New York just proposed the most invasive state-level age verification bill the US has seen. Senate Bill S08102 would extend age verification requirements down to the device itself: internet-connected devices, operating system providers, and app stores would all be required to implement what the bill calls “age assurance” before users can access their own hardware and software ecosystems.
Edit:
Meta is one of the lobbyists for the age verification bill.
Into the Metaverse: The Money and Motivations Behind Meta’s App Store Gambit
In May 2025, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representative John James (R-MI) introduced the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA), a bill that would require app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for users under 18. Meta has bankrolled a wildly expensive lobbying campaign to enact ASAA and its state-level analogs, and instead of recoiling in horror at taking kid privacy advice from Meta, some lawmakers are credulously going along with it.
Confirmed by Bloomberg : Meta Clashes With Apple, Google Over Age Check Legislation
The struggle has pitted Meta Platforms Inc. and other app developers against Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the world’s largest app stores. Lobbyists for both sides are moving from state to state, working to water down or redirect the legislation to minimize their clients’ risks.
This year alone, at least three states — Utah, Texas and Louisiana — passed legislation requiring tech companies to authenticate users’ ages, secure parental consent for anyone under 18 and ensure minors are protected from potentially harmful digital experiences. Now, lobbyists for all three companies are flooding into South Carolina and Ohio, the next possible states to consider such legislation.
in addition, there are Over 50 Child Advocacy Groups Unite to Demand App Store Accountability
… I really don’t want to have to stop using all fucking technology now. Ffs this is absolutely disgustingly absurd. EVERYTHING GETS HACKED I am not tying my ID and real name to literally everything I do on an electronic device…
Sorry, but they handed out pamphlets at Davos.
Well not actually Davis, a more important event that nobody’s heard of.
I’m usually left of centre, even a bit more to the left than that.
But all these liberal places passing these laws… They’re making it difficult not to change teams.
I don’t watch conservative mouthpieces on YouTube, just the literal reality of these badly thought-of, privacy nightmare laws… All a conservative would have to tell me is they would revert this, and I’d be hard pressed to vote otherwise.
They’re not getting the memo are they…
What a crazy hypothetical you made up, “left of center”, considering the Republican party was pushing for federal ID verification for online services years before Democrats caught up to speed. Red states brought this up first and resulted in multiple porn sites banning users in those states.
But yes, online censorship and corporate surveillance is a bipartisan issue in the two party system of fascists. You will not be able to “vote” these issues away.
Apparently Louisiana was the first state to really push for this kind of stuff so I seriously doubt conservatives in government would stop pushing stuff like this either.
It’s one of those things that’s going to be inevitable… It’s always “FoR tHe KiDs” but it’s really about knowing exactly what every citizen is doing at all times so they can come after you for whatever displeases them.
Just to point out I’m Canadian and regardless of who started it. Saying they’ll vote Republican to avoid this stuff comes from substantial ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States
The only spin I can see from the right side is they want to be so ass deep into your tech stack that they don’t even have to ask to verify who you are.
I’m also Canadian lol. The point I’m making is that if it has me thinking like this, imagine people who were truly on the fence.
They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
If you’re Canadian then you know “left of center” in American units is still to the right of center everywhere else in the world.
It’s absurd to see a democrat doing something and blame liberals for it.
I was talking about Canada, should have mentioned that. Carney brought up that he wants to look at the issue, and God damnit I will fight this thing or at least the version that’s going to put all of our data at risk.
If it passes anyway, then I cannot in good conscience vote for any party who approved age verification like it is done in the UK, Australia, and some States.
So you replied to an article about something happening in the US to talk about Canada without mentioning Canada anywhere in your original post?
Lol that’s like saying you’d vote in favor of voter suppression laws in exchange for gun rights… yeeaaah no don’t do that lol
Don’t trust conservatives
In Canada our cons are dumb, but not brain dead like the US’.
I don’t want to vote for them.
But once age verification garbage enters the picture, I become a one-issue voter.
So as a one issue voter, you’d vote for the people doing the thing you don’t like more than the other group, instead of those doing it less?
And you called your cons dumb…
Hey after I fight tooth and nail, write opinion columns, write to all politicians I have access to, and create petitions, if all of this wasn’t enough, what else is there to do?
It’s not a sure thing in Canada, and maybe a party further left will vote against it and oppose it, in which case yeah I’d vote for that.
As a voters you don’t get much a choice. In any voting system there is a case where all your choices are for something you are a hard no on.
The team with Palantir, Cambridge analytica, that team? Team Red is all about absolute freedom for the rich, not so much the plebs
for starters, democrats are not leftists.
I’m not American lol
I’m saying they’re poisoning their own well with garbage like that.
again, they are not leftists. if anything they are poisoning the right wing capitalist well for anyone paying actual attention.
The Republican supermajority in Ohio that passed ID checks for websites months ago thinks you’re a moron for continuing to blame only Democrats for this shit
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Parents can age check their kids manually. We should not identify every user on the internet.
No we can’t. We try, but kids are not 100% of the time in our sight. They are sitting in their chair “doing homework”, but when they see us coming they switch apps - who knows what they are doing. They are getting up at 3am when we are a sleep, again doing who knows what. Even if we put controls on, anytime there is a way to bypass the control (often a website that looks good enough to fool the automated approval system school has set up) that will spread to the entire school and all kids get access to that for a week in school before it is shutdown.
If you want age verification to work, you need a strong legal effort (international!) so that anyone who makes something online that gets kids (intentionally or not) faces a strong enough legal issue (read years in prison) that it is really stops this. Part of that is enough money for investigation so that it is a given you will be caught. I don’t think you can do this, and so the whole effort is pointless.
Network level content blockers are really easy to setup and they’d be even easier if bills targeted ISPs instead (requiring gateways have the tech built-in). It takes a pretty smart and determined kid to get around network controls and it can target specific devices so adults still have an unrestricted experience.
And good luck for that kid to go online if I confiscate their device.
I can’t - teachers give them homework that must be done on the device all the time.
As a gen z, what school that uses online classroom environments and resources doesn’t give kids school-monitored tech? And for my district, our Chromebooks were HEAVILY locked down and monitored. I remeber trying to search the term “guitar latina” for a music project once and getting my search flagged because of “latina.” Most popular sites were firewalled/unaccessable (so .xxx domains were most likely blocked too). The terminal was literally disabled. Several system settings were disabled or unable to be edited. We couldn’t download programs, and most extensions were blocked (I think they eventually blocked them all). Hell, we couldn’t even change our desktop wallpaper.
Basically, at least at my middle and high school, it was very hard to access inappropriate material, and if you did, you were likely to get caught. Use cloudflare’s family dns (they have a whole setup guide) for your home network and any devices that aren’t fully locked down by the school (includes personal devices that aren’t school owned), and put parental control on so your kids can’t touch it.
If they get past all that, then congrats! You have kids who are very good at problem solving, searching the internet for info, and experimenting. All of which are great qualities for future cybersecurity professionals.
the school devices are locked down. However your experience shows why the locks are not good. Too many useful searches could be bad. They are not going to assign a team of humans to review every search result. Either they whitelist things so restricted that you can’t research anything or they blacklist so little things not on the list spread faster than they can block. (Both is a real possibility)
- Confiscate device
- “Time for homework”
- Give back device
- Do homework
- “Homework done”
- Reconfiscate device
they can do it at the computer that sits in your room.
At what point do I change from a concerned parent protecting my kids to an over protective hellicopter parent?
It takes a pretty smart and determined kid to get around network controls
Proxies and VPNs exist for a reason. If the entire country of China can’t keep up with the number of VPNs and proxies poking holes in their Great Firewall, what makes you think individual parents have the time to do so? You never used a proxy site to access blocked content on a school computer? It doesn’t take a high degree of technical skill. You just google “proxy site” and paste whatever URL you wanted into the site.
an important feature in parental control software is to disable installing random software
And a proxy site doesn’t require installing third party software.
Almost everything is a webpage these days. Or a youtube video
IDK what proxies you use but free ones really suck IMO and they aren’t very obfuscated so they can be easily blocked too. VPNs are trickier but there are methods to detect VPN traffic so that could be blocked too. If you wanted to go ballistic you could even set a whitelist of services and everything else gets blocked.
but free ones really suck IMO
Kids don’t care. They’ll use whatever is available. Free ones are almost undoubtedly collecting and selling your browsing info too, but kids won’t care about that either. Now your attempts at blocking them have made their browsing less private.
and they aren’t very obfuscated so they can be easily blocked too
And now you’ve fallen into the whack-a-mole trap, which is exactly what most parents don’t have time for.
there are methods to detect VPN traffic so that could be blocked too
Methods available on residential ISP-provided modem/routers? That’s the only “networking gear” that most households have. I think you may be falling for the Average Familiarity trap.
If you wanted to go ballistic you could even set a whitelist of services and everything else gets blocked
Sure, and your kid can just buy a cheap prepaid SIM card to keep under their mattress. Data plans are stupid cheap, and kids are resourceful. Hell, I can walk down to the corner store and buy an entire android phone for like $50. Will it be a good phone? Fuck no. But it’ll get access to the internet. And if a neighbor or nearby business has unprotected WiFi, I don’t even need the prepaid SIM card.
If you’re trying to stop a 14 year old from looking at tits, you’re already in a pitched battle against an opponent who will never run out of determination. My original point was simply that parents don’t have the time or resources to constantly play cat and mouse with whatever kids are using to jork it. There are entire private companies and government departments with hundreds of full time employees who specialize in parental controls, and they still struggle to keep up. Parents who work full time (and who probably aren’t tech literate enough to do anything more than click the “Enable AdGuard” button when setting up their router, if their router even supports AdGuard) simply won’t have the time or resources.
Parents who work full time (and who probably aren’t tech literate enough to do anything more than click the “Enable AdGuard” button when setting up their router, if their router even supports AdGuard) simply won’t have the time or resources.
That’s a capability that most routers don’t have, which is the kind of bills we should be passing except there’s zero upside for big business.
I agree with you on that. My original point was simply that expecting every single parent to run their own blocking isn’t feasible, nor effective under real world situations.
Right, so use them to your advantage? Don’t allow unfettered internet access on the device you give your child. Use MDM/Parental controls to lock its internet access to a proxy or VPN that blocks adult websites, as well as other anonymizers. Business have been doing this since forever.
It only takes one kid to figure out the bypass and it spreads all the kids. Some of those kids are talking to kids going to other schools.
every week my kids hear about a new game the school isn’t blocking while they are in class. Sometimes the teachers catch them, but kids are good at hiding what they are doing - and switching to what they should do when the teacher comes near.
As a parent I’m totally up for the cat and mouse game over the prospect of living in a world with only proprietary operating systems. This idea will get worse and worse until only Windows, Android, and Mac operating systems are in compliance with the law.
I’ve been saying for a while that we should start presenting lawmakers with secure ways to do age verification, instead of relying on lobbyists to do it. Lawmakers will inevitably pass these kinds of things, so at least make sure the groundwork is there for it to be done securely instead of just bitching about it when Meta lobbies to be the third-party age verification system.
Have the government set up a database with every single name, DOB, ID number (SSN, for the Americans), and a password that the individual has set up on the provided site. Then have them use a known hash for each one, essentially turning the password into a salt. And the hashes can be stored in a simple database that determines whether or not someone is old enough.
Next, the device hashes the user’s inputs for name, DOB, ID number, and password. If you want to require an ID, that photo can be verified directly on the device, because even phones are powerful enough to do things like OCR nowadays. Now the device sends that hash directly to the government, and asks “hey, does this hash match someone who is over {age of majority}?” The government’s system automatically responds with a simple yes/no.
Your device can now automatically respond to any age verification checks, so there’s no need for individual sites or apps to ask for your personal info. They can simply ask your device, and your device can respond automatically. The user never even needs to see an “are you over {age}” prompt, because it all happens before the site or service even loads.
It’s essentially the same idea that Tor uses, where routing your traffic through three nodes helps ensure security. The first node (the site, in this case) only gets the verification from your device. The second node (your device) can keep your info entirely on the device, so it never needs to send it to any third party. And the third node (the government) never sees your browsing data. The only device that actually sees both your personal info and your browsing data is your device, which you control. You didn’t need to send a third party any extra data about yourself to verify every individual site or service. Everything about your info stays entirely on your device. And the government didn’t get any of your browsing info, because the device was simply asking if you were old enough to be verified.
For shared devices (like desktops) this could be done on an account level. Same basic concept, except the “is over {age}” flag could be set on the user account. “But my privacy” folks start to rabble about this, (because it usually implies something like a Microsoft account) but I can guarantee Microsoft already knows roughly how old you are. So parents can log in with their verified account to watch porn, and kids will get unverified accounts that redirect them back to a “hey it looks like you’re unverified. If you’re old enough to view this content, here’s how to verify your device” page.
For parents, protecting your kids is now as simple as refusing to verify their devices/accounts and protecting that password (so they can’t just use your info to verify themselves behind your back). Hardware verification can be done securely.
I don’t know what it’s all used for but there is a government site for ID verification already: https://id.me/
Even if Trump wasn’t President I’m not all that comfortable with the US government knowing every time I want to rub one out.
There’s a few cryptographic methods to share this data “blindly” (signatures, zero knowledge proofs, verifiable credentials, etc.) so we’re not putting out more and more about ourselves to be taken advantage of.
As you said the biggest problem is the lobbyists. They don’t represent the people, they represent businesses.
Exactly. There are so many people in this thread who really seem to underestimate how much time and effort it actually takes to keep kids from playing the games their peers are playing. Keeping a teenager from looking at tits is a full time job by itself, which would require all kinds of invasive privacy violations. As the old adage goes, the strictest parents make the sneakiest kids.
They are only easy to setup if you don’t care about getting them right. Either you block a lot of useful content (only approved, audited things allowed), or you block only things that are known evil (that is you audited it). Either way the vast majority of the internet is not audited and we have no idea which of that is good vs evil. (nevermind trying to get a consistent definition of good/evil). The name “onlyfans” makes me think of sports fans and thus something I’d allow kids to access - of course I know better, I’ll be there is someone out there who would be setting up the firewall who doesn’t know it is in fact adult content.
There are very comprehensive block lists for this kind of stuff so you don’t have to audit everything yourself.
It’s not on you to know every single website and what it does. All major security providers maintain a classification database of websites that they use to filter the internet. Most major corporations subscribe to those lists, as do schools (I think by law). All you would do is buy one of these services and the blacklist would be managed by them. They’re not 100% perfect, and you child will be able to find a picture of boobs if they try hard enough, but that has always been the case.
One quick and easy way is to change your DNS to 1.1.1.3, which is a public resolver Cloudflare runs which filters out adult domains. This doesn’t scale if you’ve given your child a cellular device that can connect to other networks, but in that case you shouldn’t have done that, or should secure that device with a security solution that can enforce polices across the OS.
Personally I think it should be easier for parents to be able to do this kind of thing without having to learn too much about the tech, but deciding how to raise your child and what to shelter them from is your responsibility. These products have existed for decades. Instead of forcing OS manufactures to confirm ages and identities, we should focus on making sure parents have access to easy to use parental controls.
Every week my kid hears about another game (not boobs) that the school didn’t block and thus they can play when the teacher isn’t looking. There are also a lot of non educational youtube videos they can watch, but since some of their real educational videos are on youtube they don’t block most. (Again youtube will block boobs - but that is not all I’m worried about)
You don’t want kids watching non educational YouTube so your solution is to track what adults are doing online?
OKAY THEN.
in public schools the admins can’t just do their own research and use their judgement to find a good blocklist, but they are told which lists they need to use. and those lists are often not that good, but at least they are tied to an expensive license or something.
but kids are not 100% of the time in our sight.
neither is your age verified phone. kids are already stealing parents credit cards to spend on mobile games, this will just add another incentive. but I bet your next idea will be constant age verification with the front camera.
but when they see us coming they switch apps - who knows what they are doing
and how the fuck does this help with that? your issue is that you are fucking lazy to even enable the built in parental control functions in the phone!!!
They are enabled - the kids have found bypasses. Turning on the hotspot and then using their school device for instance
why isn’t the school device locked down? why do you want to lock down everyone’s private devices, instead of making the school to lock down theirs?
I don’t care about your device. The school devices are lockee down - but it isn’t feasable to lock everything down and still have a useful device for the things they need to do.
My mesh hub can straight up disable the internet at my house from 12am to 6am or any other hours I want.
But not my kids phone that they turned the hotspot on before then. even if I take it their school device can be got from the backpack
Again, stop giving them devices that they have full control over. They either shouldn’t have a smartphone or they should have one that you control.
Woah. Crazy how governments around the world are all doing this in lock-step.
It’s almost like we’re all being ruled by a handful of families haha.
Yep but point it out and you’re the crazy person 🙄
I can’t believe all of you who are opposed to this.
Won’t you think of the poor data brokers who’s entire library of intimate personal details about every person who’s ever used a smartphone is practically worthless without the ability to link it to your actual identity.
Screw the children, think of the shareholders you monsters.
This is a clearly coordinated attack on the civilians to get more data to sell and spy on them.
This isn’t a coincidence that these bills pop around at the same time.
Agree. But it’s “citizens” not civilians. “Civilians” are those that aren’t military. Civilians are virtually everybody, police included. The USA started this double-speak ~15 years ago, where they pretend that police are military, and police aren’t civilians. Please stop rewiring your brain by using their language.
Lobbying remains more powerful than carefully considered debate.
snd more powerful than voting.
You could say that capitalists have seized the means of democracy, and most of the worlds political class are just a vassal to exert their will over all of us.
“Child advocacy groups”, funded by billionaires.
If you can’t see it, you need to peel back a few more layers.
This is a good example for how democracy under capitalism tends to serve the interests of the Epstein class above the rest of us.
Fuck these people
You’ll need to verify your age for that too.
Fucking cockroaches
Weren’t the red hats the ones bitching about “the nanny state”?
The same crowd that needs the second amendment to stand up to tyranny but are nowhere to be found when tyranny is actually happening?
You mean the hypocrite amendment?
Freedom for me, laws for thee
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
-someone smarter than me
before users can access their own hardware
So the New yorkers can’t buy computers and mobile phones anymore.
So what.
Politicians who unwaveringly support The King of the Pedophiles and a serial rapist think want me to believe they’re “protecting the children.”
Christian fundie groups trying to get rid of porn on the web. Other groups seeking to eliminate anonymity from the web.
Meta is likely going along with it because it protects them from child vulnerability lawsuits.
If they succeed in getting rid of internet porn, there will be only website and it would be www.bringbacktheporn.com
… And based on usage, it’ll be run by a religious group. They consume the most porn, after all, and I bet this kind of bill is virtue-signaling or offloading of responsibility.
:D
Hell, let’s go one step further and force it on the user level:
Every time you want to access an online service, a government-appointed doctor comes to your house and does an X-ray of your clavicle to determine bone ossification, dental examinations, and a DNA methylation test to determine your biological age.It’s very important that this happens every time, in order to catch anyone who ages backwards.
Benjamin Button starts freaking out
