Social Media Age Requirements Are Anti-Free Speech

[DVTimes]

Social Media Age Requirements Are Anti-Free Speech

https://www.thedailybeast.com/social...ech?ref=scroll

Since the dawn of the commercial internet, Americans have spoken and accessed information online without providing their names.

Political dissidents freely express their views. Patients search for health information without fearing public embarrassment. Domestic violence victims seek help online, shielding their communications from their abusers.

State and federal lawmakers threaten to upend that culture of anonymity. And that should worry all Americans.

In March, Utah enacted a law that requires parental consent for children under 18 to use social media, and it requires platforms to “verify the age” of all Utah residents. In April, Arkansas passed a similar law, requiring social media companies to use “reasonable age verification.” And in Congress, a bipartisan group has introduced the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, which requires social media platforms to “take reasonable steps” to verify users’ ages.

Age verification requirements endanger the ability of Americans to operate anonymously online, as the laws require the collection of information from everyone regardless of age. The statutes do not mandate a specific type of age verification; indeed, their vagueness on that point suggests that nobody quite knows how to meet the requirements without creating massive privacy problems.

The Utah law punts the issue to regulators, though it states that age verification can’t be limited to only government ID cards. The Arkansas law allows social media companies to determine what verification method is reasonable, and it includes a driver’s license as one such way of meeting the requirement. The federal proposal states that the age verification must be “beyond merely requiring attestation.”

Whether the verification is via government identification cards, facial scans, or other technologies, these laws encourage companies to amass information that could link the person’s identity to their social media activities. Companies simply have not found a magical solution that can both fully safeguard a user’s identity and verify their age with sufficient accuracy to meet the legal requirements.

As Shoshana Weissmann of R Street Institute recently wrote, the technology is “not ready for prime time” and “either lacks accuracy or deeply invades privacy.”

Defenders of such identification requirements might argue that people could still post and browse the internet without publicly disclosing their real names. But the mere collection of identifying information—either by an online service or its third-party intermediary—creates a link between users’ online activities and their names.

Even China, which requires social media users to register identifying information with its Ministry of Public Security, portrays the requirements as “foreground voluntary name, background real name.” But there is little doubt that critics of the government could be easily identified.