Bill C-34 Answers Child Safety with Identity Infrastructure

Where I disagree is the framing that it’s a binary between “age verification for all” or “legal liability for parents”. There is a third option: change the incentives for the organizations designing and operating the systems children are using.

Regulate recommender systems, addictive defaults, reporting and appeal mechanisms, non-consensual intimate imagery response, synthetic sexual abuse material, dark patterns, safety plans, transparency, audits, and penalties for platforms that fail to respond properly. Those are all aimed at the organizations creating or amplifying the harm. This is, admittedly, the most difficult approach, but it’s also the approach that actually addresses the root cause.

My concern is that an under-16 account ban turns the enforcement problem into an age-assurance problem for all users. The platform has to determine who is under 16 somehow, which means assessing everyone’s age. That creates privacy and access-control infrastructure while the most vulnerable teenagers are also the ones most likely to route around it.

So yes, change incentives. I just think the incentives should be aimed directly at platform conduct and design, not at making everyone prove they are old enough to participate online.