The push for age verification is part of a conservative online censorship agenda looking to do away with online anonymity, not to mention queer and trans voices, for good. These laws are devised and promoted by notorious big bads like the Heritage Foundation, NCOSE (formerly “Morality in Media”), and other “pro-family values” lobbying orgs, along with transphobic figureheads like Senator Marsha Blackburn and social media scarecrow Jonathan Haidt. ID check efforts ultimately seek to track and deplatform users who post content that these right-wing politicians and think tanks deem inappropriate for children. In some instances, what’s “bad for kids” has been interpreted to mean any content about “homosexuality” or even worse, hasn’t been defined at all, leaving enforcement up to whoever’s in power. On the federal level, that looks like Trump’s FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who’s made his stance against the “trans agenda” abundantly clear.

While the bad actors behind the push to kill online anonymity often say the quiet part out loud, they’ve also cultivated a compelling cover story to gain bipartisan support and help normalize ID checks: the moral panic about kids’ safety online. Democratic lawmakers wooed by unsupported claims of social media-induced mental illness and stories of families who have tragically lost their children have jumped to sponsor censorship legislation, endorsing the idea that scanning faces and IDs of adults and kids alike will stop the harms that happen online. But we know that censorship and surveillance only make us less safe.

And while proponents of ID checks talk a big game about “reigning in Big Tech,” one of the most prolific conservative “child safety” coalitions pushing this legislation is funded by Meta. As Meta’s lobbying spending skyrockets, the Digital Childhood Alliance­—led by former top NCOSE staff—has conveniently lobbied hard for the App Store Accountability Act, which would shift the burden of age verification onto Meta’s competitors, Apple and Google.

These are the characters and agendas that companies align themselves with when they implement ID checks. While we’d love to believe that an organic movement of concerned parents is convincing companies to make their platforms safer for kids (and everyone else), the reality is, companies are capitulating to a concerted lobby of pro-censorship orgs that are making it easier for everyone to be spied on and censored by fascist governments.

The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (UKOSA) came into effect in July 2025, requiring platforms and websites to verify the age of users before allowing them to access vaguely defined “adult content.” The rollout was a disaster. Facing massive fines for failure to comply, many websites chose to shutdown or block access from the UK. Platforms and websites that did comply placed ID checks between users and vast swaths of content. Predictably, LGBTQ+ content was targeted, but users also reported age gates in many seemingly random communities, like the subreddit dedicated to critiquing flag design. More companies requiring age and ID checks would expand these issues.

After Discord rolled out ID checks for some global users last year, more than 70,000 ID photos were leaked to the open Internet from an insecure third party. This made the company’s attempts to roll out global age verification even more stunning, with users quick to point out a lack of trust in Discord’s ability to keep their data safe (never mind a lack of trust in its chosen third-party data handler, Peter Thiel-funded Persona). Discord was forced to cut ties with Persona after it was found leaving thousands of government-related files publicly exposed, and pushed back ID check rollouts to later this year.

As Australia mandates age verification as a part of its social media ban for youth under 16, VPN usage is surging, leading lawmakers to set their sights on banning them, too. While Internet users of all ages continue to find ways to access blocked content, lawmakers are playing censorship whack-a-mole, layering restrictive policies on top of each other instead of assessing ID checks as the policy failures they are. VPN bans are surging worldwide in fact, as they often go hand in hand with mandated ID checks, making all of us even less safe and anonymous online.

In Kansas, a law passed in February immediately invalidating trans residents’ drivers’ licenses, leaving thousands with no valid government ID. In a state with an age verification law already on the books, many trans youth may no longer be able to access online content deemed “harmful to minors,” which conservative lawmakers have broadly interpreted to include depictions of “homosexuality.” This chain of events is no accident. Restricting LGBT youth from accessing online content that reflects their experiences is the game plan for online ID checks, not a side effect. As more and more companies consider mandating ID checks where fascist governments can invalidate IDs with no recourse, platforms are knowingly collaborating with draconian censorship regimes to lock marginalized people off the Internet.

Not really, as experts would tell it.

Hundreds of security and privacy scientists are calling for a moratorium on age verification rollouts, citing among other things concerns about deplatforming, privacy intrusions, secondary restrictions on VPNs, discrimination, and censorship. They emphasize that integrating privacy-enhancing tools does not necessarily address all potential problems with ID checks and could in fact lead to more issues with privacy, uneven access, and power consolidation in tech.

A wealth of researchers have been writing clearly about the fundamentally opposed interests of age verification and data privacy and critiquing “privacy-preserving” age verification tech for as long as proponents have been swearing it’s possible to check IDs in a non-technofascist way.

And while Discord continues to dig itself an impossible hole trying to find a safe way to verify users’ ages (when no one asked them to), some brave developers are leading by example and refusing to comply with dangerous ID check laws where they are in effect.

Digital IDs would make online ID checks worse.

Proponents of Digital IDs assure that they’ll provide great convenience, but they would actually be terribly powerful surveillance tools. Many states have launched, or are planning on launching, digital ID programs. For now, these systems are offered in addition to physical IDs, but could be made mandatory for the purpose of online ID checking and for accessing other services. Digital IDs can be used to track and surveil users by monitoring which websites or stores are sending requests to the government to verify your identity. For example, states with abortion bans could use digital IDs to track people seeking reproductive healthcare in other states. The threat of surveillance and censorship, posed by online ID checks, is only made worse by Digital IDs.

Do you want to get involved in resisting the spread of digital IDs? Consider hosting a movie night with Surveillance Resistance Labs’ toolkit and check out these additional resources to learn more!

Make no mistake: the current state of things is harmful, to everyone, not just kids. Tech companies are collecting our data to power their exploitative and oppressive algorithms and making the internet worse with surveillance, censorship, and endless targeted advertising.  But the solution is cracking down on their greedy surveillance capitalist business model, not restricting speech and kicking kids offline. We should be working on comprehensive privacy legislation that prioritizes people at the margins, antitrust legislation to actually regulate these giant corporations, and the algorithmic justice legislation that digital rights experts have been calling for.