2026 Future of Speech Online Conference

The United States has long supported a culture of anonymity to foster both the free exchange of controversial ideas and the protection of privacy. There is a long and well-established First Amendment right to engage in anonymous speech which can only be abridged in certain circumstances. At the same time, this culture of anonymity and the technical tools that enable it have been abused by bad actors to hide criminal activity like the distribution of illegal drugs and child sexual abuse material, and to engage in harassment, doxxing and abuse. These realities mean that the right to anonymity both in the US and around the world has always been a qualified one, with limits to accommodate the government’s legitimate interest in countering illegal behavior and abuse. This session will discuss the various reasons why anonymous speech is important to protect, the ways in which US courts have protected anonymity online, the limits to that protection and the reasons for its abrogation. It will also explore current threats to anonymity, including threats to undermine the very technologies that enable anonymity, what is motivating them and how to combat them — as well as ways that the government might protect anonymity better while balancing legitimate interests of those injured by anonymous online speech.

The global proliferation of age verification requirements is massively increasing the amount of identifying information people must share in order to access online content and services. This increases risk of unwanted identification for all users, regardless of age. The rise of identity verification and digital ID laws as well as the potential implementation of proof-of-personhood via retinal scans or other unique biometric identifiers, is proliferating around the world. Stemming the tide in one jurisdiction may not be enough to hold back the flood. This session will examine the risks to anonymity that arise as a result of age assurance requirements — and the potential and limitations of technical interventions that could help mitigate those risks. It will also examine whether there are less intrusive alternatives to providing age information in a way that protects user choice, privacy, and expression.

Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence technologies are making it easier than ever to breach anonymity. One of the emerging capabilities of AI is its ability to analyze content either provided directly to the bot or posted elsewhere to determine to a relatively high degree of certainty whether content was authored by the same person, an individual's location, and other information that could more easily establish a specific identity. Data brokers are also increasing their capabilities to connect data from disparate locations to a single, potentially specifically identifiable source. This means that content that people once thought was anonymous or pseudonymous may no longer be, potentially because they used the same pseudonymous handle across multiple accounts or simply because they used similar syntax with other indicators of identity like location. The ability to link disparate data sources to reveal a person’s identity is not new, but practical obstacles ensured that it was only rarely done. Technological advancements may entirely remove that friction, creating a form of participatory surveillance. This session will examine those emerging technologies, the risks they pose, their potential good applications, and the safeguards we need to ensure their use is limited.

Governments around the world are increasingly using surveillance technologies and demanding user information from intermediaries in order to breach anonymity. The U.S. government in particular has used administrative subpoenas (documents not approved by any court) to demand that companies like Google, Reddit, and Meta reveal the identities of accountholders when the account has engaged in speech disfavored by the administration, such as tracking and disclosing ICE activities or criticizing ICE practices. Governments around the world are deploying facial recognition, license plate readers, and other technologies to track individuals’ movements without suspicion of wrongdoing. Other tools, including geofence warrants, reverse keyword searches, and other dragnet devices disclose the private information of innocent people to the government without sufficient justification. This session will explore what impacts these tactics have on journalism, dissent, free expression, association, labor organizing, and whistleblowing. It will also examine how and when governments might legitimately breach anonymity legitimately. Finally it will examine the role speech intermediaries should play in protecting their users and the types of actions governments can take to require such protections

As AI-generated content, scraping bots, and AI agents become more prevalent online, demand is increasing for methods of verifying human users online. The marketplace is already anticipating this eventuality with “The Orb” and its promise to provide keys indicating human users. In parallel, courts are considering whether the outputs of AI receive First Amendment protection. Any rule that requires regulation to distinguish protected human speech from unprotected machine output will require an architecture for telling them apart and raise serious privacy and civil liberty concerns This session will explore the potential need to verify the humanity of online actors, and the consequences of how such needs are addressed at the technical and policy level. It will examine the potential consequences of a decision to exclude AI outputs from First Amendment protection as well as the privacy risks of verifying “humanity” for online service use.

Every human needs a space of their own, free from intrusion by others. Anonymity can help protect that space online and off. Anonymity tools like encryption and private browsing can protect communications and help people control who knows what about them and when. These abilities provide abuse victims a critical opportunity to hide from their abusers and rebuild a space for themselves. But anonymity can also be used to invade that seclusion in harmful, even criminal ways. Harms can include harassment, defamation, impersonation, nonconsensual intimate image distribution, and other forms of attack. For decades, scholars have explored this paradox, attempting to find ways to ensure that online anonymity can foster the privacy, security, and ability to express oneself freely while also building structures that permit it to be breached when appropriate. This session will explore how online anonymity can be abused — and when and how it should be breached to address harms. It will also explore the need, in the digital age, to be able to preserve personal space, how current tools can assist with that critical effort, and how legal structures might protect anonymity, encourage these tools, while building appropriate safeguards against harm.