The latest news about YouTube collecting selfies for AI-powered age verification has me genuinely concerned, and frankly, it should worry all of us. We’re witnessing another step in what feels like an inevitable march toward a surveillance state, wrapped up in the familiar packaging of “protecting the children.”

Don’t get me wrong - I understand the impulse to protect kids online. I’ve got a teenage daughter myself, and the internet can be a minefield for young people. But there’s something deeply unsettling about a mega-corporation like Google (YouTube’s parent company) building vast databases of our biometric data under the guise of age verification. It’s the classic privacy erosion playbook: identify a legitimate concern, propose a solution that massively overreaches, then act like anyone who objects doesn’t care about children’s safety.