As soon as I heard politicians squawking at me to “think of the children” as they pushed to introduce age restrictions for social media I rolled my eyes. Here’s a transparent move against online privacy that’s sure to result in big benefits for the data harvesting industry, I thought to myself. Here’s a clever move to have folk like us co-operate in our own demise, letting the cunning sheepdogs in politics and the media herd us into the closely monitored paddocks of their dystopia-in-the-making.
Not that I’m against keeping young people safe online. Far from it. I recognise that young people are routinely and deliberately harmed by the architects of some online platforms. For example, Facebook reportedly pummels young girls with beauty product and weight-loss ads if those girls post about their body image insecurities and Facebook’s owner, Meta, has a well-documented history of preying on the young.
I just happen to think that governments across the West have consciously steered clear of doing anything concrete to pull the offending platforms into line, perhaps because those platforms are rich, powerful and extremely well-connected politically. Meta should have been fined, hugely, every time its wickedness was exposed, and the same goes for the other platforms too. This article on Crikey, unfortunately pay-walled, spells out several better measures than age restrictions.
Governments seem keen, however, to take measures that appear set to consolidate the power of surveillance capitalism and the political forces that ride along with it. So who exactly – apart from the Murdochs and their Newscorpse organisation – was really pushing for this particular style of protective measure? Here’s another illuminating article on Crikey about the mob called “36 Months” who did the front-running.
Lo and behold, as more and more countries sign up to similar online age restriction measures, more and more evidence emerges that my early suspicions about data-harvesting and surveillance may have been well-founded.
Visit the Australian Government’s “esafety” page and read the list of online platforms considered to require age restrictions. Here you find a list of 10 services: Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, Twitch, X and YouTube.
On the other hand is a list of services not regarded as age-restricted: Discord, GitHub, Google Classroom, LEGO Play, Messenger, Pinterest, Roblox, Steam and Steamchat, WhatsApp and YouTube Kids.
Finally, a list of services that have volunteered to age-restrict their platforms, without being nominated by the Government: BlueSky, Match Services (Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, Plenty of Fish, Match.com and Azar etc), Yubo, Wizz, Lemon8 and BigoLive.
So, not many platforms are obliged, at this stage, to demand proof of age. But quite a lot are doing it voluntarily. I was surprised recently when I tried to read some posts on the blogging platform Substack – of which I had long been a member – and was greeted with a message telling me that I could no longer access content unless I provided proof of age. It seems very odd to me that a blogging platform wants to force its users to provide proof of age.
It seemed even more odd to me that Substack wanted its proof-of-age conducted by a third-party company. That company is Persona, which is linked to controversial billionaire Peter Thiel, whose appalling Palantir operation is found popping up in every creepy situation involving extracting personal data for who knows what purposes.
Now, this message reminded me of a similar one I received from Facebook recently. For literally no reason whatever, Facebook suddenly cancelled my long-time account, demanding that – in order to appeal – I upload a selfie video. I refused and so I am no longer on Facebook. I am also now no longer visiting Substack.
I frankly do not believe that a shady outfit like Persona, linked as it is to Thiel and Palantir, is a trustworthy entity. I don’t believe it will delete my biometric data “instantly after 7 days” and I think sleazy things might happen with my data in Persona’s hands.
Recently when the Discord platform announced that Persona was going to handle its age verification there was a major outcry and it retreated. Actually it wasn’t just because people were creeped out by being asked to hand their data to a shady outfit. It was because Persona was found to be literally exposing the data it collects to abuse. Read about it here, on the Malwarebytes site. And read more about it here.
So, basically, age verification is being used as a Trojan horse. You agree because who wants to argue with the idea of protecting young people? But then you become fodder for the surveillance tech industry, which is linked to the right-wing nutjobs and soulless corporations who want to create a horrible dystopia where we all have digital IDs and use digital money and can’t do anything in our lives without paying a slice to the corporations and exposing ourselves to the risk of being cut off from all vital services if we say anything that somebody powerful doesn’t like.
The UK just tried to force through a compulsory digital ID system. It caused a huge ruckus and eventually the government backed down. But it was only a slight backdown, in reality. Under the system, if you want to work in the UK you will have to have a digital ID. Of course it is being billed as a measure to stop illegal immigrants which, like child protection, is a thing politicians in rich countries know they can rely on to manipulate average folk. Your typical Brit, like your typical Aussie, will usually agree to any punitive measure against refugees, asylum seekers and “illegals”. The Britcard was a step too far, but only for now. The digital ID has its foot in the door and soon it will be sitting on the lounge with the remote in its hand.
But who cares, you ask. Only those with something to hide, etc etc. I disagree. Once creepy Palantir and its evil friends have you pegged, thanks to its full (overt or covert) integration with government data across the entire corporate surveillance empire, we humble citizens will be like fish in a barrel.
Right now the US Government is talking about demanding access to your entire online history if you want to visit its benighted shores. Said something mean about Trump? About Israel? Expressed sympathy for some hapless victim of state persecution? Sorry pal, no room at the inn.
And consider what the Trump administration has done to the UN’s Francesca Albanese. It has cut her off from banking and credit services and sanctioned her family members too. Why? Because she told Israel honestly what she thought of its genocide.
The walls of surveillance are closing in at the same time that governments and their partner corporations are fine-tuning the weapons they can use to target individuals who step out of line. Israel has shown in Gaza, Iran, Lebanon and elsewhere how those surveillance-guided weapons can literally be lethal, tracking and targeting people via sneaky spyware, even to the extent of facilitating their murder.
I suppose you know that newer cars are designed to spy on you, and the car companies sell the data they collect?
I guess you suspected that Ring cameras and Alexa devices were a serious privacy risk and probably part of a growing surveillance mesh?
And naturally you knew that your robot vacuum cleaner came with serious privacy issues?
All the “smart” stuff we are being sold. All the AI “confidantes” we are asked to trust: all part of the steadily intensifying surveillance mesh. Whether these things were designed with surveillance in mind is not the point. The capability is there so it will be used and abused to our cost.
One relatively trivial example is differential pricing, where different people get charged different prices for identical goods and services. This system, which big corporations love, depends on being able to accurately identify individuals. If they know who you are, how old you are, how healthy or sick you are, how much money you have in the bank, what you own, where you live, how much debt you owe, where you work, when you get paid . . . it’s all data that determines the price you will see on the screen. And the tighter the surveillance web becomes, the better they will get at extracting your cash.
It gets worse. Similar systems are used among vendors to collude on raising prices. And by employers to gauge how desperate different workers are to get shifts, and how low an hourly rate they will accept before they refuse to work. All of it built on data harvesting.
We haven’t really done more than scratch the surface of the implications here. Certainly we have barely mentioned the scope for repression, censorship and social control.
I don’t like the look of this new landscape, with its data centres, AI agents, creepy billionaires using dumb politicians as glove puppets, weapons-based economies, anti-protest laws, controlled news media and drone warfare. It looks to me like we are heading somewhere really bad, and we seem to be accelerating rather than slowing down.
