If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this onslaught of laws and the invasive technologies behind them, you’re not alone. It’s a lot. But understanding how these mandates work and who they harm is critical to keeping yourself and your loved ones safe online. Age verification is lurking around every corner these days, so we must fight back to protect the internet that we know and love.
That’s why today, we’re launching EFF’s Age Verification Resource Hub: a one-stop shop to understand what these laws actually do, what’s at stake, why EFF opposes all forms of age verification, how to protect yourself, and how to join the fight for a free, open, private, and yes—safe—internet.
I get “AI bad”… but I’m not sure I’m following this one. How does porn websites having age verification help AI products find a market?
All these websites have been using image recognition models on both their users (to estimate age) and actors (to detect CSAM). The latter is fine because the data is already public, but the former is a gross privacy invasion. Especially because there already was and will always be leaks and breaches that then expose peoples faces or ID pictures which allows scammers to steal everyones identity.
There are technically secure ways to verify someones age, but there will always have to be a third party that you have to allow to extract identifying information from your ID to make those work. These companies however dont even try to preserve peoples privacy and have been going straight for using AI tools to magically verify their users.