> “The joint inquiry will concentrate on TikTok’s privacy policies in relation to younger users, including whether the business acquired legitimate and meaningful consent from these users for the gathering, use, and disclosure of their personal information.”

How many people, let alone kids, read the privacy policy before clicking "I Agree"?

This is nothing more than political grandstanding IMO and I hate it. I also think it's a prelude to some kind of verified identity system and that's why the big tech companies are pushing their passwordless schemes.

My biggest concern is that eventually everything will require a verified identity from one of the big tech companies and Microsoft/Google/Apple/Facebook will become the gatekeepers of everything. I wouldn't be surprised if we hit 2030 and it's considered normal to get your kid a digital ID when they're born.

Instead of pushing things towards centralized ID schemes to "protect the children," we need an outright ban on tracking, profiling, etc.. We're going to end up in a world where big tech tracks every move you make and feeds that data into crappy, over-promised "AI" systems so they can sell that data to all of the institutions that we rely on.

How great is it going to be if your kid gets profiled by AI and flagged as having a predisposition to criminal activity?