Age checks, governments, and privacy tradeoffs

After a year tangled in political drama, AI hype, and regulation battles, the TWiT crew explains how many of tech's "biggest stories" simply fizzled into nothing or left us with new headaches by year's end.

• Year-end tech trends: AI, politics, and security dominated 2025
• Major stories faded fast: TikTok saga, political tech drama, DOGE scandal
• TikTok's ownership battle—Oracle, Trump donors, and US-China tensions
• China tech fears: banned drones, IoT vulnerabilities, secret radios in buses
• Rising political pressure for internet privacy and media literacy reform
• Surveillance and kill switch concerns in US grid and port infrastructure
• Convenience vs. privacy: Americans trade data for discounts and ease
• Age verification, surveillance, and flawed facial recognition across countries
• Discord's ID leak highlights risks of rushed compliance with privacy laws
• Social media's impact on kids pushes age-gating and verification laws
• ISPs monetize customer data, VPNs pitched for personal privacy
• Global government crackdowns: UK bans VPN advertising, mandates age checks
• The illusion of absolute privacy: flawed age gates and persistent tracking
• AI takes over: explosive growth, but profits elusive for big players
• Arms race in LLMs: DeepSeek's breakthrough, OpenAI/Meta talent bidding war
• Ad-driven models still rule; Amazon's playbook repeated in AI
• Humanoid robots and AGI hype: skepticism vs. Silicon Valley optimism
• AI-generated art, media, and the challenge of deepfake detection
• Social platforms falter: Instagram and X swamped by fake or low-value content
• Google's legal, regulatory, and technical woes: ad tech trial, Manifest V3 backlash
• RAM price spikes and hardware shortages blamed on AI data center demand
• YouTube overtakes mobile for podcast and video viewing, Oscars move online
• The internet's growth: Cloudflare stats, X vs. Reddit, spam domain trends
• Weird tech stories: hacked crosswalks, Nintendo Switch 2 Staplegate, LEGO theft ring
• Sad farewell: Lamar Wilson's passing and mental health awareness in tech
• Reflections on the year's turbulence and hopes for a better 2026

Host: Leo Laporte

Guests: Mikah Sargent, Paris Martineau, and Steve Gibson

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