{"id":3931,"date":"2026-07-22T04:13:49","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T04:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3931"},"modified":"2026-07-22T04:13:49","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T04:13:49","slug":"lawmakers-say-theyre-protecting-kids-but-their-age-checks-are-quietly-building-an-id-requirement-for-the-entire-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3931","title":{"rendered":"Lawmakers say they\u2019re protecting kids\u2014but their age checks are quietly building an ID requirement for the entire internet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute who also sits on TikTok\u2019s US Content Advisory Council, told Fortune<\/em> that each of these laws gets sold as a narrow fix for kids, and each one ends up asking something much bigger of everyone else.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not just about verifying the age of kids,\u201d Inserra said. \u201cTo verify the age of kids, you have to verify the age of everyone, and that means everyone\u2019s ID.\u201d A platform can\u2019t apply scrutiny only to the accounts that turn out to belong to minors: it has to ask every user to prove their age before it knows who\u2019s who. <\/p>\n

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That mechanism is what turns a child-safety law into an identity mandate for the entire user base, adults included, Inserra said.<\/p>\n

Six months into its ban, more than 60% of Australian 12- to 15-year-olds who had social media accounts beforehand still have access to at least one platform. \u201cAny of these other mechanisms can be fooled,\u201d Inserra said, describing kids in Australia and abroad who\u2019ve beaten facial-recognition and age-inference checks with small changes, like a ponytail or wearing makeup. One mother even caught her son using an eyebrow pencil to draw on a mustache to look older for a camera scan. \u201cEven the show-your-papers mechanisms can be subjected to fake IDs,\u201d Inserra added, \u201cor better yet, you just have a family account where your parents or some other person just makes an account for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, Australia\u2019s regulator has explicitly barred platforms from demanding government ID even when a user\u2019s age is in doubt. The ban hasn\u2019t delivered the safety outcome it promised, but the country has already drawn a line on how much identifying information it\u2019s willing to force out of everyone to try to get there.<\/p>\n

Ofcom\u2019s July 16 investigation into TikTok is the crackdown Inserra predicted would come. \u201cWhen these laws, these policies fail to live up to the hype that they promise, because people can get around them\u2026 these regulators will crack down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing in the UK, and it\u2019s only\u2014it\u2019s starting in Australia. I think it\u2019s only a matter of time before this happened.\u201d Ofcom says TikTok\u2019s age-inference model\u2014the lightest-touch method, guessing age from behavior rather than documents\u2014may have missed a significant share of underage users. The regulator\u2019s message to platforms is to switch to something \u201chighly effective,\u201d a phrase that in practice means something closer to ID or biometric verification.<\/p>\n

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That escalation is already spreading past the platforms. \u201cThat\u2019s why they\u2019re also going after VPNs, or considering going after VPNs, in the UK, because once again that\u2019s a way around the system,\u201d Inserra said. The UK\u2019s House of Lords voted to require VPN providers to run their own age checks and to bar minors from using them at all, after VPN adoption spiked in response to the Online Safety Act. A tool built for privacy and security, used by journalists and remote workers as much as anyone trying to dodge an age gate, becomes another front in an enforcement fight that started with a much narrower target.<\/p>\n

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France finalized its under-15 ban this week after a scramble to reconcile its two legislative chambers before the summer recess, aiming for enforcement by the start of the school year in September. It\u2019s the country\u2019s second attempt: a 2023 law requiring parental consent for under-15 accounts never got European Commission approval and was barely enforced. This time, reporting on the bill has already surfaced the identical choice Inserra describes: an ID scan that\u2019s reliable but easy to lend to a younger sibling and privacy-invasive for everyone required to submit one, or a facial-age estimate that protects privacy but is easy to fool. Coverage of the bill has also flagged the same workaround risk Australia already lived through \u2014 under-15s simply switching to newer platforms or using a VPN to get around the check entirely.<\/p>\n

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Fortune<\/em> has tracked this same tension building on the industry and legislative side in the US, where social media companies are fighting the \u201cage verification trap\u201d as biometric collection becomes a compliance requirement, and where Congress advanced the Kids Online Safety Act and App Store Accountability Act through committee within 48 hours of each other, over the same privacy objections now surfacing in Paris.<\/p>\n

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Inserra doesn\u2019t expect the US to land in the same place as the UK or France. Instead, he recalls the Supreme Court precedent protecting anonymous speech as a reason he thinks American courts will resist a law that functions as a national identification requirement to get online. <\/p>\n

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\u201cTo verify the age of kids, you have to verify the age of everyone, and that means everyone\u2019s ID,\u201d he said, which likely won\u2019t fly stateside. <\/p>\n

But across Australia, the UK, and France, it may be something regulators inch towards.<\/p>\n

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“It’s not just about verifying the age of kids,” said Cato’s David Inserra. “To verify the age of kids, you have to verify the age of everyone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-media"],"yoast_head":"\nLawmakers say they\u2019re protecting kids\u2014but their age checks are quietly building an ID requirement for the entire internet - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3931\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lawmakers say they\u2019re protecting kids\u2014but their age checks are quietly building an ID requirement for the entire internet - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\""It's not just about verifying the age of kids," said Cato's David Inserra. 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