2026-10-06 The kids are not all-right and neither are we
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I encourage you to provide feedback on the EU Kids Act. You can do
this as a non-EU citizen or as the spokesperson for an organisation,
not just as a EU citizen. The act will affect you, eventually. And
it's not good. The KIDS Act will make the internet less safe, says
EDRi; EU Kids Act Won't Keep the Internet Accountable and Trustworthy
says the EFF.

Here's what I wrote.

Any site that allows users to submit content will have to implement
age verification. No matter how small or niche the wiki, forum, chat,
every method of communication will require age verification. Thus, the
age verification will require identification from everybody who has
something to say.

If children and teenagers are excluded from the two-way Internet, we
will experience a digital age without digital natives. How will they
learn to communicate in a medium they have been excluded from? The
default Internet will be an infantilised one.

As children learn to circumvent the age requirements we also teach
them to cheat and circumvent regulations. This sets a bad precedent.

The better solution is to provide a graduated approach and to force
providers to stop harmful practices for everybody. First, have
exemptions for small endeavours. Increase requirements with the size
of the user-base. That is to say: Support the new start-ups, not the
old, established mega-corporations. Put more responsibility on bigger
platforms. Second, if platforms abuse their users, this has nothing to
do with age. I am older than 18 and I want to be protected from lies,
fakes, manipulation, fraud and brutality, too. Let the platforms
provide mechanisms to report such, to protect others from such, to
enable users to help each others. These features exist, but they need
some thought.

It is better to regulate the expected outcome rather than to play
games and regulate the means of achieving them because far too often,
this goes wrong. Age verification will go wrong and has been shown to
grow wrong in Australia and elsewhere.

#Politics #Europe #Web