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In April, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen presented a system for so-called age verification on social media that the EU has been developing for some time. Internet users are expected to show their identification to an app, which presumably then grants them access to certain websites – the exact details of an EU legislation on age verification are not clear yet, but a proposal is expected this summer. von der Leyen assures the public that the app will not be used to identify persons, and will not complicate data protection and personal integrity.
Vague promises of uninfringed integrity mean little in a political environment where online anonymity is constantly problematised. The formal motivation behind this unusual legislation is protecting children from certain types of online content, perhaps sexual, economic or social manipulation. Internet users who are not of age risk life-altering consequences for decisions they are not mature enough to make – that much is agreeable, and it ties into a wider public debate about the propriety of letting children roam freely on the Internet.
But that is not the only debate that this EU age verification mandate draws energy from; the other aspect is the desire of governments to censor political content.
Wave of political censorship in Europe
This movement towards a controlled and surveilled Internet is also what produced terrible proposals such as Chat Control 2.0, where every online communication service would have its messages scanned for potential illicit content, mainly child pornography. This dystopian idea was met with harsh opposition in the end, with the risks to personal integrity being obvious to most parties across the political spectrum. False positives and privacy intrusions killed Chat Control as an ‘agreeable’ solution to the proliferation of child pornography, as did the basic drawbacks of surveillance; the crime will simply adapt and move into the darkness where it can continue unabated. Ordinary law-abiding Internet users instead pay the price, with abolished privacy. It is not unlikely that European governments would have been able to use Chat Control 2.0 to target online actors with uncomfortable political criticism.
Age verification is not nearly as controversial as totalitarian message scanning. But it ought to be.
It is in fact a surrender of the secrecy of your personal identity to present your identification card, passport, or other legal documents to a computer. We only have the EU’s words that this will not compromise anonymity. That an EU-developed age verification app is rolled out in a political climate where online anonymity is seen almost as a moral flaw should however not be seen as a coincidence.
In Sweden, the Social Democrats have for a few years stressed the supposed importance of accountability when it comes to messaging on social media. Politicians and other public figures have attempted to make online “hate” a political issue, and the Social Democrats have even proposed an online police force – ostensibly to tackle violent rhetoric against persons and political or ethnic groups – but fairly obviously more or less as a way to shoehorn law enforcement into social media disputes. In this debate, the word “anonymous” is used to stress the immorality and cravenness of harsh – yet legal – online discourse.
This is where we must not forget that the right to anonymity is one of the fundamental cornerstones in just about all democracies. The freedom to express oneself and to speak one’s mind must not be burdened by the consequences of said expression or speech. It is not illegal to pen an anonymous letter and stick it to a local bulletin board. In certain contexts, tracking down producers of messages, who may be whistleblowers, is explicitly even illegal for authorities to do. The value that anonymity has to guaranteeing freedom of speech is manifested through this right, which is enshrined in the Swedish constitution, and equivalents certainly exist in various forms in other European constitutions as well.
It stands to reason that it should not be illegal to exercise the same rights on the Internet. The only difference is that the Internet seems to not enjoy the same sanctity as the practical world. There are few critics of the attempts to impose age verification on social media that have taken place in many countries, even though these always mean that anonymity will be compromised.
In many European countries, the crack-down on certain online content, mainly in the form of social media posts, has reached absurd levels. Only recently, the British police announced that it would finally cease questioning persons on “non-crime hate incidents” – that is, content which was not technically illegal but which met the politically flexible definition of “hate”. This only happened after thousands of British citizens had already been victimised and made afraid to speak their mind on certain social issues due to unpredictable police visits.
There seems to be no checks in place to make sure that the identities of anonymous social media users won’t be used to bring the hammer down similarly in other European countries as well. One country which in some aspects sets the tone for EU policy, Germany, has faced scrutiny both domestically and abroad for criminally charging persons for derogatory social media posts about certain politicians. People have had their homes raided and electronic devices confiscated over disparaging comments about ministers, such as one pensioner who called the minister of economy an idiot. Another person was investigated for calling a leader of the Green Party fat, and likely only avoided a criminal charge as the platform the message was posted on, Gab, refused to disclose the user’s identity (anonymity saves the day). This is a trend of recklessness and government overreach that may well be exported across Europe as anonymity is further eroded.
A reasonable alternative
If one returns to the supposed motivation behind all this Internet legislation, how should one proceed to protect children from harmful online influences, if identification at the connection point is, as the conservative position demands, tossed in the bin?
It is true that today’s youth suffers from overreliance on smart devices and Internet connectivity, starting at alarmingly low ages. Even whether the device is connected to the Internet or not, a screen seems to serve as a distraction easily deployed by parents who cannot resist the temptation to trade their responsibility for a few moments at ease. This is a cultural decadence that is common in the West, and which must be eliminated – if parents simply did not give their under-aged children a smart phone or a tablet, there would not be a need to universally regulate the Internet and ruin the freedom of adult users.
Perhaps this is best done through age limits on the devices. In theory, an age limit on smart phones and tablets would minimise cases of children from slipping into unhealthy and asocial Internet habits, or at least reduce it to a manageable problem. A comparison can be made with alcohol consumption, which although it definitely occurs among youths, is very limited by means of strong social taboos and especially due to legal barriers to procurement. Where is the most reasonable point at which to confirm the legality of an alcohol consumer – at the cashier, or when the mouth touches the bottle?
An age limit on purchases of smart devices would not completely eliminate minors from Internet access, as there would doubtlessly be domestic usage, away from the reach of imposed age limits. It is for example unlikely that home computers could reasonably be encompassed by such a law without complications. But an age limit on smart devices helps set a new cultural standard, and informs the parental duty to limit their children’s connectivity.