...because it ain't gonna be me.
About age verification legislation and its problems. Trigger warnings. All of them.
Curse the little shitheads. I mean, Blessed be their stupid little hearts. They are the future and all, but keep them away from me. I don't hate them, but they make me feel deeply uncomfortable. I want to curse. I want to talk about dirty things. I want to have deep, meaningful conversations about how the universe came to be and how the prospect of an all-knowing creator that punishes evil, plunged the majority of people into mental and financial submission whilst still acting like utter cunts. - What I don't want is to push a drooling, booger-eating leprechaun away from my freshly washed kilt, while I lose faith in humanity, because you keep watching short form content on your smartphone, instead of looking after the little pest. So kindly and in the words of Eminem: Step off, bitch!
And while you are leaving, take that bullshit narrative of protection with you. Safety this and safety that. Yatta yatta. A little identification here, a little more unsolicited mass-surveillance there. Fuck you! All this is, is the constant erosion of privacy. And if you shrug and say "But I have nothing to hide", then fuck you again... twice! Neither do I, but if you still argue this in the later first half of the 21st century, you clearly haven't been paying attention for the last 20 years.
There are giant problems floating around.
First:
Tech Bro fucknuggets will take everything they can get their grubby little hands on, if it helps them getting even richer. They are the reason why you still buy the same software every month with your usage right ending the minute you stop, why retail employees have to piss into bottles, because they don't get bathroom breaks, why unsocial media platforms show you posts that are guaranteed to agitate you, instead of being helpful or truly entertaining and why at some point, your health insurance will back out of a claim, because you smoked, didn't go on your daily walk or didn't eat healthily enough. Collecting age information also conveniently puts you into your bracket as a relevant target group.
Second:
No one sifts through all this data. It is far too much. It will be filtered by an AI product. Not only will this conveniently facilitate large contracts with makers of said product, it will also bring its own host of problems. The state of affairs is, that, while these are good at pattern recognition, they are far from being free of errors. Just take a look at CrashPilot's code writing or all the slop videos out there, that make no sense whatsoever (except for causing brain rot). I don't think staking someone's freedom and reputation on that premise is a good idea. It seems rather careless.
Third:
Looking out for and watching over the little shits falls firmly into the Responsibility of the parents, not some companies or the state. This all stands and falls with their disposition. If they are caring, loving parents, the garden gnome will probably turn out fine. If they are negligent, ... well they shouldn't be. They manufactured the litte shit and with that comes responsibility. Yes. I imagine that job to be hard, but you made your bed, now go lie in it and stop punishing me for it.
Fourth:
Criminals are gonna crime. Now, I don't have a lot of criminal energy, let alone one of predatory nature, but even I can imagine only a handful of steps, that would make a system undetectable, impenetrable and without diddly squat anyone could ever do about it. Sadly, being filthy rich and part of a worldwide network that facilitates beauty pageants to navigate underage girls into the hands of despicable monsters, seems to work, too.
Fifth:
Teenagers are nosy cunts. And they can be quite ingenious when it comes to breaking the rules. There are already stories floating around about them bypassing AI-powered face checks with video game characters.
Sixth:
No software is ever complete, safe or bugfree. Making it open source only partially fixes that. It must have been about a week after release of that shiny new, European age verification software, when a video surfaced of someone breaking it in two minutes flat.
In conclusion:
The law is toothless, where it counts and possibly dangerous, where it doesn't.
I want the SafeWhatever for EVERYTHING in my life strictly... disabled. I want to declare my household devoid of anyone needing protection against sensitive ... anythings. I don't need parenting controls. I don't need tech conglomerates phishing for my private info. I don't need SafeSearch or SafetyCores.
I'm an adult. A consenting one too. The only thing I need, is a good Safeword. The only thing that triggers me, is corporate overreach for the sake of profit.