Are there ways of doing age gating while preserving privacy? For whom? How many people need that kind of privacy, would it impact lots of (say) teens seeking help or is this about whistleblowers? Are many under 18s using VPNs for porn? Or have they just shifted to other platforms anyway? If we implemented it “perfectly” would it even do the thing we wanted?

What are the actual numbers here? If there’s lots of fuss about vpns but actually while there’s been a big jump in use it’s not under 18s anyway it wouldn’t help.

> Privacy is a human right, and one which is essential for effective democracy.

And does this get broken enough for age gating something? We age gate alcohol to reasonable success, sometimes that involves showing id.

I’m not arguing for age gating here but I do think understanding the tradeoffs may require more evidence.

> What is there to research?

The trade-offs and how many people care and about what specifically.

E.g., you say "Privacy is a human right", so why is it that half the websites I visit ask for permission to share details of how I use those sites with more corporate "trusted partners" than there were students and staff combined in my secondary school? I'm all on board with just banning this kind of analytics, but there's a lot of people who are more angry with the EU for forcing companies to at least ask for permission before they sell your data to all those analytics firms.

Good thing then that Democracy isn’t gonna defend itself.

But that's the point, circumvent democracy, to set the stage for techno-fascism. The citizen has no rights which the state is bound to respect.

> What is there to research?

Probably how they can best attach a license to VPN use like they're doing with TV.