Canada Mulls Age Restrictions on AI Chatbots and Social Media

This is what the EU wants to implement. It's a zero-trust decentralised system that would provide age check without linking the user with his identity. The blue paper is out there and quite interesting

But then the sites would still use that information to serve us ads. Just parent.

Like some kind of temporary token system ? Can't be giving out my permanent age verification number to every sketchy service provider lol

If each person has a single number then that can be used to track you across sites. It doesn't matter that it has no identifying information on it's own, as soon as you need to buy something or otherwise provide more information that information will be tied to your ID.

You just described how identity providers work.

Credit Cards already do this. On top this isn't the government's job, they got sold by software company that makes the ID software in making our dumb leaders to think this is a serious issue. In California and the United Kingdom, they made it law to have an ID just to use Android, iOS, Windows, Linux or Mac OS.

That wouldn't work well if it is static. Web sites could use that code to identify you and correlate your id with other data. What is needed is a one-time code to be issued by a trusted authentication provider just for setting up a new account. That way the site couldn't correlate or use it to identify you. You remain anonymous to the social media site. Another commenter referred me to the [EU approach](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/age-verification-european-union-mini-id-wallet#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20original%20tender,upcoming%20EU%20Digital%20Identity%20Wallet). It definitely has merit. They are taking a digital wallet approach with an age verification app that issues a one-time code. So it uses your existing credentials and ID. Whatever you have that can verify age. They are publishing it as open source so presumably any country could adopt it. I am sure there are a few downsides but from what I can see all of the major ones I can think of would be mitigated. This approach doesn't prevent a parent or bad actor from authorizing a kid to use a restricted site. But I can't think of any way to prevent that and presumably and law would make it illegal for an adult to do so. It also presumes the parents have parental controls on their family computer. If it is open source then digital wallet providers like Google Wallet and Apple Pay could adopt them and Canadian Banks and credit card companies would be front of the line to offer the authentication service - they already do for identity.

Psychotic billionaires? This article is in reference to asking banks to collect and store citizenship information. Banks are publicly traded and widely held in millions of peoples RRSPs, pension funds and other investments. There may be a odd billionaire but its not like its Google, Tesla, Amazon or FB. I'm more concerned about the loss of anonymity on the web, privacy, ease of use, and the threat that those billionaires you mention have more information on me and what they will do with it. I feel Canadians need to know more about how our rights will be protected before we should jump on a new "trend".

I guarantee social media companies are lobbying for it, not only to appease the masses, but to relieve themselves of the legal accountability.

It is a very difficult problem to solve without infringing on the rights of adults and to make everything needlessly onerous or insecure. That being said another poster referred me to the EU's solution. It is an open source digital wallet app that uses existing credentials and issues a one time approval when setting up an account. It has a lot of merit. Not perfect but much better than the approach Australia has adopted and anything else I've seen so far IMO. The fact that is is open source means Canada could also adopt it. I hope the feds give this careful consideration before adopting.

If the suggestion is that Google knows your true identity and credentials then that presents its own set of problems. I assume you refer to Google's browser Chrome and not the search engine. What if I like some other browser? What information does Google store about my personal identification? What can they use it for? You suggest social media should be banned and yet you are on Listnook. Or do you just mean for minors? With Australia requiring service providers to come up with their own method of age verification it means there will be a lot - not all effective - and no guardrails for use. I would need a lot more questions answered before I'd want my country to adopt that model.

In this circumstance it’s the excuse to implement digital ID.

Yup the ID isn't for the kids. It's for the adults. 

It could be the death blow to social media. Well, maybe not the death blow, but they’re going to lose a lot of users who give a damn about privacy.

I thought it was just for social media

It's not about protecting kids that's why they haven't did the reasonable and rational thing. 

Guardrails prevent the action. It’s not a perfect solution but its biggest impact is signaling from our federal government that there are dangers here. That will be helpful for parents. I’m kind of jaded of ID sympathy. Educate people, advocate for what’s right, elect officials that are going to fight for that advocation - but our privacy has been conceded this life is too convenient

Yeah that's a regulation issue with the education system that's gotten extremely lazy.Don't force Id on the rest of us ok? Maybe go tell your school board that instead of giving iPads to kids and letting them run rampant on social media and chat gbt maybe they should. I don't know start teaching

That’s terrible - this is really not a good “if you can’t beat em join em” situation for teachers I hope this isn’t prevalent

Can't wait for my id to show up online after x site gets hacked.

To have companies force an ID on you to use Facebook or Listnook? It has nothing to do with regulation. Just wait until they make you use an ID to just log on to a phone, Tablet or Computer.

🗳️

and the companies that develop that software profit from this and everywhere it has been done, has been proven a massive failure.

Hilarious to share that link when it directly contradicts your claim. "The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age."

Here's that quote again, you already saw my reply to the news article you shared about the California law, so this is for everybody else to see that you're not being completely honest. "The law does not require photo ID uploads or facial recognition, with users instead simply self-reporting their age." The link you shared: https://www.tomshardware.com/software/operating-systems/california-introduces-age-verification-law

The parents are the main group pushing this type of legislation or mindset. So why should we suffer the consequences because of some individuals that don't take theirs job seriously ?

DD-WRT even has them, also all Canadian ISP's have free features that you can enable on your account site to block anything you want

I fully agree we should not be providing our ID to big tech as part of using their platforms. We need to take power from them, not give them more.

I can't wait to see more cockamamie age verification schemes from politicians. It's getting out of hand.

Acting as though it's up to parents to solve digital addiction and the immense harms being done to young people with developing brains on social in the name of free speech is a weak argument. These platforms have been engineered to create addiction and parents are struggling with it as well. You could make an argument that big tobacco should be allowed to advertise to young people as well because of free speech and that it's up to parents to ensure they don't smoke. That used to be the norm, but at least where I am (Canada), that is not the case now and smoking has declined because of it. Kids are not with parents a good chunk of the time between school and time with friends and work. When a child doesn't have a phone or social media access, their friends tell them how they're missing out and are not connected. FOMO. Its disingenuous and impractical to place the responsibility for this on parents.