Reject Online Age Verification — It's Mass Surveillance in Disguise

Vote against any online age verification mandate. These laws don't protect children — they surveil everyone. To verify that one person is 18, you have to track and record the online activity of every single user. That's not child safety. That's a surveillance infrastructure the advertising industry has been lobbying for by other means. Here's the bitter irony: the harms children actually face online — algorithmic targeting, being funneled into pro-anorexia forums or extremist content — are only possible because platforms already surveil them. Age verification doesn't solve that problem. It deepens it. The same data collected to "verify ages" can be handed to ICE, used to deny loans or jobs, and exploited to raise prices and suppress wages. Everyone pays the cost, not just kids. Congress hasn't updated consumer privacy law since 1988, when it banned disclosure of VHS rental records. That's the real gap. If you want to protect children online, pass comprehensive data privacy legislation that prohibits the surveillance-based targeting that makes those harms possible in the first place. Age verification is a shortcut that makes things worse. Don't take it.