In late June, Australia made an amendment to the  Social Media Minimum Age Act that expanded its  

scope to block access to sites like YouTube for  anybody in the country under the age of 16. This  

was in addition to bans already in place for more  traditional social media sites like Instagram,  

TikTok, Facebook, and Reddit. From then, over  the course of just 30 days, a wave of governments  

and tech platforms have started following the  old penal colony's lead. Here in the UK, the  

government introduced new laws requiring robust  age verification checks for residents wanting to  

access materials that would uh make Jesus sad.  The EU began trials of age check systems for  

social media. And in America, several states have  started rolling out age verification requirements  

all under the guise of limiting minor access to  harmful social media and smart. Now, if there's  

one thing we all know about tech companies, it's  that they can lobby against pretty much anything  

they don't like. But on this particular issue,  they're actually pushing for these regulations  

harder than the governments. Starting in about a  week from when this video is posted, YouTube will  

be introducing an AI system to guesstimate your  age based on your watch patterns and activity. So,  

if it sees all the mindless slop you've been  consuming and determines you're under 16,  

it's going to restrict access to certain  videos, change your advertising selection,  

and limit comments and uploads. They'll be  joining other platforms like Discord, Spotify,  

and Meta, which have already started rolling out  similar systems behind the scenes. Now, of course,  

there is one simple fix to get around all of  these new limitations. All you need to do is  

hand over your identification. Texas Governor Greg  Abbott signed a new law that will force Apple and  

Google to verify users ages. We want them to have  real experiences with real people. Verifying your  

age keeps a child safe. is about how dangerous  social media is for our children. The time to act  

is now. We must protect our children so that we  can protect their future. Protecting the children  

has always been an effective way to push through  policies that the general public would otherwise  

be opposed to. Nobody in today's uh political  climate wants to be on record saying anything  

other than they support protecting children.  Social media companies are also largely unpopular  

with the general public. So for lawmakers, it's  a slam dunk case that's very hard to oppose. A  

recent survey conducted by Pew Research found that  most adults overwhelmingly support more control on  

how children engage with these platforms. But  popular messages like this have always been  

used to push through otherwise unpopular changes  like banning books, mandating security backends  

on devices, prohibitions, and censorship. Now,  I know that's probably not a shock to you, but  

what may be surprising is why big tech companies  are so willing to go along with these new changes  

because there are genuine business liabilities  that come with these rules. At the very same  

time that these new laws were being rolled out  across the world, one of the most severe data  

breaches ever was taking place. The app T was  intended to be used exclusively by women. So,  

for verification, the company required new users  to confirm their gender with a picture and their  

governmentissued ID. Instead of being deleted  after this verification like the app claimed it  

would be, these files were kept unsecured on an  open URL, resulting in tens of thousands of users  

having their most sensitive data leaked. Now,  the original intention of this app and its strict  

identity verification was either for women's  safety or doxing men, depending on who you ask.  

The whole fallout has become incredibly political,  which is probably the only reason you've actually  

heard about it. Similar breaches are becoming  more and more common all the time. Alian's life  

insurance lost the data of 1.4 million of their  customers and companies like Google, Apple, and  

Telegram lost 16 billion login details. Now, these  would be bad enough as once in a decade hacks.  

But all of these happened within just the last 30  days. The point is, every website that's holding  

on to your personal details is a big risk for you  and a big risk for them. So, for businesses to be  

embracing this so wholeheartedly, there needs  to be some upside. Now, you might just think  

that if they get your ID, that's simply more data  they can use to optimize content recommendations  

and advertising towards you. But it's not quite  that simple. If you use their services frequently  

enough, even average tech companies can find out  more about you than anything they're going to get  

off your driver's license or passport. The reason  why suggestions served to you through platforms  

such as Google AdSense, Amazon or Meta Ads seem  so targeted is because even without logging into  

a dedicated profile, they can track thousands  of variables to build up a pretty good idea  

of who you are and what you're into. They  don't need your ID to sell ads to you. The  

real motivation is that companies like Amazon,  Google, and Apple are already investing heavily  

into what they're calling digital credentials.  About 11 months ago, Google quietly launched the  

digital credentials API to developers, which in  their own words allows websites to selectively  

request verifiable information about the user  through digital credentials such as a driver's  

license or a national identification card stored  on a digital wallet. The idea is that instead of  

handing out your identity to hundreds of different  sites individually as new laws start requiring it,  

you just thoroughly verify your ID with a company  like Google and then they verify you on your  

behalf to all these other sites. Now, before we  get into issues with this system, and believe me,  

there are issues. It's important to understand  how this is going to be sold. The benefit to  

you is that you only need to stand up and take  a selfie holding up your license and some number  

of fingers once instead of dozens of times for  every site that starts requiring your ID. It also  

does generally cut down on the risk that your  identity will be stolen through a hack because  

it limits how many different places are holding  your actual credentials. And for what it's worth,  

a company like Google is more likely to keep  that data secured properly over some of the more  

sketchy digital domains you're probably thinking  of trekking into. And that's actually the point.  

Every data breach that makes headlines is a way to  market these new services as a safer alternative.  

In a way, what Google is hoping to become is  like a PayPal for your identity. Instead of  

handing out your sensitive details everywhere, you  just hand it to one reputable third party. Now,  

the business potential of such a system, if  it were to be widely adopted, is massive.  

The reason that these companies are generally  supportive of this legislation is because they  

stand to more than make up the revenue from losing  people under the age of 18 off their platforms  

and then some. It wouldn't give a company like  Google anything they don't already know about  

you. But what it would do is allow them to serve  you an ad like, "Congratulations, you're already  

preapproved for this credit card or this buy now  pay later service." Web pages using the login with  

Google feature could automatically remove things  like credit checks or personal information entry,  

which stands as a barrier between you and them  completing a sale. It would also make it really  

hard for sites offering services like gambling to  not work with Google. Because if people get used  

to using their in-built ID verification, they're  instinctively going to go where it's offered and  

be skeptical of sites that want to do things  the old-fashioned way. This would make their  

advertising business far more lucrative in certain  fields like financial services, gaming, and  

pharmaceuticals. It would also potentially open up  a new revenue source for them as online businesses  

would need to pay a fee to them for their  identification services the same way that PayPal  

takes a commission on transaction processing. The  problem for Google and other companies trying to  

roll out similar services is that nobody really  wants this. Another Pew Research survey found that  

the overwhelming majority of surveyed participants  would prefer to use the internet anonymously. Now,  

they could slowly push people to get on board  with it through a long marketing campaign and  

a gradual roll out, but that's going to be slow  and expensive. Even if it's just out of laziness,  

most people aren't going to sign up for a digital  credential system unless they really need to. So,  

the best strategy for these companies is to make  sure that people really need to. Tech companies  

have been spending millions of dollars in lobbing  on these laws around the world, but they haven't  

been paying to fight the regulations. They've been  paying to shape them. Google's own announcement  

of their new credential system included a  reference to the European Union's EIDAS 2.0  

system as proof of how essential this new tool  would become. But these particular regulations  

are something that they themselves have been  heavily involved in influencing. In other words,  

they are creating the need and then providing  the solution. If in a week's time when YouTube  

automatically detects that you may be under  18 and asks for your ID to prove otherwise,  

you would have already taken the first step into  their new highly lucrative ID ecosystem. Now,  

there are absolutely other motivations for pushing  through these rules from different parties as  

well. Governments will have more oversight over  their people's online activities. E-commerce  

businesses will have a smoother sales process.  And I'm sure some people out there genuinely  

do care about the children. But to make sense of  unpopular decisions, generally the best place to  

start looking is with who stands to make the most  money. Now, this feels like it would have been a  

great time to segue to some kind of VPN or data  broker to delete me. But instead of that, I'm just  

going to shamelessly plug my own channel instead.  After last week's video got so much attention,  

we're incredibly close to 100,000 subscribers. So,  if you enjoy the occasional expose mixed in with  

lots of videos about ships and microeconomics,  please consider subscribing and go watch this  

video next to find out why oil containers  need chaos for their business to survive.