Jennifer Huddleston
William Faulkner once wrote, “To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.” Recently, the Supreme Court refused to pause a Mississippi law that would require age verification for social media. Unfortunately, this may mean what we understand are the types of consequences for speech and privacy age verification laws create.
Do you think that laws like this exclusively impact “adult content” like PornHub? Think again. Laws like the one that could now be enforced in Mississippi are much broader than the Texas law that was recently upheld in the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton case. They are more like the UK law that went into enforcement earlier this summer and has already resulted in sweeping changes.
The UK law shows that broad definitions of what is considered “harmful to minors,” like those also used in the Mississippi law, can impact general-purpose sites like Reddit and X, both of which are enacting age verification barriers to access at least some portions of their websites. Want to download Telegram or Discord in the UK? Hope you are comfortable providing a government ID or facial scan to access these messaging and community apps. Even music streaming app Spotify will now require you to verify your age to access its full content.
What happens with all these government IDs and face scans? The collection of this additional data comes with privacy risks and vulnerabilities for users. Recent headlines only further illustrate this. The dating information app Tea recently suffered a data breach that exposed millions of user selfies and driver’s license pictures used for verification.
Age verification laws would only increase the likelihood that an individual’s sensitive data could be compromised for merely trying to access their standard platforms. Unsurprisingly, many individuals would be uncomfortable doing so, particularly those who may be more privacy-conscious for their safety, such as whistleblowers and political dissidents, or those trying to escape abuse or refugee communities.
Unsurprisingly, many who are frustrated by these requirements or concerned about the potential privacy implications have begun using virtual private networks (VPNs) to make it look like they are not in the UK. In fact, free VPNs topped the app store in the UK in the immediate aftermath of the law’s enforcement, and we will likely see similar things in Mississippi now. But this is not a full solution to the law’s privacy problems. Some VPNs come with their own security risk, and unfortunately, government officials have suggested that promoting VPN use as a potential workaround could itself lead to fines and penalties.
But why should Americans outside of Mississippi care? The UK government officials have stated that America’s leading tech companies and even the American individuals who are “senior managers” at those companies could face penalties or jail if they are non-compliant. These types of laws resulted in the blocking of certain information around issues like Ukraine and Gaza, limiting the potential speech of Americans on those issues on platforms like X and Reddit. When such laws are enacted at a state level, it can either result in that state’s citizens not having access to certain technology or information or a de facto federal law where platforms constantly comply with the most restrictive versions even if it means limiting access to speech or sacrificing their users’ privacy.
The nature of the internet could mean that we all could likely find ourselves subject to some of the consequences of age verification, even if we don’t live in a jurisdiction that technically mandates it.
We’ve seen this before. Those annoying cookie pop-ups required at the bottom of many websites started as a requirement of European laws, but are often seen globally. Same thing with any other number of laws that have yielded a “Brussels effect” and become de facto global laws, like the General Data Protection Rule (GDPR) or universal charger requirements. Similarly, a “Sacramento effect” can occur when a single state passes laws that require significant changes and compliance costs to operate in that state. When companies invest significant funds in such compliance efforts, the changes can expand across borders rather than allowing those companies to maintain separate products.
We all want children and teens to be protected from harm online and offline. Proposals to institute age verification, however, do not solve problems; they create new ones that limit individual liberty. With that in mind, we should reflect on the words of Benjamin Franklin and be cautious of those who would seek to trade liberty for safety even in the name of keeping kids safe online.