4 ms·

Update on age requirements for apps distributed in Texas

38 points by Austin_Conlon 9mo ago

expedition32 9mo ago
It is interesting to me that we are running a giant social experiment with people's childhoods- something we know can only be done once. Meanwhile the silicon valley elite admitted that they don't let their 12 year old daughter on Instagram...
- munificent 9mo ago
  Society has always been running giant social experiments on the next generation. That's what a culture is.
  - bmitc 9mo ago
    What are some key examples prior to the Internet?
    - runako 9mo ago
      TV, radio, public school, computers, video games, rock & roll, rap, desegregation, etc.
      - bmitc 9mo ago
        I guess I was really looking for concrete examples and examples prior to the invention of or not related to the use of electronic technology. For your non-technological items in your list, I don't see how public school, rock and roll, and desegregation are or were remotely related to experiments being ran on children by society.
        gretch 9mo ago
        You don’t see them as experiments because they succeeded and are now just seen as “normal”.
        runako 9mo ago
        Public school -- new concept that caused massive changes to social behaviors and patterns of association. Nobody knew ahead of time what the results of this would be, so it was as much an experiment as letting kids access Instagram. Rock & roll -- millions of people thought that letting children listen to this African American music would corrupt their children and prove ruinous to children. Some parents demanded controls on access to this music, much as some parents are doing with Instagram today. Desegregation -- it's well worth an hour of reading if you haven't spent the time so far. Here I will just say that it was obviously a profound change in social patterns, changes to the US's legal caste system, and had to be enforced at gunpoint. Nobody knew how it would play out, like nobody really knows how using Instagram at age 15 will impact people in midlife. This led to (white) parental outcry over the prospective changes, as many (white) parents did not want to participate in this social experiment. Big changes, no real control groups, unpredictable outcomes. Experiments in a very real sense.
        pjc50 9mo ago
        I think you've really highlighted the extent to which irrational prejudice plays a role here, as two and a half of those examples involve racism. The US is one of a small number of societies which were ever racially segregated like that. It was in its own way a (failed) experiment. (the UK has no shortage of racism, but it was never legally enforced!)
        bmitc 9mo ago
        I think it's a stretch to call those experiments of the same kind as those being ran by modern corporations with access to enormous amounts of data and direct connections to people and the ability to later influence based upon the experiments. Who ran the rock and roll experiment? That example makes no sense. Public schools and desegregation were constructed to better society, not as some nefarious way for some corporation to improve their profit lines.
      - pyuser583 9mo ago
        Books, newspapers, concert halls, education ...
- conductr 9mo ago
  It’s more interesting to me why nobody except sv elites can come to the same conclusion themselves regarding <12 year olds on instagram and instead seem to need the government to parent their kids I hate this law and those like it, mostly because it shouldn’t be necessary for government to overstep like this. But when I look around… maybe it is
  - wmf 9mo ago
    It's a collective action problem.
    - godelski 9mo ago
      I don't think it is just that. Look at an HN thread on privacy and you will find a lot of people that do not see any issues. The problem really comes down to complexity and trust. The truth is that there never is a problem if we operate under the assumption that all actors are honest and good natured. But the reality of the world is that this is a naive assumption. All citizens should be concerned about changing objectives from their authorities. A democracy can vote in dictators and a benevolent dictator can quickly change to a malicious one (which has happened frequently historically). We also need to be concerned with non-authority threat actors, from criminals to nation-state actors competing states (and even allies for the same aforementioned reason). That's the problem. The realistic conditions we need to solve for are far more complex than the ones people operate under and we have a difficult time talking to one another about it. For a privacy conscious person it does not matter if the holder of the data is the most benevolent entity that could exist, it is if there is the opportunity for the data to be held by anyone else. Thus, no one should hold it. No matter how "worthy". Even on HN there are a large number of users who think they are not the target of hackers, and especially nation-state hackers. Of all places on the internet this should be one of the most informed on the matter and best suited to understand that being "normal" is what makes them a target, to be incorporated into bot-nets or other reasons like being used for lateral movement. It is the exact same problem: the reality is far more complex. The assumption of not being a target is based on the understanding that they are not the end target but the complexity of reality is that this is not the condition for being /a/ target. I do agree that collective action matters. But it is hard to form collective action when people do not have the motivation for action. And they don't have the motivation because they have a naive approximation of the problems at hand.
- MiddleEndian 9mo ago
  I would not let my (hypothetical) 12 year old on Instagram. I also don't want to give Instagram (or any other site, since I don't use Instagram) my ID to view content on it.
Edmond 9mo ago
If the hammer ever comes down on this issue, ie hardcore requirement for age verification, there are ways to do this while protecting privacy. We are experimenting with bootstraping a PKI certificate trust chain for facilitating trust projection and information verification online. Think of it as the ability to do things like age verification at scale via a peer-2-peer ish mechanism instead of sending your government id to a service provider. One experiment is with PGP key holders (for now Keybase key holders) as CAs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576590 And also .gov email holders: https://blog.certisfy.com/2025/12/using-gov-email-addresses- https://blog.certisfy.com/2025/12/using-gov-email-addresses-... It's all self-service and requires no sign-up or download of anything, the app (https://certisfy.com/app https://certisfy.com/app) is an in-browser app and all the cryptography happens in the browser.
- mschuster91 9mo ago
  Why so complex. ID cards could solve that issue, every European ID card has a powerful and programmable crypto processor / secure element inside and so do all ICAO compliant passports. Have the website emit a random nonce (to guide against replay attacks / reuse) plus an information what is requested (name, DOB, address, some like the Croatian ID card even store photographs), the card prepares a response with that data, signs that using its private key (with a 2FA being possible as well by using a PIN/password) and returns it to the website. The Croatian ID card doesn't even need a middleware because it doesn't do 2FA, you can ask it all of that by pure NFC communication. The German ID card requires a middleware ("AusweisApp", open source) for added protection though.
  - Edmond 9mo ago
    Age verification could indeed be implemented in other ways. The approach outlined above is for information verification and trust projection in general, meaning you can put just about any verified information on a certificate and it can be used online. Here is a concrete example of how trustworthy certificates can be used online, this is my personal profile on bluesky with verification that is independent of the Blue sky service: https://bsky.app/profile/bitlooter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/bitlooter.bsky.social If you click on the profile image you can enter that code into https://certisfy.com/app https://certisfy.com/app to verify the identity of the profile. That sticker could be on any online profile to prove high quality authenticity, it could for instance be on an e-commerce site to prove that the site isn't a scam.
John23832 9mo ago
Just let the parents be responsible. Jesus. Attach minor accounts to the account of the parent, make the parent say yes.
- pyuser583 9mo ago
  Ok, but you're saying two different things. You can't know a minor account is a minor account unless you require age verification. Don't get me wrong - I support your proposal. But it requires massive state intervention.
ghaff 9mo ago
Meanwhile I actually started college at 16 which is illegal in some locales.
- Jtsummers 9mo ago
  > illegal in some locales. In the US or elsewhere? I've known a lot of people who attended college at 16, and through friends with teenage children know even more these days. They attended (or are attending) schools in a variety of states.
  - BeetleB 9mo ago
    I think "illegal" is a strong word. Some states don't allow it in public universities. I suspect they're fine with it at private universities.
    - Jtsummers 9mo ago
      > Some states don't allow it in public universities. But which states? I haven't been able to find anything about states barring minors from attending universities.
      - ghaff 9mo ago
        Not clear in the US. Some countries, such as Canada may have stricter requirements even if some wiggle room.
        shakna 9mo ago
        I don't think Canada has a minimum age - just an educational requirement. If you've completed year 11 early, it looks like you'd be fine.
      - binarycrusader 9mo ago
        Some states such as Virginia (although with an exception if the person has a high school diploma or equivalent): https://www.vccs.edu/application-information/ https://www.vccs.edu/application-information/ To qualify for general admission to a college, you must have a high school diploma, its equivalent, or be 18 years of age or older. Unclear whether that is statewide or just a requirement of this state institution. I suspect many of the ones that do have this age requirement also have the diploma exception.
runako 9mo ago
(Not in Texas) Did this apply to X (Twitter) at all?

38 points by Austin_Conlon 9mo ago

It is interesting to me that we are running a giant social experiment with people's childhoods- something we know can only be done once. Meanwhile the silicon valley elite admitted that they don't let their 12 year old daughter on Instagram...

munificent 9mo ago
Society has always been running giant social experiments on the next generation. That's what a culture is.
- bmitc 9mo ago
  What are some key examples prior to the Internet?
  - runako 9mo ago
    TV, radio, public school, computers, video games, rock & roll, rap, desegregation, etc.
    - bmitc 9mo ago
      I guess I was really looking for concrete examples and examples prior to the invention of or not related to the use of electronic technology. For your non-technological items in your list, I don't see how public school, rock and roll, and desegregation are or were remotely related to experiments being ran on children by society.
      - gretch 9mo ago
        You don’t see them as experiments because they succeeded and are now just seen as “normal”.
      - runako 9mo ago
        Public school -- new concept that caused massive changes to social behaviors and patterns of association. Nobody knew ahead of time what the results of this would be, so it was as much an experiment as letting kids access Instagram. Rock & roll -- millions of people thought that letting children listen to this African American music would corrupt their children and prove ruinous to children. Some parents demanded controls on access to this music, much as some parents are doing with Instagram today. Desegregation -- it's well worth an hour of reading if you haven't spent the time so far. Here I will just say that it was obviously a profound change in social patterns, changes to the US's legal caste system, and had to be enforced at gunpoint. Nobody knew how it would play out, like nobody really knows how using Instagram at age 15 will impact people in midlife. This led to (white) parental outcry over the prospective changes, as many (white) parents did not want to participate in this social experiment. Big changes, no real control groups, unpredictable outcomes. Experiments in a very real sense.
        pjc50 9mo ago
        I think you've really highlighted the extent to which irrational prejudice plays a role here, as two and a half of those examples involve racism. The US is one of a small number of societies which were ever racially segregated like that. It was in its own way a (failed) experiment. (the UK has no shortage of racism, but it was never legally enforced!)
        bmitc 9mo ago
        I think it's a stretch to call those experiments of the same kind as those being ran by modern corporations with access to enormous amounts of data and direct connections to people and the ability to later influence based upon the experiments. Who ran the rock and roll experiment? That example makes no sense. Public schools and desegregation were constructed to better society, not as some nefarious way for some corporation to improve their profit lines.
    - pyuser583 9mo ago
      Books, newspapers, concert halls, education ...
conductr 9mo ago
It’s more interesting to me why nobody except sv elites can come to the same conclusion themselves regarding <12 year olds on instagram and instead seem to need the government to parent their kids I hate this law and those like it, mostly because it shouldn’t be necessary for government to overstep like this. But when I look around… maybe it is
- wmf 9mo ago
  It's a collective action problem.
  - godelski 9mo ago
    I don't think it is just that. Look at an HN thread on privacy and you will find a lot of people that do not see any issues. The problem really comes down to complexity and trust. The truth is that there never is a problem if we operate under the assumption that all actors are honest and good natured. But the reality of the world is that this is a naive assumption. All citizens should be concerned about changing objectives from their authorities. A democracy can vote in dictators and a benevolent dictator can quickly change to a malicious one (which has happened frequently historically). We also need to be concerned with non-authority threat actors, from criminals to nation-state actors competing states (and even allies for the same aforementioned reason). That's the problem. The realistic conditions we need to solve for are far more complex than the ones people operate under and we have a difficult time talking to one another about it. For a privacy conscious person it does not matter if the holder of the data is the most benevolent entity that could exist, it is if there is the opportunity for the data to be held by anyone else. Thus, no one should hold it. No matter how "worthy". Even on HN there are a large number of users who think they are not the target of hackers, and especially nation-state hackers. Of all places on the internet this should be one of the most informed on the matter and best suited to understand that being "normal" is what makes them a target, to be incorporated into bot-nets or other reasons like being used for lateral movement. It is the exact same problem: the reality is far more complex. The assumption of not being a target is based on the understanding that they are not the end target but the complexity of reality is that this is not the condition for being /a/ target. I do agree that collective action matters. But it is hard to form collective action when people do not have the motivation for action. And they don't have the motivation because they have a naive approximation of the problems at hand.
MiddleEndian 9mo ago
I would not let my (hypothetical) 12 year old on Instagram. I also don't want to give Instagram (or any other site, since I don't use Instagram) my ID to view content on it.

Edmond 9mo ago

If the hammer ever comes down on this issue, ie hardcore requirement for age verification, there are ways to do this while protecting privacy. We are experimenting with bootstraping a PKI certificate trust chain for facilitating trust projection and information verification online. Think of it as the ability to do things like age verification at scale via a peer-2-peer ish mechanism instead of sending your government id to a service provider. One experiment is with PGP key holders (for now Keybase key holders) as CAs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576590 And also .gov email holders: https://blog.certisfy.com/2025/12/using-gov-email-addresses- https://blog.certisfy.com/2025/12/using-gov-email-addresses-... It's all self-service and requires no sign-up or download of anything, the app (https://certisfy.com/app https://certisfy.com/app) is an in-browser app and all the cryptography happens in the browser.

mschuster91 9mo ago
Why so complex. ID cards could solve that issue, every European ID card has a powerful and programmable crypto processor / secure element inside and so do all ICAO compliant passports. Have the website emit a random nonce (to guide against replay attacks / reuse) plus an information what is requested (name, DOB, address, some like the Croatian ID card even store photographs), the card prepares a response with that data, signs that using its private key (with a 2FA being possible as well by using a PIN/password) and returns it to the website. The Croatian ID card doesn't even need a middleware because it doesn't do 2FA, you can ask it all of that by pure NFC communication. The German ID card requires a middleware ("AusweisApp", open source) for added protection though.
- Edmond 9mo ago
  Age verification could indeed be implemented in other ways. The approach outlined above is for information verification and trust projection in general, meaning you can put just about any verified information on a certificate and it can be used online. Here is a concrete example of how trustworthy certificates can be used online, this is my personal profile on bluesky with verification that is independent of the Blue sky service: https://bsky.app/profile/bitlooter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/bitlooter.bsky.social If you click on the profile image you can enter that code into https://certisfy.com/app https://certisfy.com/app to verify the identity of the profile. That sticker could be on any online profile to prove high quality authenticity, it could for instance be on an e-commerce site to prove that the site isn't a scam.

John23832 9mo ago

Just let the parents be responsible. Jesus. Attach minor accounts to the account of the parent, make the parent say yes.

pyuser583 9mo ago
Ok, but you're saying two different things. You can't know a minor account is a minor account unless you require age verification. Don't get me wrong - I support your proposal. But it requires massive state intervention.

ghaff 9mo ago

Meanwhile I actually started college at 16 which is illegal in some locales.

Jtsummers 9mo ago
> illegal in some locales. In the US or elsewhere? I've known a lot of people who attended college at 16, and through friends with teenage children know even more these days. They attended (or are attending) schools in a variety of states.
- BeetleB 9mo ago
  I think "illegal" is a strong word. Some states don't allow it in public universities. I suspect they're fine with it at private universities.
  - Jtsummers 9mo ago
    > Some states don't allow it in public universities. But which states? I haven't been able to find anything about states barring minors from attending universities.
    - ghaff 9mo ago
      Not clear in the US. Some countries, such as Canada may have stricter requirements even if some wiggle room.
      - shakna 9mo ago
        I don't think Canada has a minimum age - just an educational requirement. If you've completed year 11 early, it looks like you'd be fine.
    - binarycrusader 9mo ago
      Some states such as Virginia (although with an exception if the person has a high school diploma or equivalent): https://www.vccs.edu/application-information/ https://www.vccs.edu/application-information/ To qualify for general admission to a college, you must have a high school diploma, its equivalent, or be 18 years of age or older. Unclear whether that is statewide or just a requirement of this state institution. I suspect many of the ones that do have this age requirement also have the diploma exception.

runako 9mo ago

(Not in Texas) Did this apply to X (Twitter) at all?