Authored by Nick Corbishley via NakedCapitalism.com,

“It is for parents to raise their children, and not the platforms.”

Those were the words of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday as she announced the readiness of the EU’s online age verification, ahem, platform.As we’ve beenwarningsince November 2024, these platforms are ultimately a Trojan Horse for digital identity systems, which are in turn intended to serve as the cornerstone for the digital gulags being quickly assembled around the world.

What gets rarely mentioned in the public debate, including in Von der Leyen’s 11-minute speech below, is the fact that online age verification inevitable traps everyone, not just minors, in its web. “Protecting the children”, however, is always aseductive pretextfor launching otherwise socially unacceptable policies. And there are few more socially unacceptable policies than the controlled death of online privacy and anonymity.

It is for parents to raise their children. Not platforms.The European Age Verification App is ready ↓https://t.co/EumEPEJOI7

To save readers from having to stomach Von der Leyen’s sickly sweet presentation of the European Age Verification App, here is a summary of the main points [incidentally, while listening to her address, punctuated with beaming smiles, I kept thinking of Pink Floyd’s classic tune, “Mother”, particularly the line “Momma’s gonna make all your nightmares come true”*]:

The app, VdL says, is necessary to make the online world safer for children— safer from online bullying, highly addictive content, highly personalised advertising, harmful and illegal content, and grooming from online predators.

VdL claims to have herself “carefully listened to the parents,who do not have proper solutions to protect their children” whose concerns she shares. “It is”, she says, “for EU institutions parents to raise their kids and not for platforms.”

To protect children from the dangers of the online world, the EU needs a “harmonised approach”— in other words, a “Europe-wide technical solution for age verification.” And the good news is that the European Age Verification app is “technically ready” and will soon be “available for people to use.”

VdL likened providing proof of age to access online platforms to supermarkets asking young people for ID to purchase alcoholic beverages. What she doesn’t say is that people of all ages, even adults well into retirement age, will have to provide proof of age to access online platforms. That is a major distinction that doesn’t once get mentioned. Also, once this system is in place, users would not just momentarily display their ID like one does when buying alcohol. Instead, they’d have to submit their ID to third-party companies, raising major concerns over who receives, stores, and controls that data.

Source: ZeroHedge News