Age verification issues on Substack? Please reply or add a comment with your country of residence
We are working on this issue and will be distributing all free Substack content to the Planet Waves website. Paid content is already there. YouTube and SS video will also be distributed to Odysee.
Good afternoon,
I’ve received a couple of reports of people not being able to access free materials sent via the Planet Waves Substack due to age restrictions. First a practical matter, then a short editorial.
Would you please check in by responding to this email or adding a comment if you are having an age restriction issue on this or any other platform (particularly YouTube), letting me know where you are? As in what country and what region?
We will address this by providing a direct link to the Planet Waves website for any free materials distributed here. Paid content is already posted to the My Account area on the Planet Waves site. Videos present another problem if you are blocked from both YouTube and Substack. For that, we will use our Odysee account.
It will take me a little time to organize this workflow, but I’m on it.
Thank you for responding or commenting with the age-verification situation for Substack and YouTube in your country.
Commentary
Age restriction on the internet “to protect children” is a joke. Had that been enacted in 1995, I might have believed it. Anyone determined to find something will do so. For those not determined, the algorithm will find them. In addition, these age restrictions collect important personal data, and, I am told, biometric data in some places.
This is a barely-varnished attempt to get control over you and also the content that adults might see.
And while they are busy restricting Substack and YouTube, suicide-inducing A.I. bots are being designed to appeal to children, including with salacious “romantic” material, or via fantasy-generating systems like Character.AI.
These companies are not working in your interest, nor are the entities that are corralling them into these actions. Have you seen the coverage of Meta making billions on ads for things like pornography and prostitution that then lead to financial scams? Here is some coverage. This is about ALL Meta services, including Instagram and WhatsApp (which serves ads in many countries).
While we are busy “protecting children,” we might want to “protect adults.”
10% of Meta Revenue Comes From Known Scam Advertising
From the report, which at this time I’ve been given no reason to doubt (if you have one, please tell me):
“Meta projected 10% of its 2024 revenue would come from ads for scams and banned goods, documents seen by Reuters show. The social media giant internally estimates that its platforms show users 15 billion scam ads a day. Among its responses to suspected rogue marketers: charging them a premium for ads – and issuing reports on ’Scammiest Scammers’.”
Haha!!! 15 billion scam ads a day! That would be two a day for every man, woman, child, wombat and sugar glider on the planet.
And: “Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states.” These scams are designed to steal from you; Meta’s profit is only part of the story. The resulting losses to the public are in the tens of billions of dollars.
Yep, I was wondering why I see ads for psychedelic mushrooms on Facebook when trafficking and possession of this Schedule 1 substance are still felonies.
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Also since May I have devoted myself to original coverage of these issues. My latest article is here. It is also on the Planet Waves My Account area.
I will add the compilation of my 2025 A.I. coverage below my signature.
OK, now back to writing Inner Light.
Faithfully yours,
A.I. Compilation 2025 from Planet Waves
Our focus is on the human dimension — the psychological and spiritual conditions created by the A.I. environment. Not the technology itself, and a little about the economic and environmental issues. This is about people and what the atomic bomb of computers does to us. We’re studying the invisible and the easily overlooked effect…
Also Australia. Hit the same problem. Made me sick to the stomach and more than a little angry. But I worked out that I could bypass it by opening the article direct in browser rather than the app. I'm a fully paid Core member anyway, but hopefully this helps others. Thank you for all you do Eric.
Love and light
Hi Eric, I’m in Australia as you know. Paid subscriber and I’m not experiencing the age restriction issues. I don’t recall giving my date of birth when I signed up to Substack so this is strange. But we have definitely lost free speech here.
Love to you and the team xxx