The Internet has taken over the United States of America. Activists are fighting

Members of Congress 19 took up an online safety bill Tuesday that could soon have a big impact on the future of the Internet as age verification laws expand in half of the United States and around the world.

In response, the digital and human rights organization Fight for the Future is hosting a week of events — on Reddit, LinkedIn, and various live streams — to raise awareness about how these bills set a dangerous precedent by making the internet more user-friendly rather than safer. Many proposed bills include an identity or age verification clause that would require people to upload an ID, allow a face scan, or otherwise verify they are not a minor before viewing adult content. Fight for the Future says these policies will lead to increased censorship and surveillance.

Among the 19 bills considered at a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce Committee were the Children’s Online Safety Act (KOSA), which passed the Senate last year with unanimous approval, and the Reducing Exploitative Social Media Exposure for Teens Act, which prohibits tech companies from allowing anyone under 16 to access their platforms. In addition to age verification, the bills raised concerns about parental control issues, consumer research on minors, artificial intelligence and data privacy.

“We’re seeing this huge wave of identity checks becoming the norm in tech policy, and we feel like we need to capture the activated communities that are already being heard in Congress,” said Sarah Phillips, a campaigner at Fight for the Future. “If you look at YouTube, if you see people making content about KOSA or responding to a lot of these rules, it’s very frowned upon among people. But on the Hill, it’s considered common sense.”

Missouri’s age-gate law went into effect earlier this week, meaning 25 US states have passed some form of age verification. This process typically involves third-party services that can be particularly vulnerable to data breaches. This year, the U.K. also passed an age verification law — the Online Safety Act — and Australia’s teen social media ban, which requires social media companies to disable the accounts of users under 16, comes into force on December 10. Instagram, YouTube, Snap and Tik Tok follow this historic ban.

Phillips believes that laws are a direct threat to democratic freedom. “These are censorship laws,” he says. “In the South, where I live, these same proposals mimic many of the arguments you see behind banning books and behind laws that decriminalize information about health care or abortion.”