At the end of June, the Supreme Court torched a two-decades-old precedent protecting the right to online anonymity. It declared that requiring age verification for adult websites posed a negligible speech burden and was permissible under the First Amendment, allowing such laws to proceed in nearly half of US states, including America’s second-most-populous state, Texas. While it’s easy to get behind the idea of keeping 13-year-olds off Pornhub in theory, the decision brushed off real concerns about throwing up barriers to legal speech.
In mid-August, the court went even further: it at least temporarily allowed Mississippi to extend this age verification to social media, which is to say, the vast majority of spaces where people communicate with each other in 2025. Numerous other states have similar designs on the internet. South Dakota and Wyoming have started enforcing their own laws that demand services with any sexual content verify ages, covering not only sites like Pornhub but Bluesky and other all-purpose web platforms that don’t outright ban porn. New York just proposed rules that could see age-verification rules implemented on social media within the next couple of years. Texas and Utah passed rules that will soon require app stores to verify users’ ages; a similar bill awaits California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s signature.
This is even more problematic. Civil liberties advocates have warned for years that there’s essentially no way to verify ages without eroding privacy or chilling speech to some extent. The response from politicians has largely been that the downsides are minimal and justified to keep children safe. Early chaotic results of the UK’s Online Safety Act — which requires age-gating for a variety of content — suggest otherwise.
And over the past week, things have gotten yet markedly worse. The US government — including immigration authorities, the military, and the Department of Justice — has barreled into the business of sniffing out people who made social media posts it finds objectionable and threatening them with the force of the law. They’re riling up a snitch state that will hunt down targets for them to prosecute or strip visas from, a process that could be made infinitely easier by inevitable Tea-style data leaks from social media sites.
While all this is happening, Donald Trump’s administration is directly coordinating the transfer of one of the biggest social media platforms to administration-friendly tech moguls. A monthslong negotiation process has produced a tentative deal to spin off TikTok from its Chinese parent company; the rumored buyers include Larry Ellison-owned Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz, and the whole process has given Trump tremendous leverage over the service. That adds TikTok to the stable of businesses owned by heavily conservative-aligned figures, following X, owned by Elon Musk — who is currently doing his part to ferret out online undesirables too.
These businesses are highly unlikely to resist demands for information on users, even if verification laws are written with privacy protections built in — someone like Musk might well dox users without being asked. They’re also, incidentally, the ones with the most resources to comply with age verification laws or escape legal penalties for flouting them, while smaller services like Bluesky and Mastodon struggle. And increasingly, big platforms are the ones least sympathetic to vulnerable minority groups targeted by Trump.
the Supreme Court torched a two-decades-old precedent protecting the right to online anonymity. It declared that requiring age verification for adult websites posed a negligible speech burden and was permissible under the First Amendment,
Not American and don’t want to be that like ever, but - why not ditch anonymous voting while you’re at it.
The response from politicians has largely been that the downsides are minimal and justified to keep children safe.
Yeah, well, what’s justified is not their place to judge. No matter which specific legal mechanism this may mean, when there’s such a discussion and a “yes” or “no” to such a question has to be determined, it should require a very specific mandate. Technically that should be some constitutional court at the least, and better a referendum.
But OK, it’s year 2025, not going to happen.
Its not America, but sure. Go off.
The thing is, we already had blocks on porn through mobile phone operators. What would happen is that all porn was blocked, and if you wanted to access it through your data plan, you had to turn it on. And to do this, you used the credit card they already had on file for you. And that was it.
But for some reason, they now want each website to challenge age. AND they want you to use 3rd parties like Yoti to hold your personal ID. So instead of one company that already had your info, you have multiple. And it gets more with every new site you visit that is claimed to be “adult”. I mean, you cant even go on the cigar subreddit without having to send your drivers license to Yoti… The fuck is that about???
Anonymity is dangerous because it let’s the little people think they can have have ideas and talk about them freely and possibly not face any consequences for it.
This is right, though in our situation we can only speak of “illusion of anonymity”, which lets little people think they should have anonymity and all those ideas and conversation opportunities, even if they don’t have these in fact.
Some things are so powerful that even illusion thereof affects the societies.
If we think about Soviet examples - during the Thaw, after Stalin’s cult of personality official condemnation, there has been plethora of cultural sprouts, so to say - poets of the 60s, Soviet science fiction, ideas of peace and how should the humanist and peaceful and kind future be built.
Much of that was based on the picture of the Civil War that was complete fiction, but the concept itself was important - that there really is some idea of decency, and some 40 years of going maybe the wrong way are not enough to undo it. Yes, in reality repressions basically started with the Soviet state, and slowly built up to the level of the 30s. Yes, in reality in the Civil War the main approach to communism wasn’t what people in the 60s dreamed of, it was Trotsky’s war communism. And yes, in reality what Stalin did what pretty much what was planned since early 20s - with the nuance that Lenin himself judged that there should be a long, 50 years at least (so there shouldn’t have been planned economy in the USSR till 80s, when IRL said economy was crumbling), pause, which was NEP, before trying anything radical, but when Lenin died, those who had power judged that there’s a new war coming and they have to build the heavy industries and the military at any cost. Maybe, if NEP were allowed to last for longer, the USSR would simply be much stronger overall, enough to survive WWII. And maybe that lack of modernization focus would lead to it being a much weaker country by 1941. But the point is, that eventually the (imperfect, but really far more functional and culturally rich, and sufficiently alive to be one of the two main offerings of civilization for a couple of decades) society was born from all this that nobody had been building intentionally, but it was present in the illusions given to people.
This is also why while I’m certain that the widespread awe before the Internet is misguided, it was from the beginning built basically as what it’s become, - that despite this some of the ideas it helped spread are worth that awe. What the Internet was advertised as, from its beginnings, is not what it is. But that nonexistent thing has been advertised, and people around us want it, and they will perhaps have it at some point.
If we talk politics, this is also true for “rules-based order”, which was a nice way of saying “American/colonialist order”, but made enough people around the world believe that there should be rules, and now it’s backfiring, because said system doesn’t support doing anything by the declared rules. Say, Putin is basically committing the same international law violations that the USA has. He’s pretty open about it. He’s doing terrible things, but the overall situation is one big response to the order not being in fact rules-based, making it closer to rules-based. Meaning that the fake thing becomes real.
Sort of like Aule created dwarves in Silmarillion, as soulless toys, and Eru made them living creatures. Let’s hope that it happens to the world network as well.
Exactly, plus how are we going to know who’s brown and who’s not if everyone is just anonymous?? 🤷🏾♂️
Almost more concerning is the way big tech has consolidated on standards that hurt anonymity, even though they aren’t legally required to.
For example, have you tried to make a burner email account lately so you can register at some stupid app or site that you only intend to use once? It is surprisingly difficult now because all the “legit” email providers are moving towards requiring phone-based (mobile SMS) 2FA which inherently deanonymizes you in the US due to KYC laws.
Also the throwaway email sites like GuerillaMail are being blocked more often by various sites. Their domains are now frequently blacklisted so you can’t use a burner account as easily to register anonymous social media or other website accounts.
That’s more of a tragedy of the commons situation. Spammers take advantage of anonymous email accounts and ruin them.
Age verification is ID verification. By requiring ID site owners effectively have a monopoly on the bot armies infesting reddit, YouTube, Facebook, etc. These armies aren’t going away. They are just getting smarter and more influential with AI.
Everyone is focusing on the privacy aspect and glossing over the fact that these laws give Silicon Valley complete control over online discourse. They’ll know who exactly who you are and how best to manipulate you with their bots.
I’m more concerned they’ll be turning you over to the gestapo for anything you say online that goes against the administration that they helped elect and are now helping to keep in power.
There are privacy preserving biometrics, as well as ways to determine age without breaching privacy or requiring identity, but you’re right none of the big platforms are using those methods.
So even with those methods do you think they will use the age checking ethically? This isn’t a problem with privacy, but also with discrimination. Ageism is what’s going to occur.
America is destroying it? Might want to take a look around - America is way behind on destroying online anonymity! The UK already has. Australia is in December. The EU is already getting ready to.
Some states in America need you to verify your age to watch porn……oh boo hoo. Here in Australia we’re going to have to verify our identity to use a search engine!
You’re right, America always takes the podium even if it’s an international issue.
Thing is, we shouldn’t blame America for it, we should blame all tyrannical governments which oppress human rights. This isn’t the problem for the future, it is a present problem; authoritarianism is a threat to humanity.
Absolutely - and at the moment the USA is pretty much the only government in the west that isn’t pushing authoritarianism. It’s all of the leftist governments that are.
The internet is fragmenting in front of our very eyes. The only things that will be left when it’s all said and done will be Tor, I2P, Lemmy, Mastodon, and Nostr.
We are played like fools, our tyrannical governments are treating us like dogs on a leash - slowly stripped off our dignity and self respect, and to what extent?
The vision of our future is a police state, a complete control of the populace like the slaves we are. This age weaponisation should’ve been a clear indication, something totally unjust and ageist is completely inexcusable.
So the corporate sites will be more difficult to access and the sites that pirate the same content will be business as usual. Since teens always ask for their parents’ credit cards to buy embarrassing content legitimately instead of pirating them anonymously, these laws will absolutely stop underage viewing.
It is becoming more aware that discrimination is rising rather than falling in this society. Laws like this explicitly increase the ageism within the society, and like all other individuals teens want to be treated equally; and do what they consider is ethically right.
Such laws will never stop underage viewing, as even in the mode discriminate society it is safe to say options are deemed to exist. And like adults which prefer to use legitimate stuff, it is naive to think teens will be absolutely willing to be stripped off their rights when the legitimacy turns hostile.
What do you have to hide?
Please post your browsing history so I can see it. Unless you’re trying to hide stuff?
It seems to me you are using the example of Nazism to try to hide your illicit activities. What is your computer?
Cool, what’s your social?
Everything the current and future governments can use against you, legal or not.
Clearly this admin doesn’t care about pesky things like laws. If they don’t like you they’ll pull any dirty trick they can to stop you. Only reason they haven’t gone after normal people is time and money.
