Governments and global organizations may have arrived at the winning formula for making Big Tech play along threaten them with the stick of huge money fines and dangle some carrot they like best in front of them at the same time.
And that latter could just be – giving access to even more personal data tech juggernauts are allowed to harvest and exploit. Harmful as it may be to everybody else in the world that is absolutely key to their business models, massive bottom lines, and the power arising from it all.
Now, we’re hearing that a Big Tech group called Digital Trust & Safety Partnership (DTSP) has come out in support of age verification in its response to the UN’s wide-ranging Global Digital Compact.
DTSP’s members – Google, Apple, Meta, TikTok, Microsoft (plus LinkedIn), Amazon (via Twitch), Reddit, Pinterest, Zoom, and Match Group, Bitly, Discord – have “rebranded” age verification as “age assurance” and reveal that they are willing to combat harmful online content – but that this could, to actually work, highly likely mean, “collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID.”
So that’s the carrot Big Tech wants for itself in return for playing ball with the UN and its initiative – which itself, opponents say, is a gateway to more censorship and that of perhaps the most dangerous kind: things like linking individuals’ digital ID to their bank accounts.
We obtained a copy of the submission for you here.
A DTSP submission in response to the UN initiative refers to the Global Digital Compact’s structural elements, the group said, touting at the same time the “experience of practitioners” when it comes to implementing “trust and safety.”
(Cynics would say that would be experience in intense censorship implemented on those platforms.)
One of the four points DTSP has come up with in the submission is titled, “Guiding principles and best practices for age assurance provide an example of how our framework can be applied to identify examples of practices to protect young people online.”
This relies on a previous recent DTSP report and lists the different ways age assurance (Newspeak for, “verification”) can be achieved. “Effective approach” is one of them – clearly a favored approach, because it allows service providers “confidence that a user is a given age.”
But, the paper notes – a highly accurate (i.e, “effective”) method – “may depend on collection of new personal data such as facial imagery or government-issued ID.”
That’s Big Tech’s way of saying to the UN – “We’re just sayin’.”
