Over the past two years, we have seen a global push from governments all over the world towards privacy-invasive, ineffective age-verification laws. The UK, Australia, Brazil, and France have passed regulation that in practice require age verification of all users, largely through unregulated overseas corporations with questionable privacy records. Additionally, constant AI surveillance and profiling is often sold as a ‘privacy-preserving’ measure. The EU is expected to propose this Thursday similar legislation under a solution that relies on you owning a device approved by Google or Apple. Meanwhile, commercial age verification solutions remain prohibitively expensive for small and independent platforms and risk furthering Big Tech’s internet dominance. Why should you as a European, accessing a European chat app, trying to talk to your European friends need to own a device approved by a US entity?

In the tech field, there is a game of hot potato happening around who should own age verification. Meta believes verification should be the responsibility of App Stores, with its safety chief arguing that it should happen at “the operating system or app store level”. Google rejects this, warning it would mean “reengineering the protocols that have defined the decentralized web”. Meanwhile, the age verification industry’s own lobbyists say that app-store or device-level signals “does not establish that the person currently accessing a service is the age claimed”. Conveniently, the only thing that would count as “verification” is what they sell.

We believe online safety should not come at the cost of privacy, and that access to lawful communication should not depend on forced identification. This is why we are supporting the Stop Killing the Internet movement, a sister campaign of Stop Killing Games.

What can I do?

If you are an EU citizen, we highly recommend you sign the EU citizens’ initiative to Stop Killing the Internet! Paul Diegel, the representative of the EU initiative:

“Our demand is exactly what the Commission claims to stand for: digital identity and age verification that are voluntary, privacy preserving and non-discriminatory. Add your voice today. Every signature brings us closer to a free, secure internet, without obligatory ID and age verification for the use of legal online services!”

If the values of the Stop Killing the Internet movement resonate with you, we recommend you subscribe to their newsletter to stay up to date with their latest activities, updates to the EU citizens’ initiative and more. Their website also includes a “harms and remedies” map - we recommend checking it out if you are curious about the relevant issues in your region, such as harmful law proposals, initiatives, campaigns, etc.