UK Spotify users are now being threatened with account deletion if they refuse to comply with government mandated age verification facial recognition scanning.
If you are a UK resident hoping to listen to salacious music like the Wheels on the Bus or the famously lewd theme song from Paw Patrol, Spotify is now demanding that you submit your facial recognition scans before you can continue to listen to such sexy sexy music. After all, word is that even the text on the website might not even be clothed and those letters and numbers just let it all hang out. So, it only makes sense that the site becomes an adults only space because only adults can make the judgment call as to whether people can handle the health implications of listening to such titillating music.
To ensure that children’s innocence isn’t taken away, harming their virgin ears after listening to such not safe for work music, Spotify has also threatened UK users who do not submit to their massive surveillance regime with account deletion if they fail to submit to their facial recognition system. From MSN:
Spotify has become the latest app to introduce measures designed to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act, by asking users to undergo age verification checks if they want to view or listen to age-restricted content – and many users aren’t happy.
It will also use algorithmic methods to estimate a user’s age. But Spotify is taking it a step further, stating in its official outline that “your account will be deactivated and eventually deleted” if you fail to complete the age verification process.
The article notes that some users have flat out stated that if these changes are made, then some will wind up going back to piracy altogether. It’s an understandable response given that such systems already have a reputation of leaks and hacks. After all, would you want to submit your personal information to a system only to have bad actors blackmailing you after? It makes the prospect of using such services even less attractive.
After all, it is services like Spotify and Steam that were able to lure users away from piracy in the first place. Enshittification of these services has already resulted in these services shedding some users to piracy. This will only get worse as the massive government mandated surveillance starts taking hold on top of it all. This will no doubt be bad news for record labels and artists alike since so much revenue is now tied to services like Spotify. If those revenues decline significantly and users are choosing to avoid such services because of the demands for biometric data, that will make things more difficult for artists in general.
This move is the latest development in the massive uptick of dragnet surveillance on users on the part of services. Already, we’ve seen age verification get slapped on Reddit, Bluesky, Roblox, XBox, itch.io, Steam, and YouTube. This seems to be the latest web giant to bend the knee to government mandated surveillance.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
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