It is about time the most important progressive State gave the tone and sent a clear message that this not about politics. The bill received 65 votes and 15 abstentions, nobody voted against it. It must pass two more steps before it comes into effect. Regardless of where I stand on IP protection, I will always support biometric age verification laws through every means possible. It’s moving too slow for my patience, but Ireland and the European Union are already onboard while the UK still pretends it is doing something since announcing in 2019 they would be the first to implement age verification!!! This was 5 years ago. In the meantime they got themselves into a full-blown strangulation epidemic where kids ask their teachers how to “safely strangle” little girls during sex, but privacy is sooooooo important, we don’t know what to do, while people are dropping dead from strangulation in the UK. You want lessons in hypocrisy, look no further than the Commonwealth on age verification for porn. I’m sure we will be last in the world. As usual.
I hope that after porn access is regulated and dealt with around the globe, we will immediately initiate bills for age verification and ongoing biometric checks to access social media content, open a social media account, or create content distributed on social media or engage in speech on social media. Anyone who does anything online should be biometrically verified. Enough crying about disinformation while opposing biometric verification. You can’t have it both ways.
…But but Netflix and Amazon and and… You’re already kind of verified on Netflix, so spare me the drama! To watch a streaming service you give your credit card. Your banking data is already linked with most of your biometric info. Should kids get verified on their parents Netflix account? I really don’t care, but sure, why not, the more verifications the better. There could be an initial check every time you open a movie (it could be a fingerprint or iris check, super simple), and if it is a child, they could only access child content and zero regular content. If a parent decides to watch an r-rated movie with the entire family, then there isn’t anything that can be done. It is obviously child abuse, but it wouldn’t be the platforms fault in this example.
I also want biometric identifier databases of all porn creators and actors and legal requirements for biometric signatures for consent (i.e. to make sure they are not given by anyone other than persons depicted in porn videos), this will take care of deepfakes among other things. Companies should be barred from exploiting pornography because they cannot give biometric consent and they are not actors, therefore they should automatically be recategorized as traffickers. It would be the most normal thing to prevent companies from profiting from trafficking. All porn profits should be seized from companies and donated to charities that fight gender-based violence. Of course this will require new bills specifically designed to freeze porn companies assets and to declare that any trusts they may have set up are invalid, and redirect all funds to deserving charities.
As for social media, there is currently a heap of disturbing criminal content circulating on social media platforms, mainly Youtube and Tik Tok, and the courts have been waaaaay too nice using section 230 as pretext. At times it feels as if only a nuclear war may rid the earth of that stupid section, and you know what, so be it. I want 230 gone. Not holding Youtube liable for animal abuse videos is the straw that just broke the camel’s back. Humanity has long overstayed its due on this all-too-generous Earth. Maybe it is time for humans to exit.
PS. based on the above, I no longer oppose a Tik Tok ban, not because of national security concerns, but precisely because Tik Tok hosts animal abuse videos with total impunity. Ban it!