Age verification processes are dangerous to Canadians ⚠️🧵
Unfortunately, there is no magical solution: A ban of social media for children necessarily means a requirement to identify every adult using social media. This means that intrusive age-verification processes would have to be put in place by social media platforms, therefore collecting an immense quantity of very sensitive information from every Canadian adult using social media.
This is dangerous in many ways.
First, it means many (if not most) platforms will delegate this task to private for-profit third-party vendors with little to no incentive to protect this information properly. We have already seen data breaches of sensitive information in this process. This would increase the risk of Canadians becoming victims of identity theft and fraud, and would diminish the value of Canadian identification documents over time.
Secondly, this can create a permanent record of legal identities tied to social media accounts. This would endanger users who rely on pseudonymity online for safety, such as victims of domestic violence, trans and gender diverse people (for whom the legal identification might not match the name used on social media), performers using stage names online, and other people that are part of marginalized groups regularly targeted online (women, people of colour, 2SLGBTQ+ people, etc.).
All these vulnerable groups would only be one data breach away from incredible harm with the implementation of mandatory identity checks to access social media.
Furthermore, risking to link every social media account to a legal identity can have a silencing effect for activists, journalists, and whistleblowers. This can lead to self-censorship of topics important to discuss publicly in a free democracy.
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#StopIDSurveillance #Privacy #HumanRights #AgeVerification #CanPoli #Canada
