tl;dr: Australia's under-16 social media ban, which is largely failing to keep kids offline, has forced platforms to mandate biometric or government ID verification through third-party services—already resulting in a Discord breach exposing 70,000 users' IDs. The UK, EU, and others are pursuing similar "Australia-plus" laws, with UK officials even floating restrictions on VPNs. In the US, 19+ states and federal proposals like KOSA are heading the same direction, building a surveillance infrastructure that ties online speech to identity verification and creates serious risks for privacy, anonymity, and free expression.