"Facebook did it six years ago " Facebook tried it in 2021, and they backpeddled after they received nothing but mockery for it.
"It’s basically lobbying for age verification, just in the guise of “age assurance,” which is effectively “age verification, but if you’re a smaller company you can get it wrong some undefined amount of time, until someone sues you.”"
You have to remember that Google's entire business model involves collecting your data and targeting ads at you. They also want to reduce the number of false impressions (i.e. from bots) on particular ads. They also don't want to look like the villains here, thus all this nonsense and mincing of words.
It's useful not to look at this as an isolated event but one accompanied by tougher stances on ad blockers and an attempt to push DRM on the web.
"While cynical people will say that maybe Google is supporting these policies hoping that they will continue to be found unconstitutional, I see little evidence to support that."
Pushing clearly unconstitutional laws in the hope they'll be found unconstitutional is still very bad tactically.
“age assurance” I've seen people complaining about it on some other site, I think it was Instagram?, and they basically just permanently ban you, and don't care for false positives.
https://www.gawker.com/5637234/gcreep-google-engineer-stalked-teens-spied-on-chats
"We entrust Google with our most private communications because we assume the company takes every precaution to safeguard our data. It doesn't. A Google engineer spied on four underage teens for months before the company was notified of the abuses."
To embarrass Google, I'm gonna bring GCreep back up.
They're probably going to withdraw it in the end, but they'll end up looking like complete idiots, like Apple did, and the usual suspects will see them as a weak target.
