I like to think about the future — and often, my predictions turn out to be accurate, which makes me happy.

Lately, I’ve been reflecting on Texas’ new law requiring age verification for app stores. I believe this is just continuation of a broader trend that will only become more pronounced. Increasingly, platforms and websites will be legally required to collect more data from users — and it won’t stop at age verification.

Once normalized, these measures will expand. Biometrics might become standard for logging in. Identification keys could be required by law. Anonymity and privacy will no longer be viable. That’s the end goal.

Why This Is Happening

There are real threats online — bad actors, hackers, and foreign influence campaigns, often linked to countries like Russia or North Korea. These threats are used to justify increasingly invasive regulation.

The issue is, many decision-makers — CEOs, politicians, bureaucrats — aren’t technical people. They tend to think in simple cause-and-effect terms: “If bad actors use anonymity, eliminate anonymity.”

It’s a similar argument often made about firearms: “If criminals use guns, ban guns.” But history shows that bad actors find ways around restrictions. The result? The general public ends up burdened, while the truly dangerous actors adapt.

The Likely Outcome

Big Tech might succeed in stripping away privacy from the mainstream web, but that won’t erase privacy altogether. There will still be niche spaces, “islands of anonymity” where people can speak freely and act without surveillance.

The “dark web” and “deep web” are examples of these spaces. In the future, privacy advocates may be pushed further into such corners. And there will be growing public backlash against these anonymous platforms, framed as dangerous or subversive.

But it’s not really about the dark web, or about age verification. It’s about control. It’s about identity. It’s about knowing everything about you — and being able to influence, restrict, or punish based on that knowledge.

A Final Thought

I once watched a YouTuber dismiss concerns about AI, saying we shouldn’t worry because “billions of queries” are processed every day. It was meant to be reassuring.

But that argument misses the point. The number of queries doesn’t matter. The question is: who has access to those queries? What can they do with them?

Some time ago I visited a YouTube video from 15 years ago. I was surprised to see that YouTube remembered a comment I made. That leads into conclusion. Everything is stored, everything is recorded, everything can be used against you.

What if the future government will not be polite, and will abuse power? How will you hide from it?

Privacy isn’t gone — but it’s under siege. And if we don’t push back now, we might lose it for good.