this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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Part of me wonders if the point of the age checks is to stop this whole "to catch a predator" shit. That's gotta be bad for business, right?
If everyone in a chatroom or forum is verified "over 18", does that mean the pedos have plausible deniability?
IMO the purpose of age verification is to legalise social media companies data collection before they get in hot water over it.
That's why Meta has been spending millions on lobbying for age verification.
Also, adding age verification is a costly burden that makes it more difficult for competitors to enter the market.
Yep, absolutely!
This, and it also gives them the ability to tell who’s a bot and who isn’t. For somebody who’s entire income is based on advertising, being able to guarantee advertisers actual human eyes on is worth a lot of money.
Correction: to make sure the only bots/manipulation of views etc are the bots they control.
Except the way it's done means everyone on the internet is by default a child, including the pedophiles. There isn't a single purpose for the age checks, it's useful for (wannabe) authoritarians, its profitable for the companies, it's convenient for child abusers, it's data galore for 3 letter agencies etc. The current big wave of it is known to be sponsored by the american megacorpos, so pretty much all the reasons apply.
I mean to an extent, yeah, but most companies implementing this stuff are doing so because of laws in various jurisdictions, not because they're worried about their image. But of course it's all connected, if your image gets bad enough then law makers force your hand.
God forbid they actually try to moderate things properly, why make them do that when we can get all this facial data??
Not if the predators themselves get to regulate stuff.