Governments that are serious about age verification and individual privacy (which, doubtful they truly are) should agree on a protocol and set up certificate issuers that are associated with a digital ID. Then age verification will not be an invasive procedure or risk data leaks or insider threats.

[1]: https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/03/02/anonymou...

I think for this argument to carry weight with voters, privacy advocates need to be much more specific about what "coming back to haunt you" looks like. They do a little bit of it later on[1], but I think most people do a rough cost benefit in their head and decide that the small benefit outweighs the small risk (to them).

[1] "And that creates a lot of risks for data breaches, overly broad data collection and retention, censorial legal demands for collected data, corporate and governmental malfeasance, pressure to self-censor, and perhaps blatant First Amendment violations. Every new layer and every new mandate brings more potential for risk. As we’ve unfortunately seen many times over the years, people including high-level government officials will maliciously seek to root out the identities of their critics, so the more layers of anonymity we can preserve in online speech, the better."

This is not the problem. Even if, like millions, you are not talking about these things online, these systems still place you in danger. Even if you are a perfect, clean, compliant citizen these privacy-destroying systems place you in danger.

Fundamentally these systems expose you to coercion, extortion, blackmail, ID theft, etc. by criminals and immoral people who want money or power over you. There are countless examples of bad actors inside and outside these systems obtaining access to innocent people's private data and misusing it to their detriment.

This is the strongest argument against these bad ideas. Arguments that paint innocent, privacy-seeking people as suspicious or immoral in any way, should not be used.

It is rational and moral to seek privacy for your own safety and the safety of those you care for. Don't let them argue otherwise.

1. Age gating + VPN ban under the guise of protecting children from social media

2. Few years pass, Identity Passport gets ushered in under guise of convenience of not having to repeat those pesky age verification checks.

3. Utilities start to require ID Passport. Including signing up with an ISP.

4. Renting starts to require ID Passport.

5. Work requires ID Passport.

6. Well done, you built the torment nexus!

REMOTE PRIVACY NEVER EXISTED BEFORE A FEW DECADES AGO!

And what happened in these decades are enough for the societies to wonder whether this new possibility in human connections (i.e. remote privacy) is globally a good thing. Just stomping your feet because the new toy may be declared illegal is not helping anyone. Governments are expressing serious doubts: this discussion needs serious interventions, not temper tantrums.

It’s simply not on the cards, and I live a frugal enough life in a high paying industry that I can retire in a few years. If I was willing to bank on inheritance then I could retire now.

I feel for the people that are forced to engage though. But too many of them simply don’t care about privacy, which is why we’re here.

Try "devastate" maybe.

Plus, like others mentioned, I am preparing my future self to be in a total offline/unplugged world and be a semi-ghost digitally, and even now in 2026 I found a bunch opportunities already doing it in a semi-agorist way (e.g. second hand, cash on hand, offline remote physical work, hunting/fishing, farming/a little farm, etc).

I feel we are still living in this bubble that treats the internet as some sort of utopian democratic institution. For certain people with strong mental gating it can be the case. But I'd say it's a massive projection from intelligent technologists on the rest of humanity. Most people really need some guardrails to avoid becoming hopelessly addicted to the worst material.

I hope this creates pressure for new technologies and media that answer some of the problems of communication which the internet couldn't. I guess people will find new bubbles of anonymity like Signal/Whatsapp groups to get information and discuss. Hopefully which reward some degree of contribution and proper thinking. Revive the genuine social sphere rather than tuning into the corporate filtered simulacrum of a town square. The truth I've seen is that the current internet is pure poison to most minds, and anonymity is just one less bit of friction to mindlessness.

So the article is not really defending privacy; it's simply defending social media. (Under-16s are an important demographic they don't want to lose).

That said, the article is forced to concede:

> Australia does order that personal information collected for age verification “must be destroyed once all purposes have been met.”

Let's repeat:

Social media MUST DESTROY all personal information collected for age verification.

But let's be honest: if you really value your privacy, you shouldn't be using social media.

The government already knows everything about us, and I mean everything. It is extremely naive to think they don't or that you are safe behind a VPN.

Donate to FIRE: https://www.fire.org/donate

Donate to the EFF: https://supporters.eff.org/donate

Any others?

I may sound crazy for saying so, but I think the answer is more government run infrastructure for enabling identity-based operations, like payments and authentication, with rules about standards, open source, contractor selection, and audit that make operation transparent. It can work if technical operations are legislated instead of "left for the engineers to figure out." Then at least the evolution of systems can become real political issues that map to election cycles.

My stance is probably a polarizing one, but this is precisely why we need to be able to debate the minutae of these systems through our political discourse instead of just "will we; won't we" legislation. This should be debated in democratic process.

what do people think the billions of billions of pattern matching used in ads will be used for?

people think 'anonymous' credentialing will work here?

they've captured scroll patterns, typing patterns, language patterns, all sorts of fingerprinting.

the game unfortunately is basically already over.

Don't get me wrong, just because it's a hypocritical headline doesn't mean it's incorrect. Just still rankles to see it, is all.

Whenever I speak to someone who's planning to vote Reform (UK hard-right party) their views are primarily shaped by seeing AI slop videos on TikTok/Instagram, showing immigrants doing crimes etc etc

Reform will probably win the next election because of this, unless we find a way to make platforms manage the situation.

Interesting example: https://www.londoncentric.media/p/london-tiktok-fake-news-cr...

Not a matter of if, but when, a breach happens.

What privacy are we protecting here?

In the end someone has to be held accountable. Society does not work without accountability and never has. We were living in temporary illusory world made by nerds. Now the rest joins in.

Tech companies should ignore it and just publicly name whoever attempts to prosecute them and see how the population responds. I think people today are orders of magnitude more informed about their privacy and the consequences of digital ID laws. A few countries are on the edge of revolt at the moment anyway, and this would be a good way to get young people into the streets.

20 years ago, people would have had no defense against it or understanding of what was being imposed on them. Today, normal people use Signal and encrypted messengers, faraday bags, and leave their phones at home. Where we were nerdy security guys back then, non-technologist women and girls use spy tradecraft level electronic opsec for their own safety and security from middle school. People are much more sophisticated about their privacy now. They're ready to take this on.

The laws coming into force are on people who are not in favour of them, and I'm so optimistic that I will not interrupt the enemies of privacy and human dignity while they are making a mistake.

The only logical consequence and response to that is to completely abolish those lobbyists that work against freedom.

It's been true for decades in the USA that if they want to arrest you, they will. The age verification doesn't make this situation better, but at this point it's almost just a formality.

Almost all big tech giants are frankly paper tigers (can I survive without facebook, sure, without next day delivery, harder, without banking or secure ways to talk to my utility providers, waaay harder.

Having a way to get rid of bots that sour our Online discussions, lovely. To reduce billion in bank fraud, sounds great.

I feel as privacy advocates we need to be clear on the difference between secrecy (that’s gone unless you stay offline.) and privacy (your neighbour knows you are having sex in the afternoons but does not say anything.

Then you have the mega corps like Facebook who can figure out every detail about you even from merely _not_ using their system because of the hole you leave in your social network that does use them.

The only privacy left is from anonymous troll farms claiming to be an American while talking about how the Texas oblast is valuable for its warm water ports.

I am fine for privacy on consumption of content, but you should be forced to identify yourself for posting so the common man at least has a chance to evaluate your statements instead of being misled, all while, as stated above, our governments and corporations don’t have that limitation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Basically, to mean it is brain rot. The problem is that it might concern a big part of the population and that is why we have such laws.

To me, it is exactly what was described in G. Orwell "Animal farm" book. Pigs are now in control and big part of the crowd are "sheeps".

Afterward, we always have hard time to understand how people could have let Nazi, Stasi, or Stalin come in power and do such awful things. But it never came in one day, and with the "i don't care, they probably now better" attitude of the current western country populations, you understand easily how all of that could have happened in a first place.

In the recent, and most recent history, let's not forget what happened to Putin's Russia. Russia was opening and on a very good course for individual freedom and rights, then a ex-KGB officer took control of the power and little by little, year after year, suppressed freedom, privacy, and opposition to reach the point of today where the country is a total nightmare for human rights and liberty.

I mean, your ISP knows your IP, the government can know your IP, Google knows your IP, Meta knows your IP, all the websites you log on know who you are and what you're IP is, and forward your data to 3rd parties, many of these connect the dots between the various websites you visit.

If there is one benefit to true ID verification on the internet, is that people won't feel as if they're browsing things anonymously while they're not.

Or imagine your daughter is getting blackmailed by some anonymous pedophile freak over Snapchat.

Nah, I need stronger arguments for why anonymity on the web is a human right.