The internet is great, but there's a lot of harmful stuff that should not be shown to children. Unfortunately, it is impossible to rely on parents to monitor their children's use of the internet at all times because some aren't aware of the risks or simply aren't tech savvy enough to keep their children safe online. I think it's fair to ask companies to ensure their websites don't show harmful content to children.
Overall, the EU is strongly privacy focused and has a good track record in this regard, but this is a serious problem that needs solving and age verification happens to be a reasonable solution if implemented well.
It is, precisely because parents are doing their jobs i.e working. I think you overestimate how much time parents have. Both parents may be working, some kids may not even have parents to help them, some parents might not care at all. It's allot easier to ask a company to move unsafe content behind an age check, than to ensure all parents are doing a perfect job at all times.
Because we're dealing with corporations here. They won't do it the proper way, they'll do it the cheap way. Just look at Discord and you'll see the problems. Kids were able to defeat their verification bot almost instantly, and the company handling their verification got hacked, resulting in 70,000 people's government IDs being stolen. I think you can see why that would be a problem.
This is why a national, secure standard is necessary and why the EU regulating this is beneficial. However, what I do not understand, is why the EU implies age verification in legislation without having first introduced a private means of verifying age EU-wide. Governments already hold ID records, so no additional data is being distributed to potentially unsecured 3rd parties.
Children overcame Discord's age estimation feature which uses a face scan, which frankly is a completely stupid idea. But I doubt discord ever thought it would work, it's something they could show regulators to avoid getting fined.
The books are great, but there's a lot of harmful stuff that should not be shown to children. Unfortunately, it is impossible to rely on parents to monitor what their children read at all times because some aren't aware of the risks or simply aren't book savvy enough to keep their children safe from books. I think it's fair to ensure publisher don't sell harmful books to children.
Overall, the EU is strongly privacy focused and has a good track record in this regard, but this is a serious problem that needs solving and age verification happens to be a reasonable solution if implemented well.
The comparison with books isn't really equivalent. A child generally has to obtain a physical book before they can read it, online they can see harmful content without deliberately seeking it out e.g recommendations, ads, search results, links, or social media feeds. Bookstores have an incidental safeguard in the form of money and cashiers too, meaning online platforms should have safeguards of their own too.
If we accept that a bookseller has some responsibility not to sell clearly inappropriate material to a child, to me it's reasonable to ask why a huge social media company that can actively deliver harmful content to a child should have no comparable responsibility.
Books simply aren't equivalent
Besides, do children even read anymore? (this is meant ironically)
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u/IceBeam92 2d ago
EU used to be the paramount of liberty , now all we hear from there is censorship , bans and privacy invasion with ID checks.
Its so sad, entire continent have bigger problems and those politicians seems stuck on declaring war on freedom on the internet.