US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification (reclaimthenet.org)

Do we know who is funding this? is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this, so they are pushing to have the OS have the responsibility or something like that?

Writing like this is frankly so exhausting. I don’t think anyone not already in the choir could make it through.

People lend phones or computers to kids. The age associated with the user account means absolutely nothing.

That means porn sites won't require me to independently verify my age right? Right?

So, who's gearing up to sue the FTC for a declaratory judgment that this is unconstitutional?

The breathless fearmongering over an age field on account set up is just completely over-the-top. This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking. The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification. The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. The question is how awful will the new normal be? Legislation like this is a win all around, a complete nothingburger. We should be celebrating it, not fighting it tooth and nail.

The tech crowds utter derangement over this minor mandate is truly a sight to behold.

Tim Apple argued it was a violation of their engineers and managers free speech to make them engineer back doors

Wonder if they will stand up against this on the same grounds

https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/

All this fake good intent to prevent another TikTok which was the only media which transmited the reality on the ground during the Gaza genocide. And its aftermath in the youth mind and in the University campuses. Fascists and industrialists have to take control, again, of the minds. (See oligarchy's appetite for social and media companies)

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So this bill creates a commission to ensure that the information cannot be stolen or breached from operating systems, but says nothing about how the applications querying this information must protect or leverage it. I basically requires that any application get to know a user's birthday, as long as it's "necessary". What a fucking joke! I'm so sick and tired of this bullshit.

Direct link to the bill: https://docs.reclaimthenet.org/parents-decide-act-os-age-ver...

Edit: Oh, and the commission gets to make up the rules on how ages should be verified. So, prepare for a whole other level of PII leakage that isn't even captured by the text of the bill.

Discussion on the bill source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203

> The term “operating system” means software that supports the basic functions of a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.

> The term “operating system provider” means a person that develops, licenses, or controls the operating system on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device.

So excited to see the GNU vs. Linux debate finally land in court.

This is yet another underhanded attempt at making digital id mandatory. Child protection is just the trojan horse.

EU also released their age verification legislation. Notice how closely they are timed.

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-chief-urges-bloc-wide-push-on-age-v...

Pure coincidence?

It is all going according to plan.

An utterly insane idea for a law.

Age verification inherently means identity verification. There's no way to prove your age without first proving that you are YOU, either by showing your face or authenticating with some third party authority, usually government or a corporation.

The idea that you should be locked out of using your own computer until you do this is utterly insane. What problem does it solve that existing parental control tools don't? A generation of parents already trust their babies with iPads for this reason. And what of the millions of Americans who don't have current ID?

Glad to see that Elise Stefanik came out of fucking hiding in NY-21 to dump this stupid "parents decide" bill on us when she couldn't even be assed to help her constituents over the past several months when one of the main hospitals in her district is bankrupt and closing.

Last time we saw her anywhere near here was her "farewell tour" when she was supposed to go be Trump's UN stooge. Haven't seen her up here since.

Glad to know we get to die up here for on-device age verification for everyone else.

Why is Meta funding this? What exactly do they benefit from doing this?

This is equivalent to China’s Digital ID without branding it as such - because such branding would fail.

They are laying the foundation at the infrastructure layer to build a Digital surveillance net, look at the pieces with the eye of an Architect -

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/banks-citizenship-data-colle...

And

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250...

Related HN post "Ageless Linux- Software for humans of indeterminate age" :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381791

Salvage old free as in freedom distros. Learn about i2pd and tunneling Usenet/IRC and Email (even cool online Nethack/Wesnoth/FreeCiv gameplays over it, any turn based libre game will work).

There are some Usenet servers (text content only, no binaries, all illegal crap it's cut down by design) listening under I2P servers. By design enforcing any cross-pond law it's impossible.

Learn about NNCP in order to tunnel messages over it, really useful for asynchronous connections such as Email and Usenet: https://nncpgo.org

Also, learn connect to a Pubnix and to use Usenet/IRC/Email/Mastodon services (tut it's a TUI Mastodon client) from remote servers. Make their own law obsolete across the world. Learn Mutt and GPG too, it's about 20 minutes of your life and for basic email a simple text editor like Nano, Mg or Mcedit would suffice to compose an email.

Try free Biltbee servers over IRC too, these can be connected even from DOS IRC clients in order to connect to modern services such as Jabber, Steam chat and even discord (join the &bitlbee channel once you connected ot a public Bitlbee server, there are several, and type down 'plugins' to get the available chat systems in that service) and thus any age bullshit for FreeDOS it's by design unenforceable without breaking network drivers and TCP/IP stacks as TSR's and whatnot. Ditto for old Amiga, RiscOS and such old releases which are unsupported. And banning retro computing would make the several civil right unions sue the state (and the judges) like crazy for huge amounts of money. Even META too as being the main lobby instigator.

Claim your freedoms back.

I can already smell the exceptions - some companies will be exempted from these restrictions due to "national security implications", or, more realistically, "we distracted the President with a golden gewgaw and a bribe".

I've been trying to download media for a while now. I don't have a huge collection; most media is not actually very good. But, the internet soon will just be an awful conglomeration of cable TV / a big shitty mall / a horrible outrage & propaganda machine. It's already most of the way there. Either destroyed from within by bots, data brokers and corporations, or destroyed from without by government, surveillance, and regulation. I recommend you start treating the internet like a mall; it's not some place you'd actually like to go. You get in, get what you need, and get out. Some people will will disagree with the analogy on the grounds that they _like_ going to malls. Well, good news, the new internet might be for you.

This is tiring. The text is so vague, and if a big country adopts it software companies will comply, and there's no reason to why smaller ones wouldn't, since 'the work is already done'.

I wonder if it would be illegal for an user to use an outdated system without those functions when they roll out, or to use outdated applications, or to distribute outdated applications, or to keep mirrors of multiple versions of operating systems. I doubt they thought that far, or if they care at all.

This will be required in firmware eventually.

Politicians will do any draconian measure to help kids except try and improve the lives of their parents so that they can actually dedicate time to parenting. Making it slightly harder to access the internet fixes nothing. What if instead of having the largest prison population in the world our government supported communities that make raising good children possible? Our society needs to lose this urge to diagnose each other and provide some forceful treatment and instead set sights on providing the pre-conditions for everyone to prosper and lead their version of a fulfilling life. Only then will we have functional, healthy children. I quite like what the mayor of Baltimore has been doing to revitalize his city and it seems to be leading to actual change there if you want a good example: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQs59YY-e2I&pp=ygUXY2hhbm5lbCA...

There’s a version of this I could support: - pre-specified age gates baked into the protocol (perhaps just 13 and 18). - account admins on a device get to specify which bracket is associated with the account - an api that allows sites to query whether the current user’s account is above one of the thresholds

Leaks pretty minimal PII (the user is between 13 and 18 would be the tightest identifier obtainable with the above gates). But still allows for age gating some content without relying on self-reported age.

Am I optimistic the actual solution won’t be more invasive? Sadly no…