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Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says
(www.politico.eu)
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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Because digital age verification is a privacy and security nightmare for everyone. It's not the same as showing your drivers licence to get into a night club. It would be more equivalent if the nightclub checked everyone's details, and then also registered those details in a clipboard that they left hanging on the wall next to the night club in partial view of the bouncer.
Arguably even if they could patch all the security and privacy holes in their implementation of age verification, it's still a flawed system, just like age verification when entering a nightclub or buying alcohol. Underage people still get into nightclubs and buy alcohol just by looking older than they are and the same is true for access to social media. Even when the sites are checking everyone, underage people are still getting in. In Australia's implementation it's something like 80% of children are still able to access social media but now the social media sites have access to even more of our personal data.
Social media sites have created unsafe places for minors. It's clear they are unable to control entry of either the minors or predators, so they should be responsible for moderation of their digital spaces and the outcomes of not ensuring that moderation. If they can't meet that requirement then maybe they shouldnt be allowed to operate.
Nah that's a flawed analogy. It's not like them having the clipboard partly visible. It's more akin to them photocopying your ID just to enter the nightclub. Even if the data quickly finds its way into a safe in the boss' office, it's total BS that they have that level of detail stored anywhere. Any serious breach of security will provide attackers with enough information to fully impersonate anyone who has ever visited the club.
... That is still fully separate from the also wholly valid question of, "what if this night club is suddenly deemed illegal?" Suddenly, everyone who legally visited may get a visit from the gestapo.
It doesn't take ANYONE DOING ANYTHING ILLEGAL for such a mindset and set of rules to never the less become very problematic.
People who want to nanny others' behavior to such a degree are ALL Nazi-level pieces of shit, whether or not they understand that fact.
You also can't guarantee that that the bosses safe is actually safe. Is it a safe in his office or in some building in Russia that he sends all the photocopies to by snail mail? Is the safe actually a safe and not just an unlocked filing cabinet in the alley behind the nightclub with a sign on it saying "free ID photocopies"? Are the photocopies also put in folders with a record of all your drink preferences, conversations, conversation metadata and which songs you danced to with all the folders photocopied, submitted to the government for citizen profiling and then sold on the black market for profit by the night club owner?
You're still kinda' missing the point. It doesn't require any of that to never the less be a gross violation of privacy.
All of that is merely icing on the cake as to why this crap is a disgusting invasion of privacy and an untenable removal of freedom to associate.
I said "also", that point is not lost on me.
True, I guess I'm still holding out for that zero knowledge age verification. If I could just give the bouncer a slip that says "this person is old enough to party" they could staple that slip to their nightstand for all I care.
I don't see it technically being impossible to implement like that. Let's hope this age verification kerfuffle either dies down or shows us how you could tackle this without disrespecting all our privacy.
I think the bigger problem is that we are implementing a system that has been proven to be ineffective at solving the problem, yet the world is plowing ahead. All we've achieved is removing the liability for social media site operators. They can run cess pools of misinformation and child predation and wash their hands and say "whelp, the kids shouldn't be there, we have government approved age verification (also until thats proven to be zero knowledge we have even more personal data to use for marketing and sell on the data broker market)."