New controls aim to restrict children’s access to parts of the internet. (Getty Images/Unsplash+)
The Conversation: New age-gating laws aimed at making the internet safer actually threaten free speech
As written in The Conversation Canada by Neil McArthur, Professor, Faculty of Arts, Director, Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba.
The United Kingdom recently launched a broad system of age verification that requires any platforms that host pornography or other “harmful” content to ensure their users are 18 or older.
Around the world, large swathes of the open web are being replaced by walled gardens. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Texas’s age restriction law. Twenty-one other states have similar laws in place, and more have been proposed.
Australia restricts young people’s access not just to specific websites, but to all social media, and it will soon extend this to search engines.
Read the full story at The Conversation Canada.
Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.