Identity

Back in July 2025, the Online Safety Act came into force in the UK, with the stated purpose of protecting children from adult content on the Internet. Age verification sounds like a good thing, of course… if for some reason parents aren’t able to act as parents.

Thing is, though, authoritarians will always tell you to think of the children. (“See? This is a noble goal… so you have to surrender some of your freedoms. You don’t want children to be harmed, do you?”) It all sounds so very reasonable.

It always does.

I’ve pursued something very close to anonymity for over thirty years, now. We were taught to: don’t send anything over the Internet that you wouldn’t write on a postcard, they said in the early days of the Internet. There were scammers; there were spammers; there were freaks, weirdoes and Nigerian princes who needed some help clearing funds through your bank account…

Back when ‘online crime’ meant people getting scammed, governments weren’t particularly bothered. If individuals were foolish enough to lose their money, that was on them: authorities were slow to respond, ineffectual and often disinterested.

There’s another form of crime in cyberspace, though, and that’s the thoughtcrime. It must have occurred to legislators that “age verification” actually means identity verification. All those pesky citizens who gave themselves names like ‘ItsMeBob’ will be pinned down; put under the microscope… and in many cases silenced because we know that people who write ‘hurty words’ in an online forum can be arrested.

This, of course, comes at a time when so many notable public figures are being discussed in connection with the fun times and other dealings they may have had with convicted child sex offender and dodgy financier Jeffrey Epstein. The people in positions of power have shown themselves to be entirely incapable of protecting children – and many of them have clearly done the opposite.

But they – tech billionnaires and politicians prominent among them – want you to supply your identification papers.

To protect the children.

Obviously, I’m not the right person to campaign against this. I’m a liar, at least to the extent that Bryony Marsh doesn’t exist. Also, I’m a pervert – at least, to the extent that during my life I’ve sometimes worn the clothing more commonly associated with the opposite gender. (Transgender people make such a handy scapegoat for the world’s ills, don’t they?)

And now, little by little, the freedom that I found through online anonymity is being eroded. The story plays out like this:

• It’s determined that a website I visit contains “adult content” according to some process that isn’t transparent.
• The company that runs the website is instructed that age verification will be required.
• The owners of the website either comply, or they get slapped with a series of fines by The Office of Communications (Ofcom). If they ignore this process, Ofcom takes action to block access to the website, UK-wide.
• If the website owners take the path of least resistance, they introduce age verification. Simplest to do it worldwide – but as we established above, age verification is actually identity verification.

What we’re seeing is the end of a freedom that many of us grew up taking for granted: the idea that ‘cyberspace’ offered escapism and a chance to be somebody else. That it was a place where you could make mistakes; push boundaries; stay safe. Whistleblowers, dissidents, people wanted to take the piss out of the Scientology UFO cult… they had a degree of separation that kept them safe.

That’s going away, now. Authoritarian politicians want a return to the “good old days” where culture was handed down by the state broadcaster. Where, if you had an opinion, you had to write a letter to the editor of your newspaper and hope they approved of it.

Good luck calling out corruption in local government, in a world where your identity has been verified and messages are uniquely associated with you – and good luck exploring a non-conformist lifestyle.

Maybe they can make trans people sew a pink triangle on their clothing? The symbol’s been freed up, seeing as being gay doesn’t attract the stigma it once did. Maybe the Starmtroopers are already on their way for me, because I wrote some things about how the ‘elites’ that own everything and run everything seem to be the least fit to rule.

People being persecuted for their sexuality is nothing new.

I’ve worked for the government. I’ve worked in the defence industry. I’ve done… things. I signed the Official Secrets Act as soon as I left school: I know how to keep secrets. When you discover, in childhood, that you’re a trannie, you more-or-less have to. That’s fine: I came to terms with that a long time ago. Don’t ask, don’t tell… but my online life (conducted with a certain amount of care and circumspection) was my own. I never thought I’d see things come to a point where I might have to start worrying about what the H.R. Department could learn about what I read and write in my free time.

On a smaller and more personal scale, I fell foul of the whole “age verification” shemozzle yesterday. While I was working on the Matilda Hale stories, one resource that I found tremendously useful was the H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast. They’ve long since finished discussing Lovecraft’s body of work, but they’ve moved on to discussing other stories in the ‘weird fiction’ category and after all they’ve done for me, I thought that perhaps I should subscribe to their Patreon.

Here’s the thing, though: they use Discord for their members’ discussion area. The very same Discord that’s announced they’re doing the age verification thing, beginning next month. All users must upload photo ID, or use live video of their face as proof of age. In other words, anonymity won’t be tolerated.

Remember, that’s the company that suffered a massive data breach just a few months ago, with some 70,000 users’ identifiction documents being stolen.

Here’s your pink triangle, Ms. Marsh…

Needless to say, I won’t be signing up. Just one example of how we’re being herded into an increasingly small digital reservation – by the people who tell us it’s to protect the children. While trying as hard as they can to keep us from discussing why they were on the passenger list for a certain private jet, to a certain secretive island location.

But don’t listen to me: I’m a danger to society.