Age verification proposals are often presented as a simple tradeoff: sacrifice a little privacy to better safeguard children online. But that framing overlooks a more fundamental question. What happens to people who cannot verify their age at all? This is particularly a problem when users are required to prove their age with identity documents.
Moreover, people will be less willing to upload video of George Floyd dying, or of brutality and massacre in Gaza, or to stream from the streets during the 2014 Ferguson unrest.
Visceral video from the ground accelerates popular movements. They want us dependent on news agencies for our only window into the rest of the world.