We sadly have to make the dark web and so called “hidden” Internet’s the norm.

I’ve found documents, which alongside all the flowery language of protecting the children, states in section 2.3 that providers are obliged to perform age verification upon account creation, relying on “the age verification tool” (which I assume is the EU Digital Identity Wallet).

So if these hypocrites could just pause patting themselves on the back, and for once, explain that the default experience, for at least large online platforms, is one that is also considered “appropriate” for children of all ages; and therefore extremely limiting for adults. Well, unless you just integrate your government issued ID into a wallet, that (at least locally) creates links between it and your accounts (you might want to keep anonymous).

There’s also a lot of decent points that are being made, but which could easily be viewed separate from the identity-gating of the “open” internet. An age-bracket, based on a local, self-reported, password-protected ‘date of birth’ field, would be more than sufficient, but instead the EU chooses to fundamentally distrusts its citizens, while asking for unreasonable levels of trust in return. And similar to Google’s reCAPTCHA, I don’t even have, nor have desires to have, an iOS or Android smartphone that supports the application.