Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne was furious in the senate after being wrong about age verification. She proceeded to continue to be wrong.
If you can count on one thing about the age verification bill, it’s that supporters are going to be wrong on most, if not, everything. We saw this in the last government when she got her own bill wrong about who age verification applies to, suggesting that people are too stupid to understand VPNs in an age where people learn to walk as they learn how to use touch screens, wrongly stating that critics don’t offer solutions, and, as a cherry on top, suffering a complete meltdown when faced with legitimate criticism in general. Luckily for us, the badly thought out bill died on the orderpaper before it could receive royal assent.
Unfortunately, the senator is determined to codify her bad ideas into law. When the current government resumed, the legislation was, once again, tabled almost immediately. This seemingly with the intent of giving the bill as much time as humanly possible to make it across the legislative finish line this time around. Lucky for us, we have a minority government, so it’s entirely possible the government could fall at any time whenever there is a confidence motion in play (it was actually entirely possible that it could’ve fallen once already, but opposition MPs decided that they also didn’t want another election so ridiculously soon after the last one).
Anyway, Senator Miville-Dechêne was back in the senate trying to hawk her badly thought out bill that censors legally protected speech. As it turns out, she is still absolutely steamed that reality stopped her from passing her bill – especially after it got that close to becoming law. You can see her rantings in the Hansard and, well, she’s back to being wrong about a lot of things along the way. I can tell you, there are some real whoppers of wrongness. Here’s one example:
This is a real public health issue that is not discussed enough because of the taboos surrounding pornography. The idea that only parents can control their children’s screens is completely outdated since the advent of smart phones. On this point, I would like to quote the recent comprehensive report by the Select Committee on the Impacts of Screens and Social Media on Young People’s Health and Development. This Quebec committee unreservedly recommends that pornographic websites be required to implement reliable age verification measures that respect privacy and cannot be circumvented.
(audience laughter)
Yeah, I want $10 million, a mansion, 12 vehicles, and a living, breathing unicorn to fart rainbows in the front lawn. Without getting ahead of ourselves, though, let’s break this down here.
First of all, the first comment is a very quick way to piss off public health experts. This is because there are very real health issues, emergencies, and crisis out there. This includes the yearly massive wildfires spreading across the country (including all that smoke inhalation that ensues), the fentanyl overdose crisis claiming lives in Canada every day, the growing measles outbreak here in Canada, smoking, drinking and driving, Cancer, Parkinson’s disease, COVID-19 (including the lingering health impacts such as long haulers), the ongoing mental health crisis, and so on and so forth. There are very real health issues facing Canadians today – a number of which don’t get the focus of the government that it should.
So, why is labelling pornography a public health issue so offensive? It’s because it not only is not, but it trivializes other very real issues facing Canadian’s today. In fact, even the US government recommended against referring to it as a public health crisis. From the research:
On the basis of the existing evidence, we believe that some pornography harms the health of some people, but that it does not meet the criteria of a public health crisis, for the following reasons:
1. Pornography is not an acute event that requires an immediate response. Although pornography use has increased over time, the rise has been steady, even with the advent of the Internet. As such, there does not appear to be an acute event or tipping point that would require immediate response.
2. Pornography does not directly or imminently lead to death, infectious disease morbidity, property destruction, or population displacement. Research suggests that there may be adverse health consequences of pornography use for some, no substantial consequences for the majority, and positive effects for others. For example, for the minority predisposed to perpetrate sexual violence, viewing violent pornography may exacerbate risk. Additionally, individuals who frequently view pornography portraying risk behaviors (e.g., condomless sex) may be more likely to engage in them. Research on how pornography affects the cohesion and fidelity of relationships and sexual satisfaction is mixed, but the majority of users do not experience substantial problems. Importantly, death, infection, property destruction, and population displacement are not resulting from pornography use. And for some, pornography use is associated with health-promoting behaviors, including increased intimacy, “safer” sexual behaviors (e.g., solo masturbation), and feelings of acceptance.
3. Pornography does not overwhelm the capacity of local systems to do the job of maintaining a community’s health. There are multiple resources within communities across the United States for individuals who believe they are negatively affected by pornography, including therapy. Our systems are not overwhelmed.
This isn’t a one-off study, either. As we noted earlier, numerous scientific research has long concluded that porn addiction is not actually a very real diagnosis. Science has long dismissed this as a concept and researchers are urging people to stop thinking of pornography in that light. In short, it doesn’t matter how many times certain people and organizations say it, there is no such thing as a porn addiction public health crisis – or anything even remotely suggesting something similar.
Now, moving on to the second point, the senator relies on the same tired trope that parents are completely helpless in porn use for their children. This has long been a debunked point. As we’ve pointed out numerous times now, parents have numerous tools available to do, well, basic parenting. This includes parental control software (and there’s a LOT of options out there), implementing restrictions at the router, educating their children on this topic as appropriate. The only parents who are actually affected are the kind of parents that just let the computer baby sit them while they go off and do other things. Then, at that point, how do you now give some of the blame to the parents afterwards? Either way, it’s not up to the federal government to step in on basic parenting like this.
Finally, there is the demand “that pornographic websites be required to implement reliable age verification measures that respect privacy and cannot be circumvented.” Uh, news flash to the senator, such technology doesn’t exist. It didn’t during the last session of government and that hasn’t changed this time around either. Legislating such requirements won’t make this mythical technology magically appear, either. Again, I won’t re-litigate the point this time around with another massive pros, but trying to invent such technology in your mind won’t magically make it appear in real life.
The senator then relies on the logical fallacy that if other countries are jumping off the proverbial cliff, then Canada must do it:
Over the past four years, there has been progress on this issue almost everywhere except Canada. Technological advances have lowered the risks to clients’ privacy. The harms of pornography on children have been well documented. Many governments, including those of Great Britain, France, the European Union and 20 or so U.S. states, have taken action. I have taken note of the suggestions and criticisms made during the lengthy legislative process for Bill S-210.
Just because other jurisdictions do it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good idea. In fact, many of these efforts have long been challenged by civil rights organizations and have received considerable public backlash.
The senator went on to make this argument:
Let’s be clear: Bill S-209 will have no impact on adults’ ability to access pornography. It is not an attack on the freedom of expression, as some have claimed. In Europe, porn sites that have challenged age verification laws have lost their cases every step of the way. In the United States, a country renowned for its strong protection of free speech, porn sites have challenged state laws and have been unsuccessful to date. We are currently awaiting the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States.
Yes, let’s be clear, Bill S-209 will absolutely have an impact on adults’ ability to access pornography. As I pointed out in my analysis, section 9 (4) is unequivocal that it is designed to block websites. Here’s part of that text:
The Federal Court must order any respondent Internet service providers to prevent access to the pornographic material by young persons on the Internet in Canada
I don’t know how much more black and white you can be about an adults’ ability to access such material. This isn’t even getting into the mandates of requiring age verification systems as well, demanding that users provide huge amounts of personal information to organizations they don’t know very well with highly questionable privacy “safeguards” from the perspective of the legislation. I get it, though, the Senator doesn’t understand how her own bill works. This has been the case for a very long time and her comments shows that this hasn’t changed.
With regards to the second point, yes, various organizations have challenged the age verification laws in the US. The issue did appear before the courts. Those age verification laws were ruled unconstitutional over and over and over again. So, when the senator says that all challenges to such laws have failed, it’s a very obvious lie. What’s more, numerous law experts have long pointed out that such laws have always been unconstitutional.
The fact that one such case did make it to the US Supreme Court is actually quite surprising because it was 20 years earlier that the Supreme Court made a decision on a similar case and that effort was ruled unconstitutional. So, if anything, the appearance of age verification laws before the US Supreme Court is more of a re-match more than anything else. Obviously, the court is now more political than ever before, so that does add uncertainty to the issue, but still, if the rule of law holds out in this case, it would mean that caselaw is continuing to conclude that age verification laws are still unconstitutional.
The next argument the senator makes is this:
The second major change in Bill S-209 concerns verifying a user’s age, made possible by recent technological advances. The previous version of the bill required age verification, which meant checking the customer’s identity. It did raise privacy concerns.
To address this, we followed the example set by the United Kingdom by authorizing provisions for age estimation. I say here “age estimation” and not “age verification.”
In recent years, facial age estimation, powered by artificial intelligence, has become much more accurate, with a significantly reduced margin of error. This technique doesn’t require proof of identity, meaning far less personal data is collected.
While it’s fun to throw around the buzzword “artificial intelligence” and suggest that such technology is fool-proof, the reality is very different. Age estimation technology has long been known to be inaccurate. Research into the accuracy of such technology points out as much:
The second issue is that some proposals allow for age-estimation technology, which uses biometric means (e.g., face scans) to estimate user age. Unfortunately, these methods are plagued with inaccuracies, often failing particularly badly where it matters most: along the margins of age and age categories. Authors of an ongoing National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) study evaluating existing age-estimation algorithms go so far as to say, “[W]e do not have any evidence (yet) that an age-verification classifier can outperform a regression-like estimator on the same task.” (Regression-like estimators estimate user age broadly, whereas classifiers attempt to pinpoint an exact age—a key distinction between the two.)
Notably, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted unanimously to deny applications by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, Yoti, and SuperAwesome for use of a new verifiable parental consent mechanism under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule. The FTC’s rejection letter specifically cites comments in the Federal Register that “raised concerns about privacy protections, accuracy, and deepfakes.”
Various legislation attempts to treat minors differently according to age—an approach that presents particular problems when it comes to age-estimation technology. While it’s important to recognize developmental differences between 10-year-olds and 17-year-olds, the algorithms will fail significantly when attempting to differentiate minors aged 18 and over from those aged 16 to 17, 13 to 15, and under 13. According to the NIST study, even Yoti—the best age-estimation software currently available—has an average error of 1.0 years, while other software options err by 3.1 years on average. Yoti demonstrates a true positive rate of 0.57 for children aged 13 to 16, which means it can correctly place someone in that age range slightly more than half the time—only somewhat better odds than flipping a coin.
This error is understandable in that the task isn’t an easy one—after all, we’re talking about differentiating between months (or even days) of life. But if age verification were required by law, 19- and 20-year-olds would routinely be classified as underage, requiring parental consent to use social media and/or other apps. Even as the technology evolves, a fraction of a percent of error can still amount to millions of people needing to use a different verification method.
I don’t know about you, but that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement for the technology.
The senator then started engaging in moral panic as well. One argument she made is this:
The bill’s scope is a legitimate concern considering that a growing number of social media platforms, apart from porn platforms, now allow the distribution of pornographic material on their subscribers’ accounts. This includes X, formerly known as Twitter, 13% of which is estimated to consist of pornographic content.
This assertion doesn’t seem to match too well with reality. For instance, here is YouTube’s policy on pornography:
Explicit content meant to be sexually gratifying is not allowed on YouTube. Posting pornography may result in content removal or channel termination. Videos containing fetish content will be removed or age-restricted. In most cases, violent, graphic, or humiliating fetishes are not allowed on YouTube.
A similar policy can be found on Twitch:
To ensure content on Twitch is appropriate for diverse audiences, certain sexual content is prohibited, regardless of the medium used to create it (digital or non-digital). Users are prohibited from broadcasting, uploading, soliciting, promoting, offering, and linking to pornographic content.
For example, you may not show, offer, or promote [content warning]:
Enforcement Notes and Clarifications [content warning]
Meta has this in their policy surrounding such content:
Under this policy, we remove real photographs and videos of nudity and sexual activity, AI- or computer-generated images of nudity and sexual activity, and digital imagery, regardless of whether it looks “photorealistic” (as in, it looks like a real person).
I could go on, but apart from X (which isn’t really a platform any sane person should be using regularly anyway), I’m not entirely sure what the senator is talking about here.
Another argument made by the senator is this:
Of course, people have different ideas about how to protect children from these harms. School-based sex ed and parents certainly play an essential role, but they are not enough to stem the tide of pornographic images, which take up one-third of internet bandwidth.
The problem with that statistic is that it is apparently not really based on actual research. Here’s what one researcher said int 2019 on Statista:
The internet is a place known to be X-rated at times, but just how much of the it is porn and other adult content? Numbers as high as 30 percent get thrown around when discussing that question. The truth might be a little less sleazy, but scientific data is hard to come by in this case. The newest numbers available are from between 2005 and 2014. Two studies, one by computational neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam from Boston University and another joint one by Google and Columbia University, suggest that the share might be much lower. Only 4 percent of websites are estimated to be porn, but web and mobile searches clock in higher at 13 and 20 percent respectively.
So, the question is, where does this myth actually come from? I did some looking around and found a reference in the Hindustan Times back in 2012. They use that statistic, but never cite actual research to back it up. I found another reference in the Huffington Post which repeated this statistic in 2017, but again, that statistic didn’t have any sources citing that.
After further digging, the BBC apparently found the source of the statistic. Apparently, it’s a statistic from 2010 which is 15 years ago. Why is the date important? The article makes it a point as to why you shouldn’t use that number:
A lot of different statistics were quoted in those debates. However, few stand up to scrutiny.
One figure that cropped up again and again is that 37% of the internet is made up of pornographic material. Many of those people who quoted the figure took it from a press release put out in June 2010, external by net filtering firm Optenet.
A spokesman for the firm told the BBC: “The statistics are not up-to-date and I would not use them to reflect the reality of the web nowadays.”
That might just be because there is a lot more data around.
According to estimates from Scandinavian research centre Sintef, external, 90% of all the data the human race has ever produced has been generated in the past two years. That explosion is due to the rise of the web, smartphones, social media and the “big data” projects in which businesses, governments and scientists are involved.
So, basically, if you are using that statistic, consider it bunk. Don’t use it to argue that this is the reality of the internet today.
I could go on, but I think the above shows that the senator is continuing to be wrong about a lot of things related to age verification. You really could fill an entire encyclopedia of ways in which the senator has been wrong, but I think this article is long enough. The senator relies on stereotypes and fictional technology to make her case. She bolsters her points by using outdated and wrong statistics as well as incorrect assessments of legal challenges. This is nothing really new for the senator and her supporters of this bill, but it is worth noting that she continues to push a lot of disinformation and misinformation on this topic.
