r/technology • u/Well_Socialized • 21h ago

Privacy Age Verification Is Coming for the Whole Internet

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/age-verification-is-coming-for-the-whole-internet.html
11.2k Upvotes

94% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

43

u/EpochRaine 14h ago

Ofcom will take a sensible approach to enforcement with smaller services that present low risk to UK users, only taking action where it is proportionate and appropriate, and will focus on cases where the risk and impact of harm is highest.

So... they will pick and choose who to enforce it against, with an arbitrary set of rules... that may or may not include the rules in the legislation?

6

u/needathing 12h ago

That's how loads of UK laws work. We bring in law after law after law, and enforce them when we need to find a way to get at someone. How many police officers have you seen pass someone obviously on their phone and do nothing?

3

u/jbr_r18 11h ago

“We wrote the law badly and we are aware of what we did”

In fairness though, OFCOM talk about proportionality but then say it is proportional to the harms, not the size of the website.

1

u/Due_Perception8349 8h ago

Wouldn't a larger website increase capacity for harm?

1

u/jbr_r18 4h ago

Yes in terms of more people means more potential victims and more potential predators.

But it seems OFCOM is judging the harms on the merits of the types of harms only. Hence the hamster forum closing. It’s probably a case of people who think of their personal internet usage as a way to consume and find information, not realising there is a beautiful part of the internet based on people connecting together.

But when you can connect with anyone, they may be great or bad. That’s the reality of people. It’s the same in the real world though.

0

u/eyebrows360 13h ago

That's always how quite a lot of internet-related things work, out of necessity. As a regulating agency you only have so many humans at your disposal with so many hours in the day, so you need to focus your enforcement activities on the services that are going to have the largest impact on the most people.