Bad Faith Episode 556 Promo - Big Tech's Attack on Anonymity (w/ Taylor Lorenz)
Mar 9, 2026
Taylor Lorenz, tech reporter who covers online culture and privacy, sounds the alarm about identity verification laws. She connects investor profits, tech lobbying, and bipartisan pushes to the spread of ID mandates. She explains how measures born from porn regulation now threaten anonymity across social media and could be used to target dissidents.
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Same Investors Push Identity Verification
- Big Tech and identity-verification investors overlap, creating incentives to erode anonymity online.
- Taylor Lorenz points out Peter Thiel funded Persona, used by Reddit, Roblox, Discord, so investors profit from both social platforms and ID companies.
Age Verification Is Spreading Past Porn
- Age/ID verification is expanding beyond porn to social media and the wider web under the guise of child safety.
- Taylor Lorenz explains laws first hit porn sites, then social platforms, and are now being applied broadly across the web.
Pornhub Pulled Out Of Texas
- Pornhub shut down access in Texas after a lost court case requiring ID verification in that state.
- Taylor Lorenz recounts Pornhub pulling out of Texas and notes some states demanded extreme measures like hourly face rescans for adult content.