TORONTO — Information technology researcher and Ethical Capital Partners advisory board member Maggie MacDonald has penned an editorial for the Toronto Globe and Mail arguing that mandatory age verification for adult content will not protect minors, but will erode everyone’s privacy instead.
MacDonald wrote the op-ed in response to a recent legislative push for age verification in Canada, driven by the leadership of the opposition Conservative Party and aping talking points from religious conservative Republicans in several U.S. states.
In the piece, MacDonald notes recent legislative developments related to AV: Canada’s Online Harms Act (C-63), which is currently making its way through the House of Commons; a federal bill (S-210) aimed at “protecting young persons from exposure to pornography,” which has received Senate approval; and proposals to require digital IDs from conservative and Quebec nationalist politicians.
“Support for anti-porn bills offers an easy route to positive PR,” MacDonald writes. “But good intentions don’t make for good laws.”
Calling the current age verification proposals “alarmingly vague,” MacDonald explains that the bills “gloss over the enormous technical and critical privacy concerns they’d provoke if implemented” and pose “significant privacy risks” for all Canadians online.
After noting that a centralized “porn watcher” archive would surely become a prime target for hackers, and that the proposed bills would have a chilling effect on online free speech, MacDonald concludes by pointing out what she calls the fundamental flaw in the premise of age verification: the notion that pornography is “inherently harmful and should be managed through censorship.”
“Not only are Charter-enforced freedoms of expression in direct opposition to this approach, but peer-reviewed research in medicine, sociology and psychology consistently refutes beliefs — primarily driven by moneyed American lobby groups — linking porn to addiction, violent dysfunction or child abuse,” the op-ed explains. “Studies around human-computer interaction and child development prove policies of enclosure don’t limit harm or even prevent porn-watching. Instead, they mostly alienate young people.”
The proposed Canadian laws, MacDonald adds, “won’t halt porn-watching; they’ll just push it underground, making conditions worse for the many Canadians who rely on legal porn work for income, and access significantly riskier for audiences who will continue to seek it out.”
As XBIZ reported, MacDonald — a University of Toronto Faculty of Information academic — released a video last year titled “Porn, Platforms & Sex Panic” through her “Internet Maggie” YouTube channel, in which she explains “how content creation, algorithms, media amplification and panicky policy have shaped how porn looks today.”
