It is the battle for the Internet of the future

One of the biggest changes on the Internet since the democratization of devices and networks It allowed us all to have a window to the world, and a speaker, in our pockets. With the underlying idea of ​​protecting minors, the world has embarked on the great adventure of putting doors to the countryside: verify the identity of users who browse the Internet. And the reactions couldn’t be more polarized between defenders and those who see it as the latest blow to privacy.

What is evident is that it is the great battle of the Internet, and positioning yourself is extremely complex.

In short. The earthquake started last week. Adapting to measures that are being taken from Europe, the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, announced a package of measures with the intention of regulating digital platforms. Among them, in addition to criminal liability for company directors in case of inaction, is the prohibition of access to social networks for minors under 16 years of age.

At the time we already mentioned that everything is a potential social network, even the comments box on our website, so the description seemed vague. But there were two mentioned: Elon MuskCEO of X, charging against Sánchez, and Pavel DurovCEO of Telegram that sent a message to its users warning about the Government’s intentions.

I just want to imagine the face of someone who doesn’t know Pavel and sees that a user whose number you haven’t given appears on their Telegram saying that privacy is very important.

Telegram and Discord, proper names. Although it is social networks in general that are in the crosshairs of these identification policies, Telegram has been the most vocal. Not the most transparent. Because there we must talk about Discord. proving that It is not something that comes only from Spain, Discord announced a few hours ago that will be able to launch a global age verification system.

It will be starting next month and it may be the compass of what we find in other similar apps. The way to proceed will be as follows:

• All accounts, by default, will be set to “teen friendly”. This implies that there is certain content that we will not be able to access and, if we want to change it, we have to prove that we are adults.
• Discord’s product manager has commented that private messages will not be used in the verification process, but that the system will take into account the age of the account and the activity, as well as the patterns shown in Discord, to verify that we are adults without us having to do anything.
• BUT, and here comes the asterisk, if we have to identify ourselves, actions will be needed on the part of the users. If not, you will not be able to access age-restricted channels and servers, but you will also not be able to talk on live channels.

Okay, but… how? There are two ways to verify our age. One will be through a selfie video that, according to Discordit will not leave our device. The system will analyze the face in real time and give us access. If you consider that we are not of legal age, you have to upload a photo of the identity document. And here comes the tricky part: Discord assures that the images will be deleted quickly, but the documents need to be verified by a third party.

And the thing is, this is old business. If we go to the summer of 2024, we have the controversy that arose with the Digital Wallet system and what caught the most attention, the ‘Pajaporte’. The Digital Wallet It was the preview of what they are seeking to create now: a system to verify that we are of legal age and can browse the Internet without barriers. And, instead of using a video of our face or sending a photo of our DNI to a foreign application, the Spanish app works by securely storing the legal age credential issued by the Government.

When you try to access a site that requires verification, the application sends those credentials, but the information is encrypted, ensuring, according to the Government, the anonymity of the user. If there is a data leakthere is no information linkable to a user, but rather a key that identifies us anonymously. And it is also not useful to track the operations carried out by the user.

in favor. Once we have everything on the table, the reactions come. And there are two opposing currents in this in what we can call the ‘great battle of the Internet’. Being in favor of identification implies potentially losing privacy in favor of gaining security. It is no secret that the networks are plagued with toxic political discourse, polarization, false information (and even more so now with the democratization of generative artificial intelligence) and a system that encourages insults and threats to occur under that anonymity.

Pavel Durovvery vocal about this whole matter, is the head of a social network that has been in the spotlight on several occasions. The promises of Telegram encryption (a end to end encryption that does not come by default in all chats) have given rise to illegal activities. In fact, France launched a crusade against him and the platform by alleged crimes of money laundering, drug trafficking or distribution of child pornography, as well as being a nest for political extremists without the application exercising moderation.

That Telegram or The video game ‘Roblox’, for example, has a huge community of minors and It was in the news at the end of last year. for not being forceful with the reports of sexual predators that inhabit the platform. Among other atrocities. Cases like this are what explain why there are those who position themselves in favor of identification.

against. But there are also arguments that, condemning all of the above, advocate finding other solutions that do not involve uploading a selfie or a photo with our identity card. Socially, we are in a time where we care more about privacy. After years in which the Internet was the ‘Wild West’ and many may not have known how it worked, organizations, institutions and the press have taken it upon themselves to show that our data does matter.

Europe has been very active in regulating in favor of user privacy for two reasons. The first because our data is the information with which we pay for “free” services. The second is because leaks are the order of the day and cases such as Cambridge Analytica have shown that personal information can be used to create surgically targeted advertising campaigns. And the European drift with the age verification or the attack on communications with Chat Control.

It is good to protect the minor, but if we all upload our data, we are moving towards an Internet in which all platforms have both our ID and, potentially, our biometrics, and even create a social credit system like the one that already exists in some countries. In this sense, education is advocated more than prohibition.

Who watches the police. And here we enter the big problem: security, not really knowing if the data I am uploading is safe. In fact, the fact that Discord is one of the first to position itself in this regard is most striking, and also an example of everything that can go wrong. Although the board aims to immediately delete the verification elements once the app knows who we are, last year there were already two controversies over verification systems.

The first, when they implemented an age recognition system in the United Kingdom and Australia… which some users were able to overcome using photos of video game characters. It is an anecdote next to something more serious: a data leak from one of those third-party Discord partners who, in October, let user verification data leak, as well as country ID documents. From Discord it was noted that they stopped working with that company and we have to believe that the new partner is safer, but they have already revealed 70,000 identity documents.

Data leaks are the order of the day. Two platforms full of minors like PlayStation either Steamwhich also have bank details, have been involved in some of the most massive leaks in recent years.

unicorns exist. At this point, here is the review of the two great poles of thought in recent days on these measures to create a “safer Internet.” The debate is already in the streetbut also in the networks themselves such as Reddit, converted into a swarmwith people pointing that the platforms believe they are so important in our lives to ask for anything… and it will be granted.

The unicorn I’m talking about is that we are used to living without contradictions, but this is precisely a complex issue in which it is easy to fall into renunciations. It is laudable that we want to protect minors and punish those who threaten, extort, distribute child pornography or ‘hunt’ minors. The premise is reasonable, but the intended consequences are there.

Data leaks, loss of freedoms, voices pointing to smokescreens to undermine freedoms and increase surveillance, hypocrisy of the applications themselves and the return to fallacy of “it doesn’t matter if they spy on us if we have nothing to hide”. What is clear is that, if artificial intelligence is the big topic of 2026, Internet privacy will be the other focus of conversation.

Image | Antoine Beauvillain (edited)

In Xataka | We have the most armored and encrypted DNI in our history. The problem is that we are using it wrong.