The SCREEN Act Threatens Privacy Far Beyond Adult Websites
The Senate Commerce Committee is weighing the SCREEN Act, a federal bill that would require online platforms to verify users' ages before allowing access to sexually explicit content. Critics say its broad scope, with no threshold requiring that a site be primarily explicit material, would pull millions of ordinary users into mandatory identity checks to access lawful speech.
Why this matters: Age verification sounds like a narrow fix for a narrow problem. This bill is neither. Because it sets no floor on how much explicit content a site needs to have before the rules kick in, the net catches a lot of ordinary internet. To comply, platforms collect identity data on adults who have done nothing wrong and accessed nothing illegal. That data gets stored, shared with third parties, or breached. Your browsing habits, tied to your real name, become a record someone else holds. The privacy cost lands on everyone, not just the edge cases the bill is aimed at.
Who should care: General readers · Privacy officers · Policy
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