governments go to war against the free web
New laws in the UK and U.S. are giving bad actors the power to blackmail critics and silence dissent under the guise of protecting kids.
The age-old cries of the oppressor, to borrow from Star Trek, are “a matter of internal security” and “think of the children” because on the surface, who could argue about a need for stability and safety, or disagree with protecting kids from the worst the world has to offer? But these motivations can be easily abused without very strict limits and both lawmakers and voters lose their minds when both topics come up while aspiring authoritarians prey on these emotional reflexes to smear any opposition to their plans as treasonous and cruel, if not predatory.
As a millennial who grew up with unrestricted internet and tuned out… umm… turned out anyway, I can understand that kids being bombarded with the entire world’s best and worst facets nonstop is problematic. I also understand that given today’s highly challenging environment, it’s harder to parent than ever. Even in my golden days of a wide open, uncensored, wild internet, you weren’t truly always on like we are now.
At the same time, the proposed means of restricting access to adult topics is rather troublesome because it either requires, or hints that companies should create some sort of database of private information to verify age before allowing access. In what seems to be the most severe example so far, Reddit wants users in the UK to upload selfies to view their sprawling network of NSFW communities. If you don’t want to do that, no sweat. Just upload a picture of your government issued ID.
Ostensibly, this is to comply with the UK Online Safety Act and in partnership with a company called Persona, so the company itself won’t have access to your pictures or IDs, just your birthdate and Persona’s determination if your uploads were valid. How does Persona handle your data? According to their privacy policy, they delete it right away. Or keep it for up to three years after your last interaction with them.
So far, so not reassuring. You’re being asked — to protect the children, of course — to submit your government ID or biometrics into a black box that assures you everything is safe, and private, and encrypted, and hidden, but also can be kept around for years and reported to law enforcement if they determine you are a bad, evil person trying to do bad, evil things. How do you know what they decided to do? You won’t.
Now, at this point, I could bring up the potential of identity fraud from data breaches, but that may actually be the least of our problems. If governments are forcing popular platforms to gate parts of the web they consider too controversial for kids to access by mandating the use of official IDs and biometric information, then using an existing law allowing them access the relevant databases, they have excellent information for blackmail and a new mechanism to gate off more sections of the web.
The UK is doing it with the OSA. In the U.S., there are state laws like the ones on the books in Texas, Utah, Louisiana, and 21 other states, as well as the Take It Down Act and the proposed Kids Online Safety Act. Funny enough, KOSA was bitterly opposed by conservatives who warned that it could be used to censor their online speech until their realization that they could be doing the censoring and therefore, now love it. So, yes, the goal is very much to muzzle the web as we know it.
Today, it’s adult subreddits and porn. Tomorrow? Information about gender dysphoria and transgender issues, weaponizing the FTC with anti-trans talking points. Next may be discussions of same sex marriage and relationships, birth control, and then, well… the sky is the limit for the new totalitarians. And lest you think this is a slippery slope argument and I’m overreacting, Trump himself promised to abuse laws to censor the web to silence dissent, and I’m inclined to take him at his word salad.
Again, I can understand the impulse to protect children from exposure to content that isn’t appropriate given the alarming increase in screen time and decrease in time kids’ parents can reasonably be expected to watch them. I also realize that not all parents have the training or ability to eloquently contextualize adult content their kids clicked on by accident and are now disturbed and confused. It’s not an easy problem which does need to be tackled.
Yet, at the same time, the solutions cannot be far, far worse than the disease. And all this invasive and pervasive tracking with great potential for abuse by the powers that be, with many of said powers openly telling us they’ll readily and giddily abuse these laws to stifle their critics and silence conversations they no longer want happening in the public sphere, all while offering cybercriminals a gold mine of personal data as a turd swirl on top of this diarrhea sundae, very much meets all the criteria for terrible people abusing children’s mental health and safety in bad faith as a power grab.