Kian Vestenson

That's right.

Protecting children from the worst of the Internet is a pressing policy aim.

There's plenty of evidence that children using social media platforms can face real harms.

But the important thing here is that online anonymity has long been a key enabler for free expression, free speech, and access to online information.

And we need to make sure that we protect it.

Well, that's a really good example where you are opting into this face comparison to get something that's yours.

But age verification measures introduced at scale are

pull an incredible amount of personal data into the online ecosystem.

Last fall, Discord disclosed that hackers had breached a vendor doing age verification services.

Discord estimates that in this one single breach...

Around 70,000 people had their government ID cards exposed in the hack and now presumably transacted by cybercriminals on the internet.

We should also anticipate that these companies will be a target for state-backed hackers.

There are promising efforts being developed right now to do age verification in a way that's privacy preserving, but they're not ready to go to market.

One model that's gaining steam involves creating third-party digital infrastructure that would check a government-issued identification card and then immediately delete any associated sensitive data.

This would be a non-profit third-party tool.

That service could then supply a token confirming someone's age when they request it in order to access a social media platform.

But it's going to take time and money to figure out how to do this in a privacy-preserving way.

And as we invest in developing these tools, policymakers should look towards other mechanisms rather than these sort of blunt hammer age verification approaches.