The Latest Government Gift to Big Tech and Corporate Power
Lawmakers claim new age verification laws are about ‘child safety’ – but, in reality, they expand surveillance and silence dissent.
As age verification laws sweep the US and the prospect of a federal "online safety" law similar to the UK's gains momentum, boosters of these policies claim that they're necessary to rein in "Big Tech." But in reality, these laws expand surveillance, threaten startups and independent communities, and further consolidate Big Tech's power.
Democratic leaders, centrist political pundits, and the mainstream media falsely claim that removing anonymity from the web and censoring content via age verification is "cracking down on Big Tech." They frame privacy and civil rights advocates as somehow doing the bidding of Big Tech.
Lawmakers in at least 11 states are currently attempting to pass online age verification bills. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul has sought to mandate age verification in New York, telling Big Tech companies, "You’re not going to profit off the mental health of children in the state of New York." At the national level, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat from Massachusetts, introduced a bill to update the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) to mandate age verification. On stage to a crowd at Welcomefest, a centrist Democrat conference in June, Auchincloss railed against civil liberties groups who have fought against age verification laws, saying that he was "unwilling to accept the lecture on corporate power" from those who are "carrying the water for the most pernicious, nefarious corporations in modern history, which are social media corporations."
But despite what Democratic lawmakers claim, the expansion of online surveillance through age verification and "child online safety" bills is a massive gift to Big Tech. Large tech companies and Silicon Valley billionaires, who have aligned themselves with authoritarian government efforts to surveil citizens, stand to gain tremendously from these laws.