This is the first part of a three-part series about age verification in the European Union. In this blog post, we give an overview of the political debate around age verification and explore the age verification proposal introduced by the European Commission, based on digital identities. Part two...

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child clearly expresses that minors have rights to freedom of expression and access to information online, as well as the right to privacy.

These rights would be steamrolled by age verification requirements.

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      I can think of a number, besides the one in the OP.

      You could worry about freedom of information also for adults. Such systems interfere, by design, with receiving and imparting information. It also creates a system that can be easily abused for political censorship. Me, I worry a lot about the direction Europe is taking.

      You could also worry about privacy in other definitions. Europeans, or Germans anyway, usually equate privacy with data protection, which is not actually correct. One American definition of privacy is as “the right to be let alone”. You’re certainly not being let alone with such a system. You might feel that it forces you and your family to abide by moral values that you may not share.

      Then there’s the economic aspect. The people in a country with such laws will have to do extra work and use extra resources to implement and enforce this.