Glenn Greenwald and Greg Lukianoff warn that US and UK age-verification bills threaten digital anonymity and free speech

my latest on ERI 👇

https://eternallyradicalidea.com/p/the-online-safety-trap

@ggreenwald

@ggreenwald Ok I'll come down on your side but can we deal somehow with kids & social media?

@ggreenwald @TaylorLorenz Glenn Greenwald giving Taylor Lorenz credit was not on my 2026 bingo card.

Canada announced its plans last week in Bill C-34. Nothing is known yet about what age verification will look like. But a new bureaucracy called the Digital Safety Commission will require platforms to take measures to mitigate "online harms", including content that "foments hatred".

@ggreenwald Great example of how someone with mostly terrible opinions about everything can write something anyone reasonable can still agree with.

ALWAYS focus on the message not the messenger.

@ggreenwald No one actually cares about protecting children, everyone just wants to seem like they do.

@ggreenwald Fuck Taylor Lorenz, she never apologized for being totally wrong about Covid and still thinks she knows better than other people when she is wrong and stupid

@ggreenwald The younger generation that accepts this as "it's always been like this," will be problematic to current freedoms.

Their plan all along anyway imo

@ggreenwald Take a look @ggreenwald at the age verification Scam...

@ggreenwald Well I don’t disagree I am curious your opinion on children using social media, Do you think this is solely up to the parent to teach children about the downfalls of social media use ?

@ggreenwald It's good to see people on the left recognizing this threat, as well. If this isn't stopped it leads to the end of dissent, and the establishment will reign supreme forever.

@ggreenwald Requiring a gov idea to speak is a direct path to censorship.

They aren't doing it to help kids. If they were the numbers would be going down of abuse not up.

Just like with cameras on streets. Crime didn't go down when they added them despite being able to track everyone.

@glukianoff I wrote about it in @TheHubCanada here: https://thehub.ca/2026/06/12/ottawa-is-trying-to-censor-ai-chatbots-with-new-online-harms-law/

@ggreenwald

@ggreenwald The same people who say "think about the kids" are the same ones who would gladly abort them at 28 weeks without blinking an eye. In fact, they would celebrate it.

@ggreenwald I am bitterly chafed we are being asked to put stock into Lorenz whose interest in Free Speech is so very hard to take seriously.

Mandatory age-verification laws are one of the clearest examples of governments using public fear to normalize surveillance infrastructure they’ll never keep limited to children.

Once platforms are forced to tie identity verification to internet access, the architecture already exists: traceability, censorship pressure, financial deplatforming, and the erosion of anonymity.

States rarely surrender powers after crises. They build on them.

@ggreenwald The Guardian has changed its tune, almost as though they now support censorship of oppositional views.

@ggreenwald @LaurenAlder And cynically dressing this up as a child safety issue in order to force it’s acceptance, when the evidence to date demonstrates it doesn’t protect kids, it only isolates them from their friends.