(Not) Secret Agendas: who is behind recent social media bans and age verification laws

Something is happening with our privacy on the internet – namely, it seems to be disappearing, fading away into the distance, and giving way to unprecedented mass internet surveillance.

But there is something else here. The safety and well being of children is always an effective, no-fault reasoning for implementing new security measures – even if they bring into question fundamental democratic rights to privacy.

The people behind the laws

From age verification checks to breaking end-to-end encryption on messaging apps, numerous democratic countries in the world are adopting or trying to adopt privacy-eroding laws. In the EU, it’s the DSA. In the UK, it’s the widely talked about Online Safety Act. Most recently, US lawmakers proposed a ban on VPNs for child protection purposes.

But who is behind all of these laws? Are they politicians, regular people, age verification technology creators – or maybe someone else trying to further some dystopian agenda?

The cases below discuss the people responsible for Australia’s age checks on search engines, New Zealand’s newest age verification bill proposal, and the recently revived “chat control” in the EU that would allow EU law enforcement to break messaging apps’ encryption and essentially surveil people’s private communications.

Australia

The Australian law mandating search engines like Google to check its users ages is set to come into effect on December 10th, 2025. The woman behind it is Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, an American-born, but Australian citizenship-bearing public servant. She was appointed to the e-safety commissioner’s position in 2017. Since then, she has gone to great lengths to combat revenge pornography, and to generally make the internet a safer place for children.

Before the law goes into effect, the Australian Government has commissioned a company from the UK, the Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) to conduct trials of viable age verification technologies.

In June 2025, the press revealed the new technology has flaws. Two months later, key stakeholders resigned from the advisory board of the project. One of them, John Pane, chair of the Electronic Frontiers Australia, said that the technology nor the project cannot ensure adequate privacy protections for the users.

It does not appear that anyone else besides the current Australian government is behind the rigorous attempts to implement age verification laws.

New Zealand

New Zealand is following in Australia’s footsteps, and is planning to introduce a bill to the parliament that proposes a social media ban for users below 16. The author of the bill is a National Member of the New Zealand Parliament, Catherine Wedd. Her motivations for introducing the bill? Protection of children and more control to parents over their kids’ use of social media.

The bill was modelled after Australia’s law passed in 2024. The lead of the Australian Age Verification Trial and the ACCS CEO Tony Allen presented the findings from the Australian case in a series of events. Policy makers, government officials, and age assurance providers were involved in these meetings.

However, not all members of the parliament are supportive of the bill. Coalition partners are concerned that a ban is “too simple as a remedy” for problems that are so massive. The parliament instead hopes for opposition support to move the bill forward into the legislative process.

Chat control in the EU

Behind the notorious law proposing to essentially break online messaging apps encryption for access to people’s personal communications is the European Commission for Home Affairs. The proposal was first introduced in 2022 by Ylva Johanssen, then-European Commissioner for Home affairs, and rejected multiple times.

In 2025, it is still being debated by the Council of the European Union, or the member states, with the attempts to pass it being led by the Danish presidency of the council, and the president in office since 2019, Ursula von der Leyen. The fate of the legislation is yet to be determined – the vote scheduled for October 14 is postponed following Germany’s decision to not support it.

However, besides the widely discussed obvious issues – like breaking encryption, for example – the proposal and its proponents have been highly criticized for other reasons. More specifically, an investigation by Folow the Money has alleged that a charity fighting against children’s sexual abuse was heavily involved in the drafting of the proposal. The founder of the charity Thorn is a well-known actor Ashton Kutcher, who has met and conversed with both Sylva Johanssen and Ursula von der Leyen back in 2020.

Additionally, the European Commission for Home Affairs was found to have illegally used personal data of a Dutch citizen for the purposes of targeted advertising on X in September 2023. Allegedly, this was done in hopes to influence the Netherland’s position regarding the proposal.

The bottom line here is that the chat control proposal has been controversial from the very start. Its revival for consideration in 2025 goes hand in hand with age verification and social media bills proposed and passed elsewhere in the world. This may be suggestive of a bigger trend – democratic governments worldwide seem to be heading in a decidedly undemocratic direction.

What about tech company CEOs?

It may be tempting to suspect that there are powerful figures other than politicians behind laws advocating for social media bans or stricter access regulations.

However, there is no evidence, with the exception of chat control, to suggest that there is someone else behind the laws being proposed. Despite that, it’s helpful to acknowledge that lobbying always was and probably will always be part of any democratic processes. Even when the processes seem to be heading in a seemingly non-democratic direction.

Curious what others think about this story? Contribute your thoughts to the debate below.

A popular and not entirely unfounded narrative is that behind any laws and bills introduced and passed today stand tech bros and Silicon Valley CEOs looking to further their own agendas. And while that might be the most true for the US – where CEOs of a variety of technology companies, including Spotify, are meeting with president Donald Trump – there is no strong evidence to suggest that the same is happening elsewhere.

And yet, one person and his seemingly likely involvement with government overhauls must be addressed. Peter Thiel has been all the rage in the press lately – the mentor and financial supporter of the very social media companies that all these governments are trying to ban. Could he have a hand in this? Highly unlikely.

Peter Thiel’s secret agenda?

Peter Thiel is most well known as the tech billionaire Silicon Valley CEO, the founder of PayPal, a financial services company, and Palantir, a predictive policing software company used by law enforcement worldwide. Given this, and Thiel’s questionable ties to New Zealand’s politicians, it wouldn’t be too off the mark to suspect Thiel being behind the push for restrictive and mass surveillance-adjacent laws.

However, Thiel’s own political views are complex and often contradictory. Being the founder of Palantir, one would expect the man to wholeheartedly support surveillance state visions. On the other hand, in a recent Financial Times opinion piece, he has spoken against age verification laws passed in Australia last year, saying it’s “the beginning of the end of internet anonymity” and called for support of “free internet in the Oceania.”

What makes it even harder to believe that Thiel might somehow be associated with restrictive internet laws being passed left and right, is that these are, in fact, government laws. And Thiel seems to be severely anti-government – or at the very least, but undoubtedly, anti-democracy.

In a 2009 essay, he explicitly states that democracy and freedom are not compatible. In the same breath, he renounces ‘politics’ as an unviable path towards the ‘future,’ setting out ways to go ‘beyond’. Five years later, Thiel reiterates the same ideas, that maybe changing the system is not the answer, and acting outside of it is the way.

That politics and governments curb “progress” seems to be the mantra that Thiel lives by, and yet he is no stranger to using politicians, such as Donald Trump, to further his agenda. His mentorship and financial support has launched the careers of people like Elon Musk and JD Vance. He was a major financial supporter of Donald Trump.

What is more, Thiel’s Palantir is now the main software mandated to be used by all US federal government departments and agencies for what essentially is, per the Guardian, spying on American citizens. This goes squarely against the protection of free internet and online anonymity that Thiel called for in reference to Australian age verification laws.

In light of this, it may be fitting to call Peter Thiel a contrarian, and many have done so. What is clear, however, is that if Thiel’s goal is progress and unregulated technology, supporting such laws like mandatory age verification in the name of child protection, is not in his style.

Conclusion

The people behind the most recent laws proposed and passed worldwide seem to be mainly politicians. There is no strong (or any) evidence to suggest involvement of other people, such as technology company CEOs, with the notable exception of the chat control proposal. And yet, the scrutiny is warranted. The age verification law passed in Australia, and soon-to-be-considered in New Zealand, along with the UK’s Online Safety Act and European Commission’s chat control proposal, there is a wider trend of world’s democracies heading in the direction of such control that seems wildly undemocratic. What happens next remains to be seen, but one thing is clear – it’s not looking good for privacy nor democracy as we know it.