The Internet wants to check your identity

Application tea is a type of digital whisper network for women. Men are not allowed to join. Those who want to be members of evidence, including personal photos, should prove that they are women. Once they are accepted, users can access male profiles explained by information such as background examination and dating reviews; Men are classified with the history of shaded dating with red flags. After its launch in 2023, the tea application got little attention for two years. After that, in July, thanks to Tiktok and Instagram videos that testify to the effectiveness of the application in Sussing Out Creeps, it was reported that it has gained more than two million new user requests. Perhaps this was just another victorious starting story, except that on July 25, the application suffered from data breach, user photos, identity pictures, publications, and direct messages began to appear on the unknown message panel. Tea aims to delete user documents after verifying them, but it is clear that it has failed to do so. (The company said that all the leaked materials were years of age, which should be a cold break victims. “People can go and see that you have published something about a man.” “He can now go after you.” (Tea did not respond to the suspension requests.)

Tea spill is a symbol of what is at risk when we link our realistic identities to our online activities. However, linking the identity to digital access is exactly what is determined by a new wave of laws that enter into force all over the world and in bills under consideration in the United States on the same day that tea leakage was discovered, online safety law (OsaIt was presented in the United Kingdom. The law requires that online platforms be implemented from checking age in order to prevent underage users from “harmful content and inappropriate age”, such as pornography and materials that may encourage eating, bullying, hatred or drug use. In theory, it protects such laws of minors, but in practice it affects the experience of all users on the Internet. In order to check who a child on the Internet, after all, the sites must also determine who is no. Adults in the UK now have to download pictures of their birthdays that show or submit their birthdays Other tests-Speculation at the age of separation (from a personal photo, for example), a bank account rating, a credit card check-to watch some music videos on Spotify or create new unrestricted social media accounts. Eric Goldman, a associate dean at the Law Faculty of the University of Santa Clara, who was studying an online age verification, told me that these changes are about to dismantle the rest of the open web, which was dependent on anyone who was able to reach almost anything. “We are witnessing the destruction of the Internet in an actual time as we know it,” he said.

It is up to publishers to impose these rules and determine what is considered “harmful”. Redit was especially aggressive in compliance Osa In the UK, a lifetime checks to reach sub -subjects requires themes including anonymous alcoholic, medical hemp and menstruation. Discord requires a chat application of UK users to check their age if they want to make certain changes on their moderate settings such as turning off messages. X, GRINDR and Bluesky are also developing verification forms. Meanwhile, users put ways to overcome barriers without giving up their identities. It can make virtual private networks, or VPNS, looks as if someone is browsing from another country; One of the VPN providers is informed An increase of eighteen hundred per cent In daily subscriptions from the United Kingdom yet Osa The rules for identifying age entered into force. Other people use images created by artificial intelligence or video game clips to falsify their identities.

Choshna Weissman, director of digital media at the RSTITI Institute, a research center born in Libertaria, told me that these regulations may seem superficially similar to the wine store or a night club asking the beneficiaries to show identity-once another simple inconvenience we accept routine. However, the store writer who looks at an identifier differs from a website that stores personal data or tracks user activities. As the tea leakage explained, any system to improve age that stores user data comes with weaknesses and risks a settlement on the privacy of users. In short, the new safety laws are not disclosed by our relative identity that we have continued to expect online even with the collapse of social media, the borders between our material and digital life. Some users will definitely decide that it is not worth sacrificing privacy to access materials online, which means that there are less people who may benefit from a supposedly sensitive space, such as the AA community online, will eventually reach this. In the words of Goldman, “Age’s certification mandates for adults.” The chilling effect will feel particularly bodied among those who lack the appropriate identity credentials and between publishers who cannot easily withstand the costs of verification programs, without which they risk incurring very slope fines.

More of these laws are coming. Australia is trying to ban those under the age of sixteen years of social media, including from YouTube, and is appointed to offer mandates to improve age even to search engines. France began assigning an age verification of adult content in April, and in June, President Emmanuel Macron proposed a ban on children under the age of fifteen social media. In the United States, the Internet Safety Law for Children was re -presented with the support of both parties this year. The draft law arose in 2022, and in part, the leakage of internal Facebook documents that shows that the company was aware of the effects of its negative products on minors. If it is transferred to the law, this will give some users some users more agencies on their online experience, including the right to delete their data and cancel the subscription to the algorithm recommendations. However, like OsaIt also includes measures to improve age that it will be impossible to implement without compromising all the access of all users to the Internet. Many technology companies, including Apple, have been supported zucchiniThe increased monitoring of the way it may hurt more monitoring individuals than companies, which is never ashamed to collect user data. YouTube is already offering AI’s automatic age improvement tools to restrict specific American minors.

Michigan’s activist has followed developments in the online organization since the passage Vosta Sista Laws, in 2018, during the reign of Donald Trump, who prompted sex workers in a non -connection to the Internet through a digital platform contract such as back responsible for hosting their content. In 2022, May started chatting with people who seek to respond against zucchiniSuggested policies; She now has more than three thousand members working in campaigns and petitions. The Revenge and Drakon Tactics of the Trump Administration Second caused many people to be more marginalized, fearful of making their personal identities public. As he put it, “You have people fleeing Texas and Florida, and now you want to comment my government’s identifier for what I am looking for as an adult?” In other words, if the protection of users under the legal age from harmful content means implementing comprehensive monitoring, did you make the Internet safer or less? May has noticed that members of her younger dispute seemed particularly concerned that they will not be able to reach digital spaces safely as they did before: “The possibility of losing their communities on the Internet – for many of these young people, that’s all they have.” Then again, those of us who rely on the Internet tend to reduce the summit of not detecting our identity, and easily abandoned by Google and Meta in exchange for a smoothly designated connection. To date, potential new tea users are demanding Instagram comments to apply to verify their identities. ♦