Never Give Them Your Face: a manifesto against age verification

A short manifesto-style page published at nevergivethemyourface.com argues that the age-verification rules now moving through legislatures on three continents amount to something larger than child safety: a mandatory identity check for anyone who wants to speak, post or read online. The notice, presented as a three-minute read and free to distribute, describes the demand as a choice between a government ID and a face held up to a camera.

It is identity verification, not age verification

The central argument is structural: to confirm that a child is not present, a service has to check everybody. A law written about sixteen-year-olds therefore becomes an identity requirement for the whole internet, the page says, and users are carded not because they are suspected of anything but because carding has become the price of admission.

Although the systems were sold as age assurance, which is a yes-or-no question, almost none of them are built to answer only that question, according to the author. They are built to know who you are: name, date of birth, document number and face. The text compares the approach to background checks on gun buyers, which are not applied to everyone at all times just in case.

Biometrics cannot be reset

A leaked password can be changed; a face cannot, the notice says. It describes a face scan as a three-dimensional biometric template precise enough to be matched later against a street camera recording, and warns that the data lives on third-party servers the user never chose and cannot hold to account. Every verification database is a honeypot, the page states, and a promise to delete documents is worthless the day the company is breached.

Why the checks fail, and who pays

The manifesto argues that age gates fail at their stated purpose: determined teenagers route around them with a borrowed login, a VPN, a single checkbox or a pre-verified account bought for the price of a coffee. It recalls that pre-verified accounts for every age appeared for sale on eBay within hours of one platform introducing age brackets. Worse, sorting users into age-labelled pens creates what the page calls a children index, a way to filter directly for minors, while teenagers pushed off mainstream platforms move to smaller corners without moderation.

Refusal as a strategy

The closing sections recommend refusing the scan and the upload rather than trying to win a majority in opinion polls, on the grounds that a verification regime needs participation more than approval. The page sketches a hypothetical national month of identity choice, in which nobody logs in to platforms that demand a face, and cites three sources for its claims: an EFF paper on the dangers of age verification, Bloomberg reporting on California's proposed rules for under-16s, and CNBC coverage of child safety and AI surveillance.