Identity crisis

Back in December 2025, I wrote an article on that quintessential new Christmas tradition, that has come to veritably define the festive season lately: fake terror attacks.

It was quite a good article, if I do say so myself (I not infrequently read my old articles back and cringe - I’m deeply irritated by my own tendency to use too many brackets), and, as I recall, it kicked off quite a firestorm.

Not because I’d called yet another terror attack fake and that made me a vile ghoul (I think people are used to that by now), but because I said - as a casual aside and as a single sentence in a 2,000 word article - that:

“[What] the relentless fakery makes clear is that the biggest threat to us at the current time is not some big bad bogeyman “digital ID” (which we already have with the age restrictions etc., so we just have to find ways of getting around it, just as we’ve always had to find ways to get around censorship and restrictions) - it’s the establishment’s relentless quest to deceive and manipulate us with media fakery.“

A pretty inoffensive observation, within the context of the article, you might assume. But you would be wrong. Oh-so very wrong.

Upon making this observation, I was leapt upon by a series of individuals who completely ignored the actual subject of the article (media fakery in general, and the fake Bondi Beach attack in particular), and instead, laser-focused on my single sentence about Digital ID to tell me how wrong, inaccurate, delusional, disordered, depraved, and devilish* I was (*not all of these insults are exact quotes and some may be employing hyperbole, but then again, as this is the internet, they also may not).

“That’s not what Digital ID is!!!!!” was the sum total of their argument (that went on for many days).

So, I was being accused of inaccurately representing Digital ID by saying that being required to show your ID to get online was Digital ID, and hence (as I said), this had already been implemented with the Online Safety Act, which was already at the time requiring ID checks to access certain sites.

Six months later, the government announces everyone will have to show their ID to access certain sites (framed as a ban on under-16s using social media), and, lo and behold, the same cacophony of voices berating me over my “misunderstanding” of Digital ID, are now howling about this being “Digital ID through the back door”.

So, which is it, lads (and ladettes)? Is showing ID to get online Digital ID or not?

I am not being at all sarcastic when I say that those who so passionately oppose Digital ID (and indeed, those who passionately support it) could really do with coming to a consensus view on what it actually is.

One prominent anti-DiD campaigner told me it was a societal-wide digital entry card which you would not even be able to access your own bank account without, and that non-compliance would mean banishment from civilisation and living in the woods.

Now, however, it just seems to be about not being able to get on Twitter without showing some ID.

And I don’t say that flippantly, Twitter is a hugely important shaper of cultural and political narratives, as I’ve spoken about before (that’s why “they” are so desperate to control it): but being locked out of Twitter is hardly the same thing as having to give up all your possessions and going to live in a mud hut.

The government has actually played a very clever hand here, because obviously, they don’t want people on Twitter and other social media sites discussing politics and current events freely. It’s too powerful a potential narrative disrupter.

So what they did a few months ago is, activated all their indentured assets to all coordinate on pushing a massive anti-Digital ID offensive.

As I wrote about at the time, it was too coordinated, high-profile, and being pushed by too many “big names” to be organic.

The purpose was to provoke lots of public declarations from real dissidents that they would “never comply”, that, effectively, they would “never” show their ID to get online.

Six months later, the government expands the requirements for such checks (they were already affecting other sites like Substack back then, which is why I said in December 2025 that we already had them), and so, all those people who made such passionate, uncompromising declarations; who proudly went on anti-DiD marches and declared their brave stance to the world. are now faced with two choices:

1. Stay on social media, which means doing the very thing you said six months ago you would never do, therefore making yourself look like a completely unprincipled liar, or;

2. Leave social media, and therefore comply with the government’s agenda to silence dissidents by removing them from the platforms where they are most outspoken.

See - clever. That’s why you should never trust these “big name” assets when they go lockstep on any issue and claim how hugely important it is and nothing else matters and we must only fixate on this one central issue and ignore everything else, because they are, inevitably, always manipulating you in some way when they do this. Leading you to a place where you don’t want to be.

So far as the new government legislation is concerned, these age checks won’t necessarily affect everyone - the government claims that if you’ve already entered your credit card details into a site, or your account is more than 16 years old, you’ll be exempt from having to re-identify yourself.

In reality, the overwhelming majority of people who use the internet have already entered their card details into sites (I can’t imagine there are many adult internet users in the first world who haven’t at least once bought something online), and most of us have already willingly uploaded images of ourselves to the internet, too (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc).

So getting “proof” that people are over 16 by way of credit card details or face scans isn’t the real purpose of the age checks (and needless to say, protecting children certainly isn’t ether).

This is what it’s really about: ending anonymous internet. Making you attach your real name and real face to everything you have ever said, and ever will say, online. That’s the real goal.

I wrote about this a few months ago, in an article called ‘The Trust Trap‘, and I said:

“It was announced a few days ago that Twitter (’X’) is now going to display the country of origin on all user profiles. Not the location you yourself claim to be in, but the location their servers will be able to detect you’re actually in, i.e., if you’re a man from India, you will no longer be able to LARP online as a “tradwife from Idaho”. If you’re in India, the Twitter servers will automatically label your profile as being located in India.

On the surface, this may seem fairly trivial and inconsequential, maybe even a good thing - that it will stop unnecessary deception online.

Yet if Twitter is prepared to release location data about users without their permission, what else might they decide to reveal?

In short, just how much longer is the age of internet anonymity really going to last?

We can already see an increase in demands to prove our identity online, supposedly to verify age to access “restricted content”, but really, it’s all just slippery-slope, frog-in-the-pot stuff for accustoming us to eventually being unable to use the internet at all without first verifying who we are - and, if we use social media, posting under our real full names.

Facebook has long since insisted that users must use their real names, and will typically ban any profiles that use monikers that are obviously fake. I doubt it will be long until all social media platforms are making this demand, and there’s already a sturdy case being built for it, with many high-profile people calling for an end to anonymous use of the internet, because of the vicious and destructive behaviour such anonymity can enable.

Anonymity, we will be told, is not compatible with free speech, because with free speech comes accountability, and you can’t be accountable if you’re anonymous. So, sure, say what you like - but bear the consequences, too, by using your real full name.

‘Bear the consequences’ is the key risk that is being obscured by the ludicrous Lucified LARP of “going to prison for a Tweet”, because that’s not a real risk of posting mean Tweets.

However, having your life ruined is - if you post “anonymously” things you would never dare say under your real name, as many millions of people do.

When, for example, seemingly ordinary middle-aged mother, Brenda Leyland, was unmasked as the vicious troll behind a campaign of abuse targeted at the McCann family regarding their missing daughter, Madeleine, she was so overwhelmed by shame (and the reciprocal toxic abuse she started to receive from others) that she killed herself.

How many people would respond similarly if their shield of online anonymity was suddenly revoked and their true internet activity was revealed to the world?

The reality is that this could happen to anyone at any time. Nothing on the internet is really anonymous, and every major publishing platform possesses the ability to “dox” (reveal the true identity of) its users, as was incontrovertibly revealed in the recent Tattle Life scandal. A “celebrity gossip site” specialising in savaging the lives of often rather minor “celebrities” (Instagram influencers and the like), the website was at the forefront of a landmark legal challenge when one of the individuals targeted by the site succeeded in unmasking its long-since “anonymous” owner (and a few of the more prominent posters).

As was reported at the time, if he can be unmasked, anybody can.”

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So, that’s what requiring ID to get online is really about. It’s ending the age of anonymous internet, which will have catastrophic consequences - both personal and professional - for millions.

There are millions of people who remain anonymous for entirely legitimate reasons (victims of abuse, for example, or those who would lose their career if it was known they were speaking out). However, those other individuals - many of them paid assets - who have abused the privilege of anonymity by using it to harass, stalk, and abuse others have laid the foundations for anonymous internet being ended for all. And that’s now what’s happening.

It doesn’t really matter whether you call it “Digital ID” or not. The most extreme version of a Digital ID that the usual suspects were fear-mongering about (kicked out of society without it) will never happen: there’s too much mainstream and prominent political opposition to it (Nigel Farage - probable next PM - Kemi Badenoch, David Davis, all oppose it).

We were distracted by this fantasy illusion of Digital ID to stop us focusing on the very real threat that was staring us in the face (and indeed, had already happened, as I said at the time): the end of anonymous internet.

However, as I also said at the time, there are and will remain creative ways to get around it and to maintain your anonymity to a large extent, however, this is very good advice that we must all take heed of, even if we haven’t always in the past:

Never say anything online you wouldn’t be happy to be read out in court. This includes in “private” WhatsApp groups and the like, because anybody can take a screenshot of your comments at any time and share them anywhere. Never assume anything you say or do on the internet, under any alias, is private and secure.

Whilst I’m very much pro-internet, and the unprecedented abilities it gives us to share information and connect, there’s only one real way to ensure privacy and security in your communications: get offline and talk to people in the real world. ‘Touch grass’, as they say (but just discreetly pat it down for listening devices first...).

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