To age gate is to protect the very machinery of profit: Manushya at the Center for Organized Hate's webinar, "Rethinking Child Safety Online in Southeast Asia"

Are we truly protecting children online if we do not confront the systems that profit off of their harm? #NoToAgeGating

"The isolation [that our younger generation is facing] did not appear from nowhere. It is produced by the same economic order that hollowed out public education. Capitalism offered this generation debt and precarity amidst a global ecological collapse instead of a future. [Capitalism] has nothing to give an alienated teenager except the attention economy's promise of so-called belongingness. The platforms did not create that vacuum, but they found it, and they monetised it… 𝙏𝙤 𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙥𝙤𝙣𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙨𝙮𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙢 𝙬𝙞𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙣 𝙖𝙜𝙚 𝙜𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙤 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙩𝙚𝙘𝙩 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙢𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚𝙧𝙮 𝙤𝙛 𝙥𝙧𝙤𝙛𝙞𝙩,” says Jean Linis-Dinco, Manushya Foundation's Digital Rights Adviser, speaking at the webinar Rethinking Child Safety Online in Southeast Asia, hosted by the Center for the Study of Organized Hate.

Jean challenged the panel to look past age-gating and identity verification as the default answer to child safety online. She argued that these measures leave the ownership structures and profit models that drive harm completely untouched. Radicalisation and exploitation are symptoms of an attention economy that monetises isolation and grievance, and that no age gate closes that vacuum.

✊ We at Manushya Foundation have been raising the bells on age gating ever since it became a mainstream debate topic, arguing that even a hedge position that tries to ‘strike a balance’ on age-gating will always favour those with money and power. Our stance is a no. And that ‘no’ is not a ‘not yet’.

“Southeast Asia does not need another generation of working class children locked out of the one space where they still find each other, whilst the platforms that profited from their exploitation keep the profit and hand the state a population to discipline in their place.”

Jean was joined by Anita Wahid of AICHR (ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights) Indonesia and Suyin Chia of INITIATE.MY (Initiative to Promote Tolerance and Prevent Violence).

▶️ Watch the full conversation below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOKVd8JRIjM

🔗 Read our full statement against age gating at bit.ly/ManushyaOnAgeGating

#WeAreManushyan ♾️ Equal Human Beings