Age Verification Does Not Make Us Safer

We can all agree that the current state of the internet is harmful to everyone, not just kids. Tech companies are collecting our data to power their exploitative and oppressive algorithms and making the internet worse with surveillance, censorship, and endless targeted advertising. But the solution is cracking down on their greedy surveillance capitalist business model, not restricting speech and kicking kids offline. We should be working on comprehensive privacy legislation that prioritizes people at the margins, antitrust legislation to actually regulate these giant corporations, and the algorithmic justice legislation that digital rights experts have been calling for. I'm writing to demand that my state lawmakers reject any legislation that requires websites to use government ID or AI biometric technology to limit users or access and instead work to reign in Big Tech's abuses once and for all.