3 ms·
To me it feels that the age verfication (adult de-anonymisation) push, at least in Europe, is coming more from the increasingly-authoritarian left as a reaction
by bluescrn 7mo ago
To me it feels that the age verfication (adult de-anonymisation) push, at least in Europe, is coming more from the increasingly-authoritarian left as a reaction to the rise of the online right and Musk's Twitter.
(Maybe some unspoken element of concern over social media bots, too - as they evolve from spamming copy+pasted comments to being near-indistinguisable from actual human accounts?)
- dv_dt 7mo agoIt would be interesting to see a similar lobbying breakdown for the EU and UK. I bet it's still Meta with other right wing actors. The left rarely has the money for this kind of lobbying scale
- malfist 7mo agoIf you look at the people pushing these bills it's the anti-trans and anti-porn activists. Not the left.
- phendrenad2 7mo agoIn Europe though? You have those?
- dingi 7mo agoThis issue looks partisan from the outset, but both sides push the same thing. They just use partisan justifications.
- mrtesthah 7mo agoAge verification efforts in the US have been privacy-attacking (demanding government ID) whereas the system being proposed in europe is privacy-preserving (zero-knowledge proof).
- dringe 7mo agoIn the UK we have many people on the left with these perspectives. It comes from the second-wave feminist tradition. But generally speaking, online age verification is one of those issues where the left-right ideological divide doesn't map neatly. People support and oppose it for various different reasons. Much like the assisted suicide issue.