Lawmakers seem to think they’re capable of solving every perceivable social media problem via legislation. Sometimes, the intents are pure but the execution is lacking. In many more cases …
At this point, I’m thinking about the silver lining. If a web of federal and state laws require everybody to prove their identity to some central identity broker, in order to prove they aren’t underage, before creating an account on Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, that’s going to interfere with a lot of spambot and AI garbage.
It’s a horrible privacy violation, of course. But at this point, with AI chatbots that are indistinguishable from humans, I don’t see how we can effectively restrict account creation to humans without some sort of oracle confirming an online account is an actual human being.
At this point, I’m thinking about the silver lining. If a web of federal and state laws require everybody to prove their identity to some central identity broker, in order to prove they aren’t underage, before creating an account on Facebook or YouTube or TikTok, that’s going to interfere with a lot of spambot and AI garbage.
It’s a horrible privacy violation, of course. But at this point, with AI chatbots that are indistinguishable from humans, I don’t see how we can effectively restrict account creation to humans without some sort of oracle confirming an online account is an actual human being.