EFF launches Age Verification Hub

This keeps coming up and we keep having the same debates about what Age Verification isn't.

For the folks in the back row:

Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance

Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance

Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance

Without even reaching for my tinfoil hat, the strategy at work here is clear [0 1 2]. If we have to know that you're not a minor, then we also have to know who you are so we can make any techniques to obfuscate that illegal. By turning this from "keep an eye on your kids" to "prove you're not a kid" they've created the conditions to make privacy itself illegal.

VPNs are next. Then PGP. Then anything else that makes it hard for them to know who you are, what you say, and who you say it to.

Please, please don't fall into the trap and start discussing whether or not this is going to be effective to protect kids. It isn't, and that isn't the point.

0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/lawmakers-want-ban-vpn...

1 https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/vpn-usage...

2 https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2025-09-15/debates/57714...

> Age Verification isn't about Kids or Censorship, It's about Surveillance

We know this because, instead of putting easy-to-use parental controls on new devices sold (and making it easy to install on old ones) with good defaults [1], they didn't even try that, and went directly for the most privacy-hostile solution.

[1] So lazy parents with whatever censorship the government thinks is appropriate for kids, while involved parents can alter the filtering, or remove the software entirely.

Parental control software has existed for decades. It hasn't worked.

Over 70% of teenagers <18 today have watched porn [1]. We all know (many from experience) that kids easily get around whatever restrictions adults put on their computers. We all know the memes about "click here if you're 18" being far less effective than "click here if you're not a robot."

Yes, there were other ways of trying to solve the problem. Governments could've mandated explicit websites (which includes a lot of mainstream social media these days) include the RTA rating tag instead of it being a voluntary thing, which social media companies still would've fought; and governments could've also mandated all devices come with parental control software to actually enforce that tag, which still would've been decried as overreach and possibly would've been easily circumventable for anyone who knows what they're doing (including kids).

But at the end of the day, there was a legitimate problem, and governments are trying to solve the problem, ulterior motives aside. It's not legal for people to have sex on the street in broad daylight (and even that would arguably be healthier for society than growing up on staged porn is). This argument is much more about whether it's healthy for generations to be raised on porn than many detractors want to admit.

[1] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/raising-kind-kids/20...

It's also already illegal to send porn to a minor. Porn companies that transmit porn to minors are already committing a sex crime.