They keep telling us digital ID is for our convenience. For child safety. For a smoother online experience. But look at what's actually being built: mandatory digital Identity wallets, age-verification laws spreading across states, and platforms required to check who you are before you can walk through the door.

The EU's eIDAS 2.0 framework is rolling out digital wallets that governments want banks and big platforms to accept by 2027. In the US, state-level age verification laws and proposals like the KIDS Act are following the same path. Individually, each piece sounds reasonable. Together, they look a lot like scaffolding for an internet passport.

Here's what worries me most: it's not the ID itself; it's the revocation. When your access to the web runs through a credential the state controls, that credential can expire, be suspended, or be withdrawn. The Video puts it well: you could be deplatformed from essential services with a keystroke. And once verification is automated through government APIs, friction disappears, and with it the last excuse for services not to demand your Identity everywhere.

The anonymous web is not a niche hobby for people with something to hide. It's a safeguard for journalists, whistleblowers, abuse survivors, and ordinary people who don't want every click logged. If we lose it, we don't get it back quietly.

I'm not saying there's no role for protecting children online. I'm saying we shouldn't accept "trust us" as the Internet architecture.

What do you think? Inconvenience for the powerful, or protection for the rest of us?

Full Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YteF9zkV80M

#DigitalID #Privacy #eIDAS #AgeVerification #Surveillance #DigitalRights #SelfSovereignty #AnonymousWeb #InternetFreedom #Decentralisation