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Comment by yodsanklai | Hacker News Reader

> All this ostensibly to keep teenage boys from watching Pornhub (when parental controls already exist). The real reason ...

Maybe I'm naive, but I think there's no deeper motivation. There are activists and politicians who really believe this is a cause worth fighting for.

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Some people want this. Other people want mass surveillance. Conveniently, they are aligned! The mass surveillance people will shoot down any version of age verification that doesn't also allow mass surveillance.

Maybe we should start by tracking their every movement to see if they enjoy

Of course they won't. That's why there's precisely an exemption for government personnel in Chat Control.

https://europeanpirates.eu/chatcontrol-eu-ministers-want-to-...

Not just exempting themselves, but actively building and deploying end-to-end encrypted chat apps for gov only use with (non)retention and (un)transparancy fully under their own control. Tbf, we're still waiting for Von Der Leyen's SMS's, and that was not even on such an app. Some can just ignore the law without repercussions.

Already happening.

It can be both, and there can be both individual and systemic motivations involved.

"Maybe I'm naive, but I think there's no deeper motivation."

Maybe you are not naive. Maybe you are correct

This "real reason for age verification" trope might be just another braindead meme or conspiracy theory

No evidence has been presented to support what these commenters are suggesting

It stands to reeason that anyone who is truly concerned about "connect[ing] real-life identifiers to online activity" would be distancing themselves from using corporate-controlled mobile operating systems like Android or iOS, as opposed to thinking, something like, "I've got a good thing going here with Android and/or iOS and age verification is going to ruin it"

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