Meta Joins Google In Turning Its Back On The Open Web, And Embracing Unconstitutional Mandates That Pretend To ‘Protect The Children’::A month ago we wrote about Google effectively “pulling up the ladder” on the open internet by embracing age verification mandates as part of a regulatory approach to child safety. As we pointed out at the time, this is bizarre and stupid for a variety of reasons, but also not too surprising. It’s bizarre because…
It’s possible to implement parental controls without breaching the users privacy. For example, a website could have a tag saying it’s for adults only and the browser could check this fully on the client side, and parents would just need to press a checkbox in the configuration to use it. Google has enough clout to pull it off through Chrome, the fact they don’t proves that this is not about the children but a justification to collect more private data.
Google can do what it likes with Chrome, sure. What about Firefox, Edge, Safari and the others?
Edge is basically Chrome anyway, and Google proposes new web standards all the time.