An open letter to Governments, Citizens and anyone willing to listen. [Rant]
The Internet started exploding in popularity during the second half of the 1990s, allowing near instant, uncensored communication and information exchange across the globe.
At first only utilized by students and researchers, the Internet quickly became the go-to way to exchange information with friends, family, businesses and strangers. And it has been for almost 30 years now. But that is coming to an unfortunate end.
The problem and why it isn't about the children
As of the time of writing this article, beginning of August 2025, many countries across the globe have either started implementing, or already have implemented, various laws to "protect the children" by requiring age verification on certain kinds of websites. Sounds good right?
But how does one go about verifying the age of a user?
The most common way is for the user to give up their privacy and fork over something that could be used to prove or estimate their age. Most commonly using a webcam/phone camera and performing certain actions, uploading a legal document like ID card, drivers license, etc. or a credit card.
It should go without saying that this is just a plain bad idea. Websites backed by big companies or websites using a 3rd party verification provider will not simply delete this data again. Because why would they? Depending on the region they can sell it for profit or to train AI models after all.
But "good-faith" actors selling your data shouldn't be your only concern.
Recently an App called "Tea" (I will not rant about the app's purpose in this article) suffered multiple data breaches revealing personal information about many people, much of the data very likely landing in the App's hand without that person's direct consent.
Can it get worse than just "plain old" data breaches? (On another note: Those breaches shouldn't be happening in the first place)
Oh yeah, yeah it'll get worse, way worse. Of course it will.
Anyone who has been around in the 90s/00s remembers the "I am a nigerian prince that wants to gift you a million dollars" scams. While primitive and easy to detect, some people fell for them and some would to this day
But scams haven't stopped in the past, they've evolved too. Nowadays they use AI to generate images, videos and audio of people you know and love, even from just a short snipped that somehow appeared on the internet.
While bad enough to get many people to fork over almost everything they have, they can still be countered (albeit difficult) by good education, knowledge of the people close to you and verifying claims from the other party.
What can't be counteracted though would be an innocent popup on a website asking you to verify your age... Because you've gotten used to needing to upload your ID or whatever to get access to many sites.
Except that now you've handed someone all your juicy details that can be used to buy stuff in your name and/or on your dime - Identity theft.
"What about a better way to verify a user's age then?" I hear you ask. The EU's proposal uses a government made App to only tell the requesting service if the user is allowed to access the service or not, without sharing any other information about the user.
Great! Except... Well... The other elephant in the room.
The other elephant in the room - Censorship! :D
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out -
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me.
The above quote originated just after the 2nd world war and, like the text makes pretty clear, talks about how everyone saw the signs, but nobody did anything to counteract because "it doesn't affect me, why should I care?"
We currently are in a similar situation. "Oh I don't use those sites" or "Well those games that got taken down due to VISA/MasterCard pressure were scum anyway" are common phases and comments you see on the Internet today.
Just because it doesn't affect you yet, doesn't mean it won't in the future. Big changes regarding surveillance and control rarely happen, they happen slowly.
And almost always you hear one phase while those changes are being pushed through.
"Think of the children"
You wouldn't want your children to get abused, right?
To make sure that nothing happens we need to see everyone's personal data and watch where everyone goes every day of the week, only like that we can make sure that nothing will happen to those poor children!
When someone would come up to you with a proposal like that out of nowhere I am sure that you would answer "fuck no" and tell the person to go where the sun don't shine.
The problem is that companies and governments are well aware of this and will thus only move in small steps, one step at a time, towards their goal.
We can already see what can happen in the future - just look at China
Or if you want a more historical example, one thats fitting to the quote above, just read through German history between 1933 and 1945 - I'm sure you will find at least some similarities.
The point of this article
Now that you've made it to the end of my little rant, I want to ask you to do one thing.
Do something.
The Internet has been a free realm for information and knowledge exchange for decades. Let's please not throw that away, and let's keep (or, depending on country, gain) our freedoms, no matter what country you're from.
Thank you for reading.