Privacy
Twitch Forces Partners to Show ID To Persona to Collect Earnings
Twitch is asking streamers to hand over a government ID and selfie to a controversial third-party service to collect money they’ve already earned.
iPhone Software Beta’s UK Age Verification Screen Raises Questions
The screen Apple called an “error” revealed exactly how the company plans to use your credit history, account age, and payment data to decide what you’re allowed to download.
Apple Expands Age Checks to Australia, Brazil, Singapore, and US States
The company selling privacy as a feature is now running age screening on 18+ app downloads without explaining what data makes that determination possible.
Germany’s SPD Pushes Mandatory Government ID Verification for Social Media
The SPD is selling this as child protection, but the architecture they’re building looks a lot more like a checkpoint than a parental control.
The FSB Has a New Word for Encryption: Terrorism
The man who outlasted a French arrest now faces a Russian prison threat from the country he left behind two decades ago.
LA County Sues Roblox Over False Child Safety Claims and Lack of Age Verification
The false advertising angle is LA County’s way around the First Amendment maze; not “did Roblox harm children?” but “did Roblox lie about it?” – a question courts are far more comfortable answering.
Xbox UK Age Verification Launch Locks Out Thousands of Players
The UK’s age verification mandate arrived as promised, and Xbox delivered it by ejecting players mid-session, stripping away chat, and treating 18-year account holders like suspicious strangers.
Colorado Senate Bill Would Require Apple and Google to Embed ID Checks in Operating Systems
Colorado’s OS-level age verification bill sidesteps the failures that killed its predecessors by making Apple and Google do the heavy lifting and outsourcing the problem to a more powerful set of defendants.
Newsom Backs Teen Social Media Ban After Daughter’s Birthday Party Phone Moment
The governor who couldn’t bring himself to say “put the phones down” at his own daughter’s party is now asking the state to say it for every family in California.
Zuckerberg’s “Fix” for Child Safety Could End Anonymous Internet Access for Everyone
Zuckerberg spent five hours defending Instagram’s design choices, and walked out having handed legislators and regulators their preferred blueprint for a national digital ID system.
EU Defends Censorship Law While Commission Staff Shift to Auto-Deleting Signal Messages
Brussels is pursuing Chat Control to surveil private communications while its own enforcers retreat deeper into encrypted, self-destructing ones.
Friedrich Merz’s Push to End Online Anonymity Has a Troubling Subtext
Germany already has laws that let politicians prosecute citizens for insulting them online and Merz just wants to remove the last step between a critical post and a knock on the door.