I’ve been following the age verification debate for a while now, and honestly, every time I think it can’t get more dystopian, something new comes along to prove me wrong. This week’s revelation about Persona – the age verification vendor that’s been exposed for running what essentially amounts to a comprehensive surveillance operation – is both shocking and entirely predictable.

For those who haven’t heard, researchers discovered that Persona’s system doesn’t just verify your age. Oh no, that would be far too reasonable. Instead, it performs 269 distinct verification checks, runs facial recognition against watchlists and politically exposed persons, screens “adverse media” across 14 categories including terrorism and espionage, and assigns risk and similarity scores. They collect and can retain for up to three years your IP addresses, browser fingerprints, device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, and a whole battery of “selfie” analytics.

There’s something deeply absurd about watching billionaire CEOs throw tantrums over YouTube reviews. Yet here we are in 2026, and apparently Elon Musk has decided to give tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) the silent treatment because he sold his Cybertruck and preferred a Rivian instead.

Let me get this straight: a company worth over a trillion dollars is ghosting one of the most influential tech reviewers on the planet because he exercised consumer choice. The pettiness is almost impressive in its scale.

I stumbled across someone’s GitHub project the other day that got me thinking about the peculiar challenges of raising kids in 2025. A developer built an entire approval system for YouTube because they wanted their child to access educational content without getting sucked into the algorithm’s vortex of brain rot. It’s called BrainRotGuard, and it’s exactly what it sounds like – a parental gateway where every video request goes through Telegram for approval before the kid can watch it.