Welcome back to Free Speech Friday!

All across the internet, parents and lawmakers are calling for tech companies to verify users' ages online. They frame these efforts as a smart, reasonable, and harmless way to keep kids safe. But that's not what age verification does!!!

Age verification efforts are a major threat to privacy, freedom, and the very idea of an open web. No one knows this better than Eric Goldman. He is the associate dean for research at Santa Clara University School of Law and co-Director of the High Tech Law Institute.

He recently wrote a fantastic paper on age verification, soon to be published in the Stanford Technology Law Review. Today he's joining me for Free Speech Friday to talk about how age verification works online and how it's all ultimately a trojan horse for government control surveillance, and censorship.

Eric's paper on age verification: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5208739

***** Buy a subscription to my Tech and Online Culture newsletter, User Magazine to support my work!! 🙏 https://www.usermag.co *****

Subscribe to my newsletter: ⁠⁠

https://www.usermag.co⁠⁠

https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz

https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0

https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz

https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social

Don't Get Mad At Your Loved One