to sell a “solution,” those startups then lobby for even stricter mandates to protect their market, and the cycle repeats.

“Child safety” has simply become the marketing department for a rent-seeking surveillance industry.

Excellent point

Hey, not two days ago someone said that connections between Peter Thiel and age verification was a "conspiracy theory". Apart from the above link, the article states:

And as these mandates create a captive market worth billions of dollars, a whole ecosystem of venture-backed “identity-as-a-service” startups has sprung up to serve it. Persona, valued at $2 billion and backed by Peter Thiel’s investment network, is just one of many.

Unrelated to the above, but I like the wording too much:

“Child safety” has simply become the marketing department for a rent-seeking surveillance industry.

A note on the US v EU thing

Is this an US-only thing? There are several articles over the past few months hinting at US Big-Tech lobbying efforts in the EU. Thiel makes a living as a contractor of the surveillance apparatus. It is only in his interest to expand his business in the highly regulated EU, and I have not even started on his Dark Enlightment politics.

von der Leyen has no spine in this, if she isn't actively complicit.

wait, they actually designed this shit with biometrics?

I thought they tried to placate us with zero knowledge proofs, at least? No?!?

Children are in real danger of harm, as a result of this. I am thinking of the general safety for children, in wanting them to not be individually identified and targeted for manipulation and have their data sold.

It also equally applies to everyone else. What absolute ghouls and/or dimwits that are pushing for this.

Kids need a little danger to grow.

Hopefully, we will have the means to strip out or spoof the SystemDOGE verification in Linux. Or even better, something akin to torrenting, where many false IDs are manufactured and shared, constantly replaced as needed by automated AI.

I truly don't trust the corporations and government that wants to connect our physical and digital selves together.

No way will I ever be trusting any type of "age verification" methods, I would much rather just not use those services.

Together with two other researchers, they set out to look into Persona, the San Francisco-based startup that’s used by Discord for biometric identity verification – and found a Persona frontend exposed to the open internet on a US government authorized server.

In 2,456 publicly accessible files, the code revealed the extensive surveillance Persona software performs on its users, bundled in an interface that pairs facial recognition with financial reporting – and a parallel implementation that appears designed to serve federal agencies.

The company that wants to collect and compile all of your most sensitive data can’t even protect its own source code. They know this surveillance isn’t safe, and they don’t care. They want the power it bestows.

We need preemptive laws that prevent any identifying age checks.

It's the whole purpose behind these things.