The Intercept81%
Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing 80%
By Caitlin Vogus0% Aliya Bhatia0%
6/28/2026, 9:24:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 33 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Pessimism Bias, and Hasty Generalization, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 47.7% saturation with 478 hits. Analysis detected 3,292 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,003 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 71.8% and a BS Rank of 80% (4,179 of 20,452 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 79.60% of the article peer group.
Democrats and Republicans have struck a deal on a bill they say will help keep children and teens safe online.
The KIDS Act could pass on the House floor as soon as next week; if enacted, it would fundamentally change the way everyone — not just kids — accesses the internet.
At stake is your ability to use many social media platforms without revealing your identity.
That’s because the KIDS Act at least strongly incentivizes — and, for some services, outright requires — age verification.
Many platforms will turn to age verification to avoid potential liability under the law.
Companies like X, video-sharing services like Vimeo, and others with a history of users’ populating social feeds with edgy content may be required to verify users’ ages because they host a certain amount of content deemed “sexual material harmful to minors,” a term that the KIDS Act defines broadly.
That’s a big problem for people who need to be able to use the internet anonymously, since, as Taylor Lorenz has previously written about in The Intercept, “there’s no way to reliably verify someone’s age without verifying who they are.”
Threats to online anonymity harm everyone, but one group is often overlooked: journalists and the sources who talk to them.
Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources.
Age verification laws will create a new pool of data that the government can demand when it’s hunting for information about the people who may have spoken to the press.
Trump’s administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants to destroy journalism that holds it to account, including by unmasking sources and punishing them.
This week, for instance, news broke that the Department of Justice had unsuccessfully subpoenaed reporters from the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, likely as part of a leak investigation.
But what if it could skip the journalists and simply demand that tech companies identify sources who may have spoken to reporters using their platforms?
The risk isn’t hypothetical.
The first Trump administration abused its authority to spy on journalists to figure out who they’re talking to, including online.
The second Trump administration has already repeatedly attempted to unmask its critics online and raided a journalist’s home and seized the devices she used to communicate with her sources.
In the face of these risks, using secure communication methods, like Signal or SecureDrop, can help.
But some sources may still reach out to reporters through social media.
As a result, age verification laws will create a new pool of data that the government can demand when it’s hunting for information about the people who may have spoken to the press.
The KIDS ACT, ostensibly aimed at protecting children, will raise the risk for journalists, dissidents, and whistleblowers.
The most common methods of age verification rely on the collection of government IDs to verify a user’s date of birth with certainty.
The KIDS Act says it won’t require platforms to collect government IDs, but at least some platforms will likely choose this route to comply with the law or offer it as a fallback approach when other methods inevitably fail.
But online anonymity isn’t assured even if platforms use other ways to verify users’ ages.
Even so-called “privacy-preserving” approaches risk exposing users’ identities and undermine anonymity.
All of the methods ultimately require platforms to collect, process, and retain more data on all users, raising the risks for anonymous sources who use online platforms to contact reporters.
Age verification laws will also make it difficult or impossible for journalists to use anonymous social media accounts to gather information, like sock puppet accounts used to infiltrate and report on online extremist groups, or to avoid surveillance by the very Big Tech companies they’re reporting on.
Reporters outside the U.S. who publish anonymously on platforms like X or Facebook to avoid the wrath of autocratic regimes will also find those entry points vanish.
Requiring platforms to collect less data, not more, is a better approach.
Pools of incredibly sensitive identity data also creates an enticing “honey pot” of information that malicious actors could use to target, intimidate, and chill journalists from pursuing certain stories or sources from speaking to them.
Already, many age verification providers have been breached, leaking users’ sensitive data and allowing others to link online activity to users’ offline identity.
Age verification companies may also grant access or sell the data they collect to others, like payment processors, creating another avenue for data breaches.
Many Democratic lawmakers recognize that journalism is under threat from the Trump administration.
Rep.
Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the ranking member of the House committee that reached the deal on the KIDS Act, has rightfully blasted the Federal Communications Commission for abusing its power to destroy press freedom and free speech, for instance.
So why would he and other Democrats now support legislation that serves the same anti-press agenda?
Proponents of the KIDS ACT, and similar bills in the Senate, say these laws are necessary to protect children.
But the truth is that age verification requirements are bad for everyone, including children.
Why should we trust platforms with even more personal information, including from kids, when so many companies already use that data to target ads or share materials with law enforcement agencies that users believed was private?
That’s not to say that platforms shouldn’t be required to do more to actually protect children online — they should.
But comprehensive privacy legislation that protects everyone and requires platforms to collect less data, not more, is a better approach.
Mandating age verification, in contrast, effectively hands Big Tech and the government a skeleton key to the identities of every whistleblower, dissident, and investigative reporter who uses online platforms, not to mention everyone else, including children.
This kind of surveillance on steroids that surrenders our right to speak, report, and read the news anonymously won’t make anyone safer.
Speakers
3speakers11%attributed speech895writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageTaylor Lorenz
40 attributed words37% of attributed speech100% writer coverage
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Analysis
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