@MisuseCase

And the Overton window is shifting fast, a year ago they've said that they'd oppose age gating any other website than those hosting pornography (https://eupolicy.social/@panoptykon/114398322486562064), while today the biggest discourse they engage in on this topic is age gating social media

EDIT: I've looked again at blog posts and videos and will be asking Panoptykon to clarify their position on age-verification, as to me they give some conflicting statements at times and I'd actually want to know if they have Internet user's back or not on this issue.

@MisuseCase @robin I'd love to know, honestly.

I've been watching a hearing in European Parlament co-hosted by one of Foundation's chairwoman but this was not raised there, nor it was on most recent 2 hour interview with the same Foundation chairwoman and a panel with other experts.

Granted, their English post summarizing the EP hearing does have a more nuanced take mentioning how those regulations shift responsibility from platforms to their users https://en.panoptykon.org/dsa-vs-reality-are-children-safer-online-ep-hearing, however it does not appear the Foundation itself has changed the course described in their polish post (https://panoptykon.org/media-spolecznosciowe-od-15-lat) or in a statement given by same chairwoman to 15 powodów (15 reasons) which is a campaign advocating for "effective and proportional" age verification mechanisms.

I think it's also fair to mention communication from their Fediverse account https://eupolicy.social/@panoptykon/115491550233208488 here, where they argue that they've "came in terms" with the idea that age verification is coming and they pose their role as mediator to minimize its effect on freedom, while admitting they don't know how to introduce that mechanism without infringing upon freedom.

Again, I love what Panoptykon does usually, they've done huge amounts of work at protecting privacy and freedom, I have donated to it in the past, so it's weird they've taken such a turn. Which I think to them is located at crossroads in between protecting creatures from big tech and protecting creatures from mechanisms of surveillance and censorship.

@robin It's unfortunate how age verification craze has captured even our closest allies.

Locally in Poland, a long existing organization fighting for freedom and privacy in digital space came to be very empathetic to the idea of age verification, arguing that age verification on service provider's side IS the regulation of Big Tech we need to protect minors.

It's truthfully disheartening to see something like this, considering the threat those regulations pose to freedom and privacy of all Internet users.

I don't believe a lot of creatures in those organizations mean anything bad, but I think they underestimate the harm those regulations bring.

All of us want Internet to be safer for children and ourselves. But this is not the way to achieve this.

@danslimmon As someone who has been dealing with spam in wiki environment I think this is a bad take. Automated spam detection is hard because we don't want to accidentally target legitimate users. And legitimate user activity sometimes may look like spam to a dumb machine code.

I can only guess what you mean by a "legitimate marketing activity", however implication that it's easy to make automated spam detection system that would target all corporate advertising is silly.

Context is always important and no automatic spam filter can judge it better than a creature can.

I do agree that spammers are insanely stupid, that I did notice after years of working in the field.