Girl on the Net#AgeVerification: what's the harm?
In which I distill a lot of casual pub chats I've had with friends into a layperson's guide to the #OnlineSafetyAct. What it is, the problems it causes, and why you should definitely care.
https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/age-verification-whats-the-harm/
Schrödinger's Prat@girlonthenet@mastodon.social
Ironic that I can't read this, and it's nothing to do with the OSA.
I'm on someone else's WiFi, and the ISP blocks it because 'adult' content has largely been opt-in for a decade. The browser doesn't even acknowledge the site's existence.
If I even see the age verification button on a platform, it can only be because I'm already an adult bill-payer who has verified my identity with a much more robustly trustworthy company.
It's a better filtering system, and we already have it.
Girl on the NetTl;dr: "This law breaks the internet, destroys online privacy, kills independent websites, wrecks accessibility, trains users to routinely bypass government blocks of genuinely illegal content, and offers less protection to kids than the tools that are already freely available from every major ISP."