this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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[OPINION] Canada’s age-verification bill for porn is a slippery slope to a restrictive internet (www.theglobeandmail.com)
submitted 2 days ago by NotSteve_@piefed.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
71 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Canada’s proposed Bill S-209, which addresses online age verification, is currently making its way through the Senate, and its passage would be yet another mistake in tech policy.

The bill is intended to restrict young peoples’ access to online pornography and to hold providers to account for making it available to anyone under 18. It may be well-intentioned, but the manner of its proposed enforcement – mandating age verification or what is being called “age-estimation technologies” – is troubling.

Globally, age-verification tools are a popular business, and many companies are in favour of S-209, particularly because it requires that websites and organizations rely on third parties for these tools. However, they bring up long-standing concerns over privacy, especially when you consider potential leaks or hacks of this information, which in some cases include biometrics that can identify us by our faces or fingerprints. [...]

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[–] GodofLies@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"Those that trade privacy for security deserve neither."

How about they start addressing the actual problem rather than half-measures from think tanks. If it was truly about children, they should be passing policies from a macro standpoint that encourage people to have a family and kids. Right now, it's economically grim and has been sliding that way for many decades. The rise of fascist and surveillance state policies is only going to make it worse. Say bye-bye to your birthrate and we're right back where we started again with the gov trying to pump the numbers via mass immigration.

What does all this have to do with this bill? The intent may be framed as protecting/preventing kids from adult material, but it's also about making it desirable to have kids because "big brother is watching you/protecting you" (SMH here on how stupid this all is). These legislators are out of touch. We as a society need to address the root of the problem - why do we have a CSAM problem in the first place? It's a horrific thing to have, and to be honest, those that turn to it likely have a mental illness.

As for kids accessing adult material online - why is the government being a nanny state? This is the parent's job.

I have zero confidence that they can keep everyone's data private and safe given how many breaches there are.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca -3 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Yes and no

Call it a nanny state but companies have been abusing kids to help and back with social media which, IMHO is a much, MUCH bigger problem than porn. I'm all for a ban on social media for kids under 18 at least.

I fully agree that we need privacy and a system should be put in place that does t spy on the citizens bu at the same time we do need protections for the citizens

The entire "he who sacrifices privacy for security" is a bad faith argument. Tell that to a 70yo granny who just lost all of her life savings to scammers. Tell that to the 15 year old that just committed suicide due to some social media bullshit. Tell that to the countless teenagers wrestling with anxiety and can't get themselves away from social media anymore because companies refined their algorithms so far that they're addicting as fuck.

That is where governments are supposed to step in. Not everything should be legal or else we should also permit owning weapons grade plutonium. Yes, that is an extreme, but its to show that we need limits and the question is where

Yes, government can be abusive and very much on the wrong side, like with the marijuana prohibition that broke and ended countless lives. Now Europe wants to spy in all chats FFS.

Those are great examples.of bad government control but just because these bad examples exist doesn't meant hat any government control is bad

I would favor an age verification system that is guaranteed anonymous. That shouldn't be too hard to setup if the government gives out codes to the citizens, and they can give independent non profit foundations a list of the codes with only the birthdate. Citizen supplies the anonymous code to website, website requests age at foundation, that's it.

Foundation can't legally reveal to government (or anyone for that matter) what code visited what, and the foundation doesn't know what code is what citizen

It's just a random idea written on the toilet, I'm sure there are better algorithms out there to do this, but the point is that it can be done in a fair, dependable and anonymous way.

We need SOME control, no control just doesn't work.

At least apply the controls to all the big players for starters

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 3 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Your code would still be unchanging and unique to you, which would be easy to correlate activity with. It's basically a government-issued ID number.

And if it could somehow be anonymous, there's nothing to stop people from sharing it. It just becomes a password you need to access the internet, except all sotes must accept any of 20 million passwords, and you definitely know a bunch of people who will share.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

I know, and as I said, it's something that I was writing as a quick idea, there are better ways, for sure

My point was though that social media is ruining kids, and that is something that needs a fix.

I'm not saying my way is perfect (still better than what governments are trying), I'm saying we need something

[–] uncouple9831@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 hours ago

So in this post we have a personal moral panic with no basis and then the claim we need "some control" as if it were not true that every single fucking person discussing in this thread grew up in a world without these age restrictions and generally ended up fine.