{"id":281691,"date":"2026-06-25T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T17:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/the-papers-please-era-of-the-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T18:10:23","slug":"the-papers-please-era-of-the-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/25\/the-papers-please-era-of-the-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018papers, please\u2019 era of the internet will decimate your privacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fire.org\/news\/papers-please-era-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy\">The \u2018papers, please\u2019 era of the internet will decimate your privacy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fire.org\/news\/papers-please-era-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy\">https:\/\/www.fire.org\/news\/papers-please-era-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-06-25 13:07:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.fire.org\">www.fire.org<\/a><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Imagine your favorite team just scored an incredible, last-second goal at the World Cup. So you log online to celebrate with other fans. But, using data it\u2019s already collected on you, the social media platform you like to post on wrongly guesses that you\u2019re under 16 so it forces you to go to a third-party verification app and provide images of your face or your government-issued ID. You don\u2019t really know much about the verification app, what country it\u2019s based out of, what happens with your information, and whether you\u2019re protected from hackers or data breaches. You\u2019re not happy about it, but you hand over a photo of your passport and hope it doesn\u2019t come back to haunt you.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Now imagine that instead of posting about sports, you\u2019re criticizing a powerful politician, or talking about your experiences with abuse or addiction, or discussing embarrassing medical issues you\u2019re facing. Suddenly this \u201cpapers, please\u201d approach to the internet sounds even\u00a0more invasive, right? Unfortunately, that\u2019s the direction we\u2019re all headed \u2014 even here in the United States \u2014 and we have good reason to be wary of the global rush to sacrifice user privacy on the altar of age verification.<\/p>\n<h2>How has this worked (or not) in Australia?<\/h2>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Australia\u2019s social media ban for under-16s went into effect in December 2025 and set a landmark standard many other nations now look to when crafting their own such regulations. As a preliminary matter: This law is not working as intended. The government\u2019s own research\u00a0found that months after the institution of the ban, roughly seven out of 10 kids still were using social media. And a\u00a0study just released in the\u00a0British Medical Journal found \u201clittle evidence was found of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use by adolescents under 16 years.\u201d Secondly, phones are already\u00a0banned in Australian schools, so this ban is intended to address what kids do on the internet in their own free&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fire.org\/news\/papers-please-era-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The \u2018papers, please\u2019 era of the internet will decimate your privacy https:\/\/www.fire.org\/news\/papers-please-era-internet-will-decimate-your-privacy Publish Date: 2026-06-25&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":281692,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.fire.org\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/1200x630\/public\/2026\/06\/shutterstock_2675572841.jpg?h=82f92a78&itok=wEjk2xIv","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-281691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":281693,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281691\/revisions\/281693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}