Age Verification Is Locking Trans People Out of the Internet

Last month, the United States Supreme Court blocked trans people from obtaining passports consistent with their gender identity, overturning a stay that allowed proper documents to be issued. Since President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring the federal government will only recognize an “individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female,” the plaintiffs in the case before the Court have been interrogated for having documents with a different gender marker than their presentation. Like many trans people, the plaintiffs were “accused of presenting fake identity documents, and were forced to out themselves as transgender and nonbinary to TSA agents.”

Now imagine this identity verification process is automated via a black box algorithm, with no humans available to hear an appeal. Under laws mandating rigorous age checks to access certain content online that are sweeping across the globe, this is now a reality. Advocates, legal experts and computer science researchers told Tech Policy Press that current methods of online age verification are likely biased against trans people, cutting them off from swathes of the internet.