Age verification is just a precursor to automated attribution of speech

Age verification as identity attribution & surveillance

• Many see age-verification mandates as de‑facto identity attribution: tying online accounts to government IDs and making retroactive unmasking trivial for law enforcement or future hostile regimes.
• Some argue this simply formalizes what already exists via data brokers, ISPs, social platforms and law-enforcement portals; others reply that making it universal, legal, and automated is a qualitative escalation.
• Concerns include selective enforcement, chilling effects on dissent, “everything you ever said can be used against you,” and easier prosecution of past speech if laws change.

Protecting children vs speech and privacy

• Broad agreement that kids are harmed by current social media (addiction, bullying, grooming, depressive outcomes).
• Deep disagreement on remedies:
  • One camp: age bans and verification are necessary, even if imperfect, because parents and existing controls have failed.
  • Opposing camp: this criminalizes ordinary privacy, treats children as perpetrators, and is an exploitative “think of the children” pretext for mass surveillance and speech control.
• Some argue existing parental controls and on-device restrictions should be strengthened instead of identity schemes; others say that has empirically failed at scale.

Law, democracy, and activism

• Debate over whether to fight through politics (calling reps, coalitions, lawsuits, running for office) versus technical resistance (encryption, anonymous systems, Monero, alternative platforms).
• Several commenters report local wins on surveillance oversight but feel outgunned by national security agencies and corporate lobbying.
• Others push back against fatalism, arguing democratic mechanisms still work, though slowly, and that change should remain hard to avoid rule-by-minority or “crackpots.”

Technical and policy proposals

• Proposals include:
  • Government‑issued cryptographic age tokens or cards with zero-knowledge proofs.
  • Device‑level parental flags (“this user is a minor”) that apps must obey, as in some recent laws.
  • Anonymous credential systems and on-device age checks.
• Counter-arguments: kids will route around any client‑side control; cryptographic schemes will be implemented with backdoors; device attestation and “trusted OS” requirements will effectively outlaw user-controlled systems and free software.

Social media, bots, and anonymity

• Some suggest the true driver is platform/advertiser need for “human verification” against bots, laundered through child-safety rhetoric.
• Others emphasize that anonymity enables both important dissent and large-scale psyops, astroturfing, and extremist coordination; there is debate over whether stronger attribution would reduce or merely centralize abuse.
• Skeptics note that powerful actors (states, corporations) will evade any constraints, while ordinary users bear the risk.

Historical analogies and long-term risks

• Comparisons to: Venetian carnival masks (class‑blurring anonymity later restricted), printing press, radio in genocides, and modern censorship of protest movements.
• Many fear that once a universal identity/attestation layer exists, future expansions (speech scoring, automated fines, exclusion from services) are politically irresistible, even if initial intentions are partly sincere.