Congress Is Considering Abolishing Your Right to Be Anonymous Online

In August 2024 the Biden administration hosted hundreds of influencers at the White House Creator Economy Conference, where Neera Tanden, a senior Biden adviser, and others argued that online anonymity is harmful and needs to be ended.

“In August 2024, the Biden administration hosted hundreds of influencers at the White House for the first-ever Creator Economy Conference”

The Intercept

The Intercept reports that a package of a dozen 'child online safety' bills is moving forward in the House with bipartisan support, including the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA).

The Intercept

The Intercept says these proposals would force social media companies to implement invasive identity verification measures to prevent minors from accessing online spaces, and that proponents frame the laws as protecting children while lawmakers and tech figures are pushing ID verification at the operating-system or app-store level as well as app-level requirements.

The Intercept explains that reliable age verification requires verifying who a user is, which means platforms must collect identifying information — government IDs, payment data, or other identity-disclosing records — linking offline identity to online behavior.

The piece warns this would enable mass surveillance and censorship: whistleblowers, government employees, protest organizers, and dissenting social media accounts could be identified, subpoenaed, or prosecuted.

The Intercept

The article notes the U.S. government is already issuing subpoenas to unmask anonymously run anti-ICE accounts and reports that "last week, the FTC said it would decline to enforce COPPA" to incentivize ID verification.

David Greene, senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Evan Greer, director of Fight for the Future, are quoted warning that these laws would diminish young people's rights and chill protest and organizing, including campus protests against the genocide in Gaza and actions targeting ICE.

The Intercept documents heavy involvement from Big Tech and conservative groups in promoting these measures, noting that Elon Musk has endorsed KOSA, the Digital Childhood Alliance is described as secretly funded by Meta, and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly told a court that Apple and Google should verify every smartphone user at the operating-system level.

“In August 2024, the Biden administration hosted hundreds of influencers at the White House for the first-ever Creator Economy Conference”

The Intercept

The article details a growing market for third-party ID vendors, notes that Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund backed Persona, and says smaller apps will face enormous costs that favour Big Tech consolidation.

It flags specific legal and policy risks by saying KOSA would empower state attorneys general to mass censor content deemed “harmful to minors,” that the Heritage Foundation has said it will use such laws to remove LGBTQ+ and abortion content, and that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is quoted linking the law to protecting “minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture.”

The App Store Accountability Act and proposed app-store verification are described as creating an insecure data-sharing pipeline that could force users to submit government IDs to download mainstream apps like a weather app or calculator.

The article places the U.S. push in global and national context, citing examples where similar laws have been used to restrict content.

The U.K.'s Online Safety Act was reportedly used to restrict videos documenting police violence and posts challenging government narratives on Palestine.

The Intercept

The piece names China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia as states that use surveillance to punish dissent.

The Intercept highlights an Atlantic report that the Pentagon seeks to use AI models to mass surveil U.S. citizens.

The Intercept quotes Ari Cohn and other civil-liberties lawyers warning of "planet-sized red flags."

The editorial closes by arguing that these developments are part of a broader assault on press freedom and democracy.

It asserts that "what we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government."

The Intercept and editor-in-chief Ben Muessig call for support to expand reporting capacity in response.