Age verification mandates are spreading fast, and they’re ushering in a new age of online surveillance, censorship, and exclusion for everyone—not just young people. Age-gating laws generally require websites and apps to collect sensitive data from every user, often through invasive tools like ID checks, biometric scans, or other dubious “estimation” methods, before granting them access to certain content or services. Lawmakers tout these laws as the silver-bullet solution to “kids’ online safety,” but in reality, age-verification mandates wall off large swaths of the web, build sweeping new surveillance infrastructure, increase the risk of data breaches and real-life privacy harms, and threaten the anonymity that has long allowed people to seek support, explore new ideas, and organize and build community online.
Join our panel for a conversation about what we stand to lose as more and more governments push to age-gate the web. We’ll break down how these laws work, who they exclude, and how these mandates threaten privacy and free expression for people of all ages.
The Human Cost of Online Age Verification
Thursday, January 15th
12:00 PM - 1:00 PM Pacific
This event is LIVE and FREE!
Accessibility
This event will be live-captioned and recorded. EFF is committed to improving accessibility for our events. If you have any accessibility questions regarding the event, please contact events@eff.org.
Event Expectations
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Upcoming Events
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Recording
We hope you and your friends can join us live! If you can't make it, we’ll post the recording afterward on YouTube and the Internet Archive!
About the Speakers
Rindala Alajaji
Rindala "Rin" Alajaji (she/her) is the Associate Director of State Affairs at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, primarily focused on state legislation impacting digital privacy, reproductive rights, and free expression. Prior to joining EFF, Rin worked to advance and defend civil rights and education justice policies in state legislatures as GLSEN's State and Local Policy Manager and Equality Florida's Public Policy Manager. She is a graduate of Columbia University's Human Rights Studies M.A. program, and holds a B.S. in Applied Psychology and Global Public Health from New York University.
Alexis Hancock
Alexis is the Director of Engineering at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the works to keep the networks strong and encrypted by managing the Certbot project. As well as ensuring external EFF tools for the public are well supported. She researches an intersection of issues on digital rights, encryption, and consumer technology. She believes in an open and equitable web through encouraging expansion of security by default, bridging engineers and security research, and advocating for better and stronger tech policy and standards.
