Think about how they validate how old you are. Meta and Google, who are lobbying in support of this legislation,will force you to sign up with your real ID, and be the arbiter for questions like “are you old enough for this website”. For every request that you make through some third-party website that needs to know your age, Meta and Google will know where you tried to login, and for which content. They will then resell this data to the highest bidder. Additionally, through all their ad networks and tracking, they will follow your session and have verified ID to match your entire browsing history. This is the end of anonymity and privacy on the Internet.

Age verification companies literally require your personal information to function. They don't want you to be able to send them a simple boolean over Tor in exchange for whatever trackable token you need to access something.

If technically competent people specify and build this system, sure. But it’ll be specified by complete idiot politicians, influenced by Google and Meta, who 100% DO want to know your government name, DOB, etc., so we’ll end up flashing our IDs at the camera, turning around to be scanned, etc. The platform owners will tell us they “deeply care about our privacy.”

Old enough for the 13yr content, the 15yr content, or the 18yr content?

And on what date does that change?

Are you a collaborator, or just stupid?