this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2026
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I wonder if in the future we'll get to know exactly who pressed the digital freedoms crackdown button on the summer of 2025. Things were going backwards already before then but the sudden acceleration is curious and concerning to me.
It's to move to a risk management based society. Look at the sociology behind all of this and you would see a counter example. this was already being accelerated the first step was facial recognition years ago. Surveillance states are defaults in risk management societies. In a nutshell if we treat everyone like a criminal then its only a matter of time before we catch someone is their consciousness going forward.
Guilty until proven innocent.
Australia pressed it, as a result of parents who have genuine concerns about social media addiction in kids (but who aren't willing to do anything about it themselves).
And there's also this which explains why the implementation is the most annoying way possible. If I had my way age-verification would be solely tied to the addictive features of social media, but if that were the case the big tech companies would just lose users and wouldn't be able to insert themselves as an age-verification middle-man.
I wasn't meaning age verification in particular, Google deciding to mandate developer registration for Android apps and Samsung removing to option to unlock the bootloader on their phones also happened last summer
Regardless, my reply does explain why age verification on the internet is becoming a thing.