Quick Take: Global “Age Verification” Rollout Has Normies Noticing
We covered the UK’s Online Safety Act Age Verification clause going live earlier this week. We’ve also covered the fact the UK is far from alone in this.
Australia launched their “social media ban”, which is in reality just an age verification system, back in the spring. Now they’re expanding it to include search engines, and YouTube as well. The EU has given tech firms 12 months to enforce “strict” age verification measures and is testing their own app across five nations as we speak. Mexico, Ireland, Canada and at least 27 of the 50 US states…they’re all coming to the party.
And it’s not just countries, now companies are doing it off their own bat. YouTube announced only yesterday that they would be implementing “age verification” for US-based users.
The wrinkle in this scheme is that it’s essentially a mirror image of the government plans. Rather than forcing people to prove their identity, YouTube will be using AI to “estimate” your age. If they “estimate” you are under 18 they will place limitations on your account, if they “mistakenly” label you as a minor, you will have to submit a face scan or credit card to “correct the error”.
If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, that’s because it is.
The age verification rollout just keeps going and going and going.
The reaction to this – both in the UK and around the world – has been rather encouraging: Everybody hates it.
I’m not talking about Reform MPs going on Question Time to criticise the act. The whole point of Reform is to critise things that “reasonable centrists” are supposed to like. That’s also setting up the potential VPN ban discussion.
No, I’m talking about the hundreds of thousands of people petitioning the government to repeal the act. Or the thousands of outraged commenters all over the web.
More than just hating, a lot of people seem to be…noticing.
People you wouldn’t expect to comment on the meta are seeing the giant global coincidence and pointing it out. So we get threads like this one on reddit, or posts like this.
Our tweet on the subject has had over 7000 likes, which isn’t anything like a huge number, but is a sign it somehow burst through the soundproof bubble we’ve been locked in on every major social media platform for years.
If this real and organic awakening, as we saw in during Covid, then something is going to have to change.
The “think of the children!” defence, in which you simply accuse anyone criticizing the act of being a peadophile (as exemplified in this tweet from British MP Peter Kyle), isn’t going to cut it.
The media approach, discussing the global rollout of age verification as if it was always inevitable and is now a fait accompli (see this from Wired), probably won’t work either.
Don’t be surprised if there’s a major psy-op in the near future in which online age verification is the hero of the story.
