In the foggy sea of u200bu200bthe presumed “new problems” caused by digital platforms, one occasionally glimpses, such as the Flying Dutchman, “age verification”, the tool invoked to “protect minors” from exposure to “inappropriate content” which however , without fail, creates “privacy problems” and therefore must be regulated with caution if not outright prohibited.
Although the use of a foreign language may suggest that we are dealing with a new issue (e) or related only to content with a large user base but “forbidden to minors”, this is not the case. In fact, it involves at its root the way in which the commercial models of internet services have been conceived and put into practice from the outset and the loss of the role of law, transformed into a bargaining chip like any other product.
The case
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The need to verify the age of the person stipulating an agreement has existed in Italy since 1942, i.e. since the Civil Code was enacted. It applies to every contract, and therefore also to offers services via electronic communication networks and to those who use them, regardless of whether a counterpart in money, data or whether the use is free.
Therefore, to resolve the problematic relationship between minors and services based on inappropriate content, it is sufficient to apply (possibly in Italian) an already existing regulation. This is what the glorious MC-link already did in the 90s – proving to be a pioneer in this too. Unlike other operators that allowed registration without any checks, MC-link asked for a copy of an identity document as a condition for activating the services. Furthermore, the contract stipulated that the customer was responsible for the correct use of the access service, adopting the necessary precautions to avoid abuses. In other words, everyone had to do their part. Of course, everything can be forged and a photocopy of a document is not the best guarantee (and, however, still today the purchase of a SIM requires the same fulfillment). However, the point is that someone, at the time, had the problem of complying with the law at the cost of losing users.
Contract law also regulates the specific case of minors. On the one hand, the parents are legally responsible for the acts performed by the child and if, without their knowledge, he “puts a signature” or checks a checkbox on an online form, they have the right to cancel the agreement. In parallel, parents have the obligation (still in force, at least so it appears) to control the behavior of the people over whom they exercise legal authority. The “combined provision” of these rules is that a minor cannot stipulate contracts autonomously and that it is up to the parents to ensure that he does not get into trouble or cause it.
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Therefore, once the words “age-verification” have been translated into Italian, it is easy to realize that the solution to the problem is already widely available: the services must be provided only to adult users, whose age can also be verified indirectly. This is, for example, what Amazon does when it replaces the presentation of an identity card with a credit card number or indication of a bank account held by the customer.
But then why are we still talking about whether or not to verify the age of those who use a service instead of using the regulatory tools already available?
The answer does not only concern electronic communication services, but – more generally – the forced change of minors into consumers of goods and services, which has made it essential to convince adults of the non-necessity of their role, and to believe that it is anti-historical to prevent minors to “do it yourself”.
Therefore, it is not good to insert entry barriers that keep users out because earnings are reduced; it is not politically presentable to tell parents that instead of complaining they should do their duty, and the latter do not like being reminded of their moral obligations, even before legal ones.
It was December 1996 when I presented this topic at the Consumer Forum Intergroup of the European Parliament, but almost thirty years later we are still talking about the same thing, but with a substantial difference. At the time, the public debate was not (too much) conditioned by commercial needs and therefore revolved around major issues such as the relationship between freedom of expression and anonymity in the use of content of various kinds. However, in what would later become Big Tech (and not only) there was already an interest in understanding how to create and expand a “market” at all costs to sell everything to anyone.
Over time it became increasingly clear that the commercial success of electronic communication services and platforms depended on the attenuation – or rather the cancellation – of the rights. The “free internet” gabola, on which the dystopian system in which we live was built, would have worked much less well if, from the outset, the banner of “free for all” had been waving that of individual responsibility.
If (still) today we have the problem of “protecting minors” from the availability of “inappropriate” content, the responsibility lies with those who, for reasons of profit, have unscrupulously chosen not to follow sacrosanct rules, but also with those who have failed to enforce them, and out of ignorance or laziness abdicated his duties.
It is, therefore, bitter to note that the public debate on “age verification” is concerning issues relating to “privacy” or “free speech” instead of reflecting on the changed meaning that the word “law” has taken on in our time. From an instrument of mediation of opposing visions of the world, the law has become (in the minds of individuals) the banner in the name of which to impose the prevalence of one’s individual convictions. In parallel (or perhaps because of them), in the strategies of Big Tech it has represented an obstacle to be overcome in the name of an idea of progress that has much more to do with the electronic slavery of people induced by an intoxicating sense of absolute freedom how artificial, than with the improvement of their living conditions.
It would be easy to end this article speaking rhetorically of the “weak” who remain crushed by a vice whose jaws are represented by individual hedonism and the pursuit of profit. But that would be too simplistic an explanation, and all in all, hypocritically self-absolutive. It would mean accepting the ineluctability of the situation and justifying, in the name of “business as usual”, continuing to complain, on the one hand, about the “risks for minors” but then, on the other, encouraging them to adopt the same behaviors, indeed, legitimizing them.
“Business as usual”, indeed.