为了防止孩子被窥探而去窥探孩子,这很愚蠢。
Spying on kids to save kids from spying is stupid

原始链接: https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/23/destroy-the-village/

在最新的评论文章中,科利·多克托罗(Cory Doctorow)指出,“年龄验证”强制令——通常由反大科技公司倡导者与保守派文化斗士组成的自相矛盾的联盟所推动——从根本上是有缺陷的。这些法律非但不能保护儿童,反而实际上是在强制实施大规模监控,创造了一个必须对所有用户进行细颗粒度追踪的数字环境。 多克托罗认为,由于在没有侵入性数据采集的情况下,在技术上无法验证年龄,因此此类立法通过使匿名浏览互联网在法律上变得不可能,从而服务于监控广告行业的利益。这些强制令不仅没有约束剥削儿童的平台,反而为更深层次的监控提供了基础设施,而这些监控日后可能被政府机构当作武器使用。 他坚持认为,互联网带来的危害,例如算法激进化或掠夺性定向推送,都直接源于其底层的基于监控的商业模式。多克托罗认为,真正的儿童保护需要彻底终结商业间谍行业,而不是实施那种迫使用户放弃隐私的“年龄验证”方案。最终,他将这些法案定性为一种欺骗性的“诱饵置换”,即打着保护未成年人的幌子,牺牲了基本的数字权利。

这场 Hacker News 的讨论批评了“年龄验证”强制令,认为此类政策是政府和企业实施全面监控的借口。尽管一些评论者认为技术上可以实现有效的隐私保护型年龄验证,但主流共识认为,支持者蓄意采用侵入式的“反乌托邦”手段,旨在实现对网络的全面追踪。 参与者将此与烟酒等受限商品进行类比,指出当前的验证提议要求进行过度且不成比例的身份追踪,远超保护儿童这一既定目标。许多用户担心“年龄信号”会被武器化,从而强制推行生物识别监控和与身份挂钩的设备访问。归根结底,社区并不认为这些倡议是保护儿童的措施,而是对数字匿名性的蓄意侵蚀,这反映了一种观点:社会正为了虚假的安全感而牺牲基本的自由。
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原文




Three early 20th C newsies in pageboy caps, surround by hovering, staring robots, flying on jets of flame.

The literature on harms to kids from online platforms is complex and nuanced, rife with people citing small, ambiguous studies as iron-clad evidence that kids are being destroyed by the internet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ype6c6DdHQY

It's a weird coalition of anti-Big Tech campaigners (who are rightly angry at the platforms' callous disregard for user welfare) and Heritage Foundation-backed culture warriors (who think that if their kids aren't exposed to LGBTQ content they won't come out as queer). While there's plenty these groups disagree about, they share one consensus: there should be a "minimum age" for certain kinds of internet use.

The problem is, there's no such thing as "age verification" for the internet. What we call "age verification" is actually mass surveillance, so invasive and pervasive that it makes the ad-tech industry's commercial surveillance look like some kind of cypherpunk darknet pirate utopia:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/08/14/bellovin/#wont-someone-think-of-the-cryptographers

"Age verification" means that everyone who does anything online will have to submit to fine-grained tracking and recording of all their online activities. This nightmare is the surveillance advertising industry's fondest dream, a world where it's literally illegal to avoid their tracking, all in the name of saving kids…from them!

So it's not just a weird alliance of anti-Big Tech crusaders and the conspiratorial right that's pushing for age verification – they are unwitting allies of the very tech industry they think they're fighting. Those tech industry insiders are fully aware that an "age verification" mandate is really a way for the government to teach every child how to use a VPN. They're also fully aware that the next move is to ban VPNs:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/2217934/vpn-ban-table-july-labour

Tech bosses are the ones sitting on our shoulders saying, "Go ahead, swallow that fly – it'll be fine. And if you do have to swallow a spider afterward, well, that'll surely be the end of it":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/19/shes-dead-of-course/#consensus-hallucination

Behind them is a long line of caliper-wielding grifters who claim they can use your phone's camera to distinguish a child who is 17 years, 364 days old from an adult who's just turned 18:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/facial-age-estimation

It's beyond farce. After all, whatever harms you believe the internet is inflicting on kids – and there's absolutely some kids who are being harmed by their internet use – those harms all start with surveillance. Your kids can't be targeted by algorithms without the surveillance data that's being used to target them. They can't be funneled into pro-anorexia content or extreme misogyny forums without that funnel being primed by commercial spying.

Why do tech companies spy on your kids? The same reason your dog licks its balls: because they can, and no one stops them:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/10/ice-tech/#foreseeable-outcomes

America hasn't updated its consumer privacy laws since 1988 (when Congress banned the disclosure of your VHS rentals). The EU has the GDPR, but it also has Ireland, the country where all GDPR cases against Big Tech go to die, because any tax haven inevitably becomes a crime haven:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/31/losing-the-crypto-wars/#surveillance-monopolism

Other countries have privacy laws to varying degrees, but are grossly outmatched by US tech giants, who have fused with the Trump regime, to the extent that Trump will impose penalties on your country if you attempt to regulate his tech companies – he'll even have your top officials cut off from the internet in retaliation:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next

Any attempt to save kids from online harms should start with saving kids from online surveillance, but that's the opposite of what we're doing today. After decades of failing to pass and enforce privacy controls for the internet, those same governments are breaking all land-speed records to pass "age verification" laws that make privacy illegal:

https://bsky.app/profile/rebeccawilliams.info/post/3moviqzdit22z

The fact that these bills have the firm backing of the tech industry's most controlling, most spying companies tells you everything you need to know about them:

https://web.archive.org/web/20260315022337/https://tboteproject.com/

Kids are being harmed by online spying, and so are the rest of us. Whether you think that the algorithm made Grampy go Qanon or you're suspicious that online surveillance data was used to deny you a loan, a job, or a lease, you should want privacy:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/06/privacy-first/#but-not-just-privacy

Online surveillance is being used to raise the prices you pay and lower the wages you're offered:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/06/empiricism-washing/#veena-dubal

And the same data that's being used to "verify age" today will be used by ICE tomorrow to figure out who to round up for a concentration camp:

https://www.wired.com/story/ice-asks-companies-about-ad-tech-and-big-data-tools/

You can't protect kids from online surveillance by spying on them. You just can't. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to get you to swallow a fly so they can sell you a spider, a bird, a cat, and an ICE chud in a gaiter, Oakleys and plate carrier (beneath which lurks a stick-and-poke Totenkopf tattoo).




A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

#20yrsago Darwin’s tortoise dead at 176
https://web.archive.org/web/20060704143750/http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060623/od_afp/australiaanimal_060623102146;_ylt=Ave_b4Ps2r9TGXqs5nZIVIoFO7gF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5bGVna3NhBHNlYwNzc3JlbA–zoo

#15yrsago Major US ISPs set to limit repeat infringers with throttling, limiting access to 200 websites, and copyright reeducation school https://web.archive.org/web/20111105225114/http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-20073522-261/exclusive-top-isps-poised-to-adopt-graduated-response-to-piracy/

#15yrsago Why fair use doesn’t work unless you’ve got a huge war-chest for paying lawyers https://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/

#15yrsago Model net neutrality rule for municipalities https://web.archive.org/web/20110626114610/http://envisionseattle.org/2011/06/model-net-neutrality-ordinance-for-seattle.html

#15yrsago Campus hookups: college sex isn’t new, but hookups are different https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/06/21/the-promise-and-perils-of-hook-up-culture/

#15yrsago A Brief History of the Corporation: understanding what an attention economy is and where it comes from https://ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08/a-brief-history-of-the-corporation-1600-to-2100/

#15yrsago Eliza: what makes you think I’m a psychotherapeutic chatbot? https://www.filfre.net/2011/06/eliza-part-1/

#10yrsago Broken Windows policing is nonsense https://www.nyc.gov/assets/oignypd/downloads/pdf/Quality-of-Life-Report-2010-2015.pdf

#10yrsago How it feels to be under DDoS attack https://www.oreilly.com/radar/ddos-emotions/

#10yrsago 2016: the first presidential election in 50 years without Voting Rights Act protections https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/welcome-to-the-first-presidential-election-since-voting-rights-act-gutted-179737/3/

#10yrsago Google is restructuring to put machine learning at the core of all it does https://web.archive.org/web/20180530051703/https://www.wired.com/2016/06/how-google-is-remaking-itself-as-a-machine-learning-first-company/

#10yrsago Misconfigured database exposes sensitive data for 154 million US voters https://dailydot.com/politics/154-million-voter-files-exposed-l2

#10yrsago To understand the Trump campaign, study real-estate developer hustle https://web.archive.org/web/20161028030522/https://storify.com/KC_EDM/trump-is-running-his-campaign-like-a-real-estate-d

#10yrsago Writing the Other: intensely practical advice for representing other cultures in fiction https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/23/writing-the-other-intensely-practical-advice-for-representing-other-cultures-in-fiction/

#1yrago The case for a Canadian wealth tax https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/23/billionaires-eh/#galen-weston-is-a-rat


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Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING


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