“This door’s wide-open now. It’s going to happen whether you like it or not.” — then-Mayor of San Francisco Gavin Newsom in 2008.1
There’s fresh and serious trouble brewing for internet users. Particularly those concerned with privacy, and particularly those with unorthodox opinions and/or ambitions.
The messaging platform Discord announced plans for “global age assurance” in early February, which would require users to submit video selfies for “facial age estimation.” “Age assurance” and “age verification” are best parsed as “digital identification.” Discord users reacted strongly against the rollout. Discord issued a partial apology (which, to me, reads as heavily edited or written by artificial intelligence) and announced they’d be delaying their digital ID rollout.
The stated reason for Discord’s digital ID plans is safety, i.e., prohibiting children and teenagers from accessing explicit material and spaces. I’m sure executives are thinking about safety, especially as it concerns public relations and legal liability. Discord has earned a reputation for fostering grooming cults, trans and otherwise. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation has pressured Discord to implement “robust age and consent verification” measures and claims the platform is a “hotspot for dangerous interactions.”
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin sued Discord in April 2025 for “deceptive and unconscionable business practices that misled parents about the efficacy of its safety controls and obscured the risks children faced when using the application.”
Regardless of Discord’s intentions, their digital ID announcement portends a fast-approaching chokepoint for the internet. Relinquish your anonymity, or get out.
Government-mandated ID verification on apps and websites are the least of it. There are easy means of skirting such verification — a VPN, a borrowed ID, an AI-generated face, and other spoofing tools.
The next sort of ID verification is coming as soon as January 1, 2027. It will be much more difficult to bypass. Bypassing those after it may be nearly impossible.
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