Panopticon patch Tuesday: Twitch requires Peter Thiel-funded Persona ID verification for some Affiliates to get their first payouts

Ah yes, identity verification, the potential bellwether of digital ID and our future dystopia—fun stuff. If one could sum up the current digital world, it would probably be encapsulated by incessant AI content and talk about said content, 6–7 brain rot, and identity verification. One place that now seemingly houses all three of these is Twitch, and when it comes to age verification, the third-party provider the company is opting for is a little problematic.

Twitch streamer and Bluesky user Tawny Code Cat says Twitch is requiring new Affiliate streamers to verify their identity using third-party ID-checker Persona before they can get paid for the first time. They share a screenshot of a Twitch message explaining this.

The message says: "In order to receive your payout, you need to verify your identity through Persona, Twitch's identity verification service."

Twitch confirms this is the case in its first payout walkthrough, though it looks like this is only required for streamers whose payment is "on hold":

"Some streamers may be required to verify their identity before receiving their first payout. If your payout is on hold, you'll see a message in your Payout Eligibility Panel and receive email notifications with instructions to complete identity verification through Persona, Twitch's verification service."

Twitch is requiring new Affiliates, before their first payment, to give government photo ID and a separate photo to Persona, the same Persona that has connections to government mass surveillance programs. When I asked Twitch support for another option, they said there isn't one. #twitch #persona 1/4

— @tawnycodecat.bsky.social (@tawnycodecat.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-02-24T11:43:47.529Z

The problem isn't just that Twitch requiring additional ID verification on top of the information it already has—although that is in issue in itself—but also with the third-party service it's using to perform these checks: Persona.

Many have been rightly concerned about Persona over the past few months. That's in no small part because the company has received a large chunk of its investor money from Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel. And because it doesn't seem to be just an ID verification tool, but also appears to have ties with the government to help with surveillance.

The ID verifier has been on people's lips lately because Discord recently announced it will have age verification restrictions, and part of that roll-out has coincided with a Persona-tinged "experiment" on UK users. The company said UK users "may be part of an experiment where your information will be processed by an age-assurance vendor, Persona."

While this experiment has now finished, it's nevertheless brought attention to the ID verification program and caused a collective raising of eyebrows.

We've already seen tons of people looking for Discord alternatives in the wake of the new ID verification rules, so I wonder whether we'll see the same with Twitch. I suppose the difference here is that this verification is just for streamers, not viewers, and even then it's just a subset of streamers who are becoming Affiliates.

If there's one good thing about it, it's that it might get more people thinking about the problems with ID verification and different providers.