A new law, signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in July, is considered as a way to safeguard children’s mental health, citing concerns about the intentionally addictive nature of social media.
A new law, signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in July, is considered as a way to safeguard children’s mental health, citing concerns about the intentionally addictive nature of social media.
Protecting children would mean knowing which users are children, which would mean knowing the actual legal identity of every user of the platform. It’s never going to happen.
You don’t think that the data the companies collect and analyse from their users don’t already give them a decent idea? How do you think targeted advertising works?
That data is a very good guess, but not appropriate for legal application.
Yeah for that you’d need some kind of datepicker field marked “birthday”.
Which then wouldn’t be a legally full verification of your age, thus the legislation would probably require some other means. We currently have a similar discussion in the EU regarding porn sites. Verification methods could be showing your id card and your face to a webcam, or showing up at a verification office in person (at least in germany we have this with our national postal service). Of course the porn sites don’t want to implement this. And I cannot really blame them. Nobody would give a random porn site their real identity and it would still be very easy to get porn without verification.
Age verification on social media is very similar.