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US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed
https://social.coop/@cwebber/116408556882122186 https://social.coop/@cwebber/116408556882122186
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Morromist 6mo agoIts going to be funny when there are married 17 year olds driving cars with guns and children but who can't install linux or access facebook without calling their dad. Why are so many bi-partisan bills so bad?
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- OhMeadhbh 6mo agoI don't think that's what this bill is about. I think they want to be able to attach a government issued ID to logins for various services. They tried claiming it was to fight terrorism, but that didn't really work so now they're saying "it's for the children!"
- Morromist 6mo agoYeah, you're probably right. I couldn't find the text of the bill in the link. I'm sure the effort to do this kind of thing goes back to the 90s: like a lot of the really intense copyright bills - the CASE Act (ability for big companies to easily fine people who they think are breaching their copyright for $5,000 + legal fees without anything resembling a trial or evidentiary hearing) has been popping up in different forms for decades - but in its current name they took 5 years of trying to pass it, but the main idea was officially proposed in 2006 - so 14 years to get the bill passed, but then it was a thing long before it was officially proposed by a house comittee too. I guess they figure if they keep trying they'll eventually get it passed - which is probably true.
- Longlius 6mo agoMost of these "online safety" acts have been sitting around in congress for half a decade at this point. Mike Johnson keeps blocking them because he has serious doubts about their constitutionality (which keep getting borne out whenever the laws end up in court).
- dotwaffle 6mo agoSomeone came up with a good theory a while ago that I'm inclined to believe: The social media companies (esp. Meta as I understand it) were looking at huge fines for showing adult content to under-18s, so they lobbied hard to ensure that the burden of proof for age verification was on anyone else but themselves, hence why the OS vendors are being targeted now. Ultimately, they seem to have realised that they can't stop adult content from being shared, so the easiest way to get there was to mark anything even vaguely possible of being adult, and require age verification -- which comes with a lot of political cover vs. just deleting it. Of course, if you stoke up the right people, you end up with lots of support from the puritanical brigades, and label all naysayers as putting children in harm's way.
- trollbridge 6mo agoThey could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so, so why not shift the effort on to everyone else?
- phkahler 6mo ago>> They could stop adult content from being shown to minors; it would just take effort on their part to do so If you voluntarily sensor content, you might be in danger of being held responsible for various things since you control what people see. Phone companies in the US are "common carriers" which means they just connect people, but are not responsible for what people do over the phone (plotting crime or whatever). Social Media is still trying to have it both ways - censor some stuff but not be responsible for anything. IMHO that will eventually fail.
- heavyset_go 6mo agoSection 230 allows for as much censoring as you want, you are not liable for user generated content as an interactive computer service provider if you censor or don't.
- packetlost 6mo agoI'm really quite confident I don't want these companies collecting face and ID scans to prove age, so no I think this being an OS problem is actually a very reasonable solution.
- burnt-resistor 6mo agoThis is being pushed by dark money billionaire PACs and lobbyists all over the world. Techbro feudal lords demand total control, de-anonymization of users, and monetization of such data but sell it as "think of the children" "safety". It's also why Flock is popping up to bring Big Mommy while it's using taxpayer money to force privacy elimination and mass surveillance by continuously tracking innocent people.
- varispeed 6mo agoThat also reveals true (at least) two tier law enforcement. Banana republic level of corruption is fine as long as it's called lobbying and law enforcement looks the other way.
- foxglacier 6mo agoThis is an endless complaint I've heard for many years but Americans always vote for lobbied parties. They are clearly happy with this compared to whatever other reasons they have to vote. Somehow there's always something more important that makes them think "I'll tolerate a bit of corruption because at least he's promising XYZ".
- Morromist 6mo agoAs an american voter I confess you're right. - but also there aren't many good alternatives for us. Say you have 3 people running for senate to choose from. Canidate A and B have super PACs that spend $80 million each on ads. Canidate C doesn't. You could vote for canidate C, but he will likely lose - nobody sees anything about them, they can't employ many people to work their campaign, they don't get interviewed on tv. It feels better to vote for someone who has a chance to win. Also candiate A is a nutjob who thinks we should take over Tierra del Fuego as our 51st state and all young boys should have a year where their schooling is just learning how to throw knives really good like a Ninja, so you really want them to lose - you pretty much have to vote for Canidate B.
- 6mo ago
- varispeed 6mo agoBecause of corruption, sorry lobbying. Big corporations want the data.
- Izmaki 6mo agoThey already have the data and much more of it. This has nothing to do with “Big Corp” wanting to know how old their users are.
- varispeed 6mo agoIt's not about the age, but whole identity. You know you are serving ads to a real person and not a bot and so on and you can correlate person across different services with 100% accuracy. Currently you can still reasonably easy fake a persona.
- figassis 6mo agoIf this is the case, this can be gamed. People can use stolen documents. Nothing says a person can’t own multiple computers so what happens if someone uses your id in 20 laptops? Will the companies just claim “but the machine said they where old enough?” The law may not have teeth, but will violate privacy. Something like https://protocol.humanidentity.io https://protocol.humanidentity.io (disclaimer: I built it, sorry for the plug) or any other privacy preserving service might work better. A platform can then require that a person verifies age in a privacy preserving way before viewing adult content.
- natpalmer1776 6mo agoI really like your solution. Have you considered making connections with well connected individuals and potentially making small compromises on your products integrity to appeal to the people who would make this a legislated standard across the board? Or perhaps golfing at the right clubs to make it a defacto industry standard like ID.me seems poised to become? I hate seeing stuff like this once and then never again due to people who are capable of making something this… Good being unable to “play the game” or whatever optimize to break the social-moral glass ceiling for a given problem space.
- cik 6mo agoFor years people have been able to legally murder on behalf of their country, with not have a beer. This is another item that will operate as intended.
- downrightmike 6mo agothey are work arounds to get what they are really after
- Jtsummers 6mo agoUnfortunately all we have are the title and sponsors right now. I'm much more interested in the text of this bill which is not posted here yet. I don't expect it to be particularly reasonable, but at least we will have something to discuss once the text is available.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- DiabloD3 6mo agoI'm not sure who Josh Gottheimer of NJ is, but he seems to be one of those stealth "fake" Democrats. Too centrist to be a Republican, but also too centrist to be part of the DSA. He seems to also support H.R. 7540. I think the Democrats in his district need to seriously consider primarying him and replace him with someone that doesn't bend to foreign or corporate whims.
- ipnon 6mo agoI really think left-right and honest-dishonest are useless dimensions to evaluate Congress members on. The job practically requires ideological fuzziness and truth stretching to get anything done. This is a feature: legislatures that require high ideological purity tend to become rubber stamps. DPRK is a good example.
- burnt-resistor 6mo agoYou're bothesidesing and rationalizing a complete lack of integrity. AIPAC money, PAC money, and gold bar bribe takers are definitely corrupt and need to be in prison.
- ipnon 6mo agoMy belief is that to a large extent the art of politics is the art of bothsidesing and rationalizing away your integrity for common aims. And that when applied correctly, these common aims can be used to benefit the public. Look at systems where you can't bothesides (also known as finding common ground and compromising) or rationalize the integrity of other members (also known as acting in good faith). I suspect you will not find the results of these political bodies to have preferable results to the American Congress!
- Moomoomoo309 6mo agoHonestly, I'm from NJ and I'm still shocked they actually charged Gold Bar Bob for what he did. He's so influential in NJ politics, I thought they'd let him get away with it like he did all the other bribes he's taken over the years. I guess literal gold bars from Egypt with obvious provenance was just too on the nose.
- foxfired 6mo agoSince voting is that power we say we have in the US. Does the public get to vote on this? If not... > Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster - Neil Postman
- sheept 6mo agoThe US is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy. You don't get to vote on specific federal policies, you vote on the people who vote for those policies.
- replooda 6mo agoMark Zuckerberg and such?
- Avicebron 6mo agoYes, it's called voting with your wallet. They are better at it that you or I presumably.
- Forbo 6mo agoVoting with your wallet doesn't exist. Try to boycott Amazon by blocking the AWS IP ranges and see how unusable the internet becomes for everyday tasks. Corporations continue to push the personal responsibility narrative so they can externalize costs of unethical business practices.
- bargainbin 6mo agoWhat if the user is another machine? Sorry, my API won’t talk to another API unless it’s old enough to drink. How do we still have no people in government with basic computer literacy?
- miohtama 6mo agoIt's the opposite. This is for mass surveillance. Politicians love control and silencing anon Twitter critics.
- ranger_danger 6mo ago> This is for mass surveillance Source:
- sheept 6mo agoHow is all the tracking we have today not already sufficient for mass surveillance? What does age verification add if the goal is just more surveillance?
- miohtama 6mo agoAll Internet users will be verified. No going online without a government issued id. It's not about verifying the age.
- iamnothere 6mo agoAt the very least, if this passes, the resulting court challenge will provide precedent that shuts it down in all 50 states at once. The downside will be riding out the intervening months before the court decision comes through. Stock up on ISOs and full git clones of your favorite OS sources.
- codazoda 6mo agointervening years
- eek2121 6mo agoYou are assuming that courts will shut this down. Guess what? The Supreme Court is responsible for these laws: https://publicinterestprivacy.org/paxton-age-verification/ https://publicinterestprivacy.org/paxton-age-verification/
- iamnothere 6mo agoThere is precedent that indicates otherwise, as this is a clear First Amendment violation. Requiring commercial services to adhere to certain guidelines is constitutional, even though the Texas law is a bad one and I think a different court may have slapped down the law. Mandating speech (code is speech) is clearly not, especially for noncommercial projects. I think the key would be getting the right person to explain how this would be like requiring all authors to include a certain sentence in their novel.
- wavemode 6mo agoI kind of doubt that most judges are going to agree with a "code is speech" argument. I think it's more likely that the courts view code as a mechanism, and so this is more like requiring cars to have airbags. Though this does bring to fore the issue of enforcement. Nobody can stop you from building a custom car which has no airbags. Where enforcement happens is when you try to get it registered (thus making it legal to drive on public roads). That's when the government would stop you. Curious how such enforcement would work for operating systems. We could all just mod our OS's to remove/bypass age verification. The government doesn't (currently, yet) have a legal nor physical mechanism to prevent this.
- OhMeadhbh 6mo agoAnyone have the text of the bill? It doesn't seem to be on congress.gov yet.
- ButlerianJihad 6mo agoWhat is the age of a script that I wrote to be triggered by cron? What is the age of a script that my 10-year-old son wrote to be triggered in his dad's crontab? If I do "sudo -l" to my son's account, what is the age of the user performing actions? If my son writes a set-user-ID program and I run it, what is the user's age now?
- marak830 6mo agoIf those people writing the Bills could sudo they would be very upset.
- danwills 6mo agoSpot on! So much silly engineering would be needed to make this even slightly make sense for normal Linux 'users' and even then, if you can be root then there is no limit!? root can do anything as any user, right? And it's definitely expected that the system admin (ie yourself for your own computer!) can become root!! I'm glad I'm on a source distribution (Gentoo, even though it does require patience) so I could in-theory edit/patch out the nasty bits before they even become binaries if anything like this ever does go ahead! (Seems unlikely to really work for Linux users anyway really though, for many of the reasons you suggested!)
- bcjdjsndon 6mo agoPrograms don't run themselves though... well technically that's what AI agents do but forget that
- hephaes7us 6mo agoUltimately, there's people out there who don't expect you to have root access on your own computer.
- carefree-bob 6mo agoI'd love to know which funds/wealthy individuals are bankrolling this rush of age verification mandates. It's certainly not a grass roots phenomenon.
- siliconc0w 6mo agoYeah it does seem to be a new 'thing'. I'm betting it's like the heritage foundation who figured out age-restrictions give them a new end-run around the first amendment. Started with porn (because who is going to defend porn) and now they're going to slide down the slippery slope.
- declan_roberts 6mo agoHeritage foundation? Lol give me a break.
- nobody9999 6mo agoFrom Project 2025[0], published by the Heritage Foundation: Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. [0] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...
- declan_roberts 6mo agoCheck out https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html They're specially trying to get people to believe this is a right wing thing. Effective strategy as we can see by the comments. > This matters because it preempts the easiest dismissal: that age verification mandates are a right-wing culture war project. They are not.
- nobody9999 6mo agoAre you claiming that Project 2025[0] isn't a right wing thing? If, by you, the Heritage Foundation isn't right wing then what would be? That's not a rhetorical question. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_2025
- Aurornis 6mo agoText not available yet. > As of 04/14/2026 text has not been received for H.R.8250 - To require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system, and for other purposes. > The Government Publishing Office (GPO) makes the text of legislative measures available to the public and the Library of Congress. GPO makes the text available as soon as possible, but delays can occur when there are many or very large legislative measures for GPO to prepare and print at the same time.
- jodacola 6mo agoRandom fun fact (?): I had a little project I let run all of last year which pulled down bills from Congress.gov's APIs and ran them through an LLM to summarize the bills and attempt to provide different political viewpoints, along with some image generation, ultimately resulting in something resembling X or Threads, but fully simulated - as though the House or Senate was "posting" bills they put forth and "people" from different political camps were responding with their thoughts. I found that for 2025, on average, it took about 20 days for a bill to be posted before its text was made available via Congress' APIs. Sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes almost immediate... but 20 days on average last year. I learned a lot about congressional processes and such through the project, like this[0] really cool flow chart about the legislative steps (recommend viewing the tiff and really zooming in on the details), with the action codes[1], which is data that can come from the APIs[2]. [0] https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.33996/ https://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/ppmsca.33996/ [1] https://www.congress.gov/help/field-values/action-codes https://www.congress.gov/help/field-values/action-codes [2] https://api.congress.gov/ https://api.congress.gov/ edit: formatting
- tom1337 6mo agoa bit off-topic but always great when you visit an official government website and are greeted with a Cloudflare captcha...
- Ucalegon 6mo ago"Rep Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) announced the Parents Decide Act, bipartisan, commonsense legislation to strengthen online protections for children and give parents greater control over what their kids can access on phones, tablets, and other devices. Gottheimer’s new Parents Decide Act will: - Require operating system developers like Apple and Google to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, rather than relying on self-reported ages. - Allow parents to set age-appropriate content controls from the start, including limiting access to social media, apps, and AI platforms. - Ensure that age and parental settings securely flow to apps and AI platforms, so content is tailored appropriately for children. - Prevent children from accessing harmful or explicit content—including inappropriate AI chatbot interactions—by creating a consistent, trusted standard across platforms." This is the summary [0] from the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, who seem to be in support of the legislation. I get the feeling the definition of 'operating system' within the legislation isn't how many on HN, or in real life, would define what an OS is, since its implied to be aimed at mobile devices, but we shall see once the actual text is posted. [0] https://www.benton.org/headlines/rep-gottheimer-announces-bipartisan-%E2%80%9Cparents-decide-act%E2%80%9D-protect-kids-online https://www.benton.org/headlines/rep-gottheimer-announces-bi...
- boxed 6mo agoSeems like legislation should come after senators and members of congress directly call Tim Cook en masse to complain that: 1. Screen time reporting has been 100% broken for decades. Just does not work as advertised. False advertising is indeed illegal. 2. The parental controls are a joke. Can't block apps that were ever downloaded by a member of the household. Don't want the kid to have TikTok? You better not have downloaded it on any device ever.
- Ucalegon 6mo agoI do not disagree that there is A LOT that Apple could, and should, be doing to enable parents. The problem that we have is, that if a vendor, like Apple, just decides to continue to have broken systems, there isn't a way to compel them to fix the problem outside of legislation. And, because most people in the House/Senate have a complete lack of technical literacy, we get situations where they define things poorly or special interests get to set those definitions in their favor/for ideological reasons, rather than to make good policy.
- 9cb14c1ec0 6mo agoI just can't wait for the day when AWS or Azure goes down because Claude Code forgot to include the account age flag when deploying a CVE fix found by Claude Mythos in a control plane microservice.
- hereme888 6mo agoAnother github repo to bypass another annoyance? They're so annoying.
- einpoklum 6mo ago1. Would this not be unconstitutional? i.e. is computer software not enough of a form of expression/speech to eschew such a requirement? 2. Are OS "providers" the same as OS "authors"? And - with a GNU/Linux distribution, who would be the providers, really?
- iamnothere 6mo ago1. It would be 2. They haven’t thought about it and don’t care
- dwheeler 6mo agoI suspect this is really a surveillance bill, but we won't know until the text is revealed.
- junto 6mo agoAgreed. The whole topic is a Trojan horse for surveillance companies to siphon off data. We need to start asking which politicians are pushing this and who’s pushing them to do it. They’re either doing it for money or being blackmailed into it by the existing surveillance apparatus.
- declan_roberts 6mo agoWe need to look into this sudden "spontaneous" coordination among lawmakers to implement age verification software. What is the common denominator? Whose lead are they following, and whose money are they taking?
- iamnothere 6mo agohttps://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html
- MichaelZuo 6mo agoThere are likely at least dozens of different lobbies that can gain some advantage from pushing this.
- edoceo 6mo agoIs the advantage corporate money lining their pockets? Or is there another one?
- MichaelZuo 6mo agoDozens of different lobbies means there’s no clear cut list of advantages. Unless you just want an exhaustive enumeration of every possible human desire.
- greenavocado 6mo ago> What is the common denominator? Criticism of Israel and its agents will be outlawed by all means necessary and anybody who questions it will be black bagged. That is the end goal. This is total war.
- greatgib 6mo agoIf I had a dollar to bet, I would say that such global effort would highly benefit Microsoft that is loosing grounds in high proportion in the area of desktop OS and is trying very hard to impose mandatory microsoft "cloud" accounts to be able to use computers.
- angoragoats 6mo agoI will not give a copy of my identification to any tech platform or operating system provider, full stop. I will stop using technology before I compromise on this. Techbros and politicians, please take note.
- hirako2000 6mo agoDo you think they will care that some cyberpunk refuse to compromise, or get around it? Some people refuse to fly, judging security checks at airport dystopian. Business goes on.
- angoragoats 6mo ago> Do you think they will care that some cyberpunk refuse to compromise, or get around it? Not me individually, no, but I hope that by speaking up I am doing a very small part to encourage others to speak up. If enough of us speak up, it can make a difference. The alternative (keeping my mouth shut) is complying in advance, IMO. > Some people refuse to fly, judging security checks at airport dystopian. Business goes on. Funny you should mention that. I fly frequently (at least 3 times, sometimes up to 8-10 times a year), and I have literally never gone through the body scanning machines at a US airport, because I opt out and get groped by the TSA officer every time. I believe in small acts of resistance, and I think at the very least I'm consistent in that.
- hirako2000 6mo agoI also reject the body x-ray machine. Apparently some did speak up and by law they can't oblige us to go through potentially hazardous radiation. Not arguing against acts of resistance, however small. Just pointing out the majority of people now turned digital, the few like you and many on HN wouldn't put a dent to the erosion or freedom when it comes to software. Also interested to see what motivates people to speak up, when they know full well it won't change anything. (I'm one of those too)
- timbit42 6mo agoOK, Blank Reg. You were right all along.
- ninjahawk1 6mo ago[dead]
- cmxch 6mo agoI see that Meta (if that’s still the case) is going for the gold here.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- twoodfin 6mo agoThe debates over these proposed OS mandates remind me of the Clinton-era Clipper chip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip May they meet a similar fate!
- WarmWash 6mo agoInteresting to not that the congressman who introduced this, Josh Gottheimer, worked for Microsoft before becoming a congressman. Even more complelling is that in the last few weeks he opened $1M of calls on Microsoft as well.
- gmuslera 6mo agoIt might have some sense if we are talking about desktop environments and mobile platforms, where you have a more or less clear user using it to access websites. And for Windows and Mac that is mostly true, but not always, and for linux is not even half of the picture. But what about all the rest of things you use operating systems for? Will they stop using cars or any kind of transport that have one or several running operating systems inside? Routers or internet connectivity? Finance, clusters, whatever? Have facebook in all the operating systems on their servers for all the platforms an age verification check for whoever logs in, or not?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 6mo agoWhat's the definition of "operating system provider" The binary distribution operating systems provided by so-called "tech" companies all suck anyway I prefer to compile the operating system from source. I can add or remove any code I want. Will the nonprofit open source projects distributing the source code that I use be "operating system providers" under this legislation. That would seem pointless
- xtiansimon 6mo agoPersonally I don’t imagine wanting to give my PII to some companies, and I imagine pulling away from some internet services and communities. Never thought it would end this way.
- nemomarx 6mo agoI didn't even know a bill could be listed without the text being out. Too early to discuss much though?
- tzs 6mo agoThere are several different approaches to trying to keep children from things that are probably bad for them on the internet that have been proposed or passed as laws. 1. Requiring sites in various categories (porn, social media) to make sure they aren't serving children, without specifying how they are to do that. 2. Similar to #1, but specifying specific means the sites must use. They are often pretty bad from a potential privacy perspective because they often specify uploading copies of passports or driver's licenses or other things that could be very harmful to you if they leaked. These laws do at least often require the sites to delete those documents. With #1 sites often ask for the same documents but aren't required to delete them. 3. Like #2 but includes among the allowed means of verification some that don't give the site copies of your sensitive documents. 4. Ones that require operating systems on devices whose primary user is a child to let the parents set the age of the child when the child's account is being set up, and to provide an API that apps can query to find out if the current user is a child. Whenever any of those are discussed here, or whenever any of the other approaches being developed such as those that allow binding a digital copy of your government ID to a hardware security module you have (such as on a smartphone) and to use that to demonstrate age range without disclosing anything else (Google and Apple have these, and the EU is planning on such a system) is discussed here, 95% of the commenters comment as if it was a #2 type of system. So might as well discuss this one now. The discussion won't be any different once the text comes out.
- nemomarx 6mo ago4 is a more interesting pitch, but without knowing if the law requires the OS check the age somehow it's hard to say. I also think ideally it shouldn't be an actual age for privacy reasons? Ideally it should be a kind of adult / not adult flag that's on or off, presumably tied to other parental controls. So if the legislation leans that way it would be interesting to discuss that part in particular.
- paddor 6mo agoAccording to a recent CRYPTO-GRAM issue from Schneier, it's in Meta's interest to push these regulations as their product isn't an OS. Their competition (Apple/MS/Google) are OSs though.
- hypeatei 6mo agoI'm not sure why Meta's lobbying is harped on so much when all of Big Tech benefits from this; Zuckerberg is just the fall guy. Tech companies love the idea of identity / age verification so they can target ads more effectively. My general feeling is also that privacy is a thorn in their side when it comes to integrating more deeply into people's lives. There are also state actors at play here who would love if computing without ID became a very niche thing to do. Obviously their top line would be "fighting terrorism" and "saving the children" but in reality we've seen how these organizations (ICE, NSA, etc.) abuse their power and spy on people without warrants. tl;dr: there is much more at play here than Facebooks interests alone.
- benoau 6mo agoGoogle and Apple certainly don't benefit from this - they can serve more ads, track more data, and assume you're authorized to spend a gazillion dollars in a game if they don't know you're a child. One example of this was last year when high-profile apps like Candy Crush Saga and Clash of Clans were found to have privacy policies on their websites restricting users to 13+ so they could track and advertise more while their Android and iOS apps were designated for all ages so they could get more downloads.
- hypeatei 6mo agoFair point on the plausible deniability they currently have w.r.t. children. I'm thinking more about the possibilities that open up when software can assume that OSes have this information and start gating access based on it. Once the APIs are there, I fear the internet will turn into a bunch of ID-related prompts before you can do anything. I haven't thought it through fully, but I imagine what we see as benign today like using an Adblocker could actually become more "serious" once they know your identity and can seek damages... we see companies wanting to use the legal system in Germany for example when people find a connection string in plaintext on the client instead of just fixing the security hole. It seems like a more lucrative path to go down even if you lose the under-18 crowd gambling / watching ads on your platform.
- stevenalowe 6mo agoLooks like compelled speech to me, both for the operating system creator and the users. I do not believe that “interstate commerce” powers negate the first amendment.
- tantalor 6mo agoIf you really want to get constitutional on it, I think a better angle might be 4A (unreasonable search) or 5A (due process). Requiring disclosure of my age is effectively a search, without specific probable cause, and there are no means for me to challenge this in court.
- someguyiguess 6mo agoIt's really a violation of all of the above.
- gjsman-1000 6mo agoEver seen a giant warning on cigarette ads that nicotine is addictive? Do you think half the ad is covered by the black box out of charity? Settled law decades ago. On that note, today is April 15th, tax day. The day where if you don’t provide hard numbers about your life against your will and at your own expense, prison opens as a possibility.
- iamnothere 6mo agoCigarettes are a product that is sold. Many operating systems are free. I use several that are small projects entirely produced by hobbyists. Even if they stack the courts with muppets who ignore the obvious first amendment angle to get this passed, I will never comply with this and I will happily help others defy it.
- gjsman-1000 6mo agoSo if I hand out free cigarettes, I’d be in the clear.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- cwmoore 6mo agoI’m old enough to tell you I’m old enough.
- cwmoore 5mo agoWait…what happened? Now I’m not old enough to tell you I’m old enough.
- bayareateg 6mo agoThis is a stupid bill, but how is this an anti-LGBTQ issue?
- nemomarx 6mo agodiscussion of sex ed / lgbtq topics often falls under obscenity laws or age filtering, so queer youth might not be able to read it anymore, is the general worry.
- gjsman-1000 6mo agoIt isn’t, the author of the criticism is desperately trying to attach another issue to get people to pay attention. It also doesn’t make sense a Democrat from New Jersey writing the bill saw it that way at all.
- black6 6mo agoThis. That crowd is constantly shoehorning themselves into non-pertinent issues as part of their pathological attention seeking behavior.
- aurmc 6mo agoAnything that even slightly has to do with LGBTQ people will likely end up getting blocked from children’s eyes, while anything to do with non-LGBTQ people won’t.
- gjsman-1000 6mo agoI find it interesting this criticism assumes age-appropriate LGBTQ content isn’t a thing.
- mindslight 6mo agoBecause the people who will use the law as a club to enforce their morality will assert that there is no such thing.
- VadimPR 6mo agoUS should first implement a national identifier that can be used for healthcare purposes before implementing age verification, that would be a lot more helpful.
- mindslight 6mo agoThe US should first implement an equivalent to the GDPR that puts a stop to the ongoing abuses of the current identification systems. After we see that is working, then we can talk about increasing the technical strength of identification systems.
- rimliu 6mo agoWelllll, the land of GDPR keeps pushing for the chat control. Not sure there are any good guys left.
- mindslight 6mo agoUh, okay? I wasn't talking about "good guys" but rather a way to reign in the abuses that are already occurring even with our rudimentary identification systems.
- someguyiguess 6mo agoYes but they would need a functional healthcare system first.
- Schiendelman 6mo agoI struggle with this. Outcomes for our healthcare system are much better than critics want to accept. Most of the negative health outcomes in the United States are mostly about our built environment - people who aren't very poor and live in walkable urban centers in the US have health outcomes similar to Europe. Those reading this website in the US often have outcomes that exceed their peers in Europe - we have much better cancer treatment, for instance. US city air quality is starting to beat European cities because we don't use nearly as much natural gas (NYC is better than Berlin, for instance, at pm2.5). Most negative US health outcome factors can be traced to suburbanization, which is also where the vast majority of the gun violence is, and systemic racial wealth disparity. We have a pretty good healthcare system, we just need to subsidize it for people who can't afford it.
- OutOfHere 6mo agoI guess we'll be selecting Canada or Mexico at the country selection screen.
- t1234s 6mo agoMore likely Mexico
- AlexandrB 6mo agoGood luck, our Canadian government loves data collection and "sticking it to big tech". This will be Canadian law very soon, I'm sure.
- red-iron-pine 6mo agoin most cases it is same lobbyists pushing the same agenda for the same billionaires as the US
- ultrablack 6mo agoInput age here:
- someguyiguess 6mo ago-32,768
- hedora 6mo ago0.000023s
- Rooster61 6mo ago100'); DROP TABLE Age;--
- red-iron-pine 6mo agolizard
- jmclnx 6mo agoThis did not take long, we all knew this was coming but I am surprised on how quick this appeared. Lets hope they carve out exemptions for Free Operating Systems based upon revenue. But we know that will not happen.
- t1234s 6mo agoWill this make Linux illegal?
- Andrex 6mo agoNot if the software complies, which is in discussion. https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws
- iamnothere 6mo agoMany distributions have decided not to comply. Debian has settled on not making anything like this mandatory, as they are an international project, although they may (after discussion and likely voting) agree to optionally package age verification stuff for users who want it for some reason.
- hedora 6mo agoI'm worried that Poettering's new startup is designed to ban unapproved Linux, BSDs, etc. https://linuxiac.com/systemd-creator-lennart-poettering-joins-new-linux-integrity-startup/ https://linuxiac.com/systemd-creator-lennart-poettering-join... The cynic in me says the Win 11 "you must have a TPM" push (along with passkey's "big tech owns all your accounts" design) were rammed through specifically to centralize control of the open web. At this point, if the federal government actually forced OS-level censorship, most literate folks would just download Linux. So, first, they need to close the remaining door. I'm not exactly holding a candle for debian. SystemD has already started adding support for this, and, in the past, downstream has been able to force unpopular debian votes through.
- iamnothere 6mo agoSystemD only added an optional birthdate field to userdb, and many distros don’t even use userdb by default. And there exist distros without SystemD. So I wouldn’t worry too much about the SystemD angle, although IMHO they were spineless for adding the field.
- jonahs197 6mo agoWill there be a shooting because of this?
- hedora 6mo agoDo ICE count?
- nh23423fefe 6mo agoYou will be charged with child endangerment if you let your kid use your phone.
- gustavus 6mo agoIt is currently in commitee the energy and commerce committee. If one of your reps sits on this committee my suggestion is to reach out to them and voice your opposition to this measure. Consider writing a letter or email as well. Committee members can be found here: https://energycommerce.house.gov/representatives https://energycommerce.house.gov/representatives
- binarymax 6mo agoNonsense bills get introduced all the time. I’m not saying this shouldn’t be taken seriously, but this eventually getting codified is a long shot. There are so many issues with how this can work in practice. Best case it just asks how old you are like a website that shows mature content, and the user lies. So from a liability perspective that shifts it to the user who gave false information. Beyond that there’s no practical way to actually verify someone’s age at the OS level.
- bovermyer 6mo agoYou're assuming that politicians are competent, thorough, and consider all the implications before writing a bill or voting on a bill. That is a _very_ dangerous assumption.
- cucumber3732842 6mo agoThe government doesn't care if it's nonsensical and contradictory and enforcement would be a dumpster fire because all that essentially grants their buddies (if not now then in the future) in the executive more power.
- forshaper 6mo agoAge verification in general rolled out so fast, I'm more inclined to think that nonsense gets passed more easily if it enables going after drastically more control.
- WarmWash 6mo ago>Beyond that there’s no practical way to actually verify someone’s age at the OS level. KYC for windows, MacOS, iOS, Android, and internet players like Google and Cloudflare being forced to block unverified devices. There probably would still be a way around it, but it would be a headache for most people.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- iamnothere 6mo agoAs I’ve said before, it’s a great time to invest in a pallet of SFF computers and source/ISO archives of all the best distros.
- webXL 6mo agoF this BS. I will never send a single dime or packet to any company or politician that supports this. I will tell everyone I know to boycott their service or products. The latest absurd power grab in the guise of protecting the children.
- i-e-b 6mo agoThis will be fun to implement in washing machines, and car ECUs; and for users that aren't humans, and...
- HNisCIS 6mo agoIt's like explaining to IT that you can't, in fact, install global protect/UEM on a satellite just because it runs a Linux operating system.
- phendrenad2 6mo agoStill no text? What, are they uploading it via dial-up?
- peteyPete 6mo agoWhy do people with no understanding or ability to clearly think through the implementation and consequences of said implementation, have the ability to initiate a vote changing everything for everyone? This is just about the dumbest thing I've read this week which says way too much these days.
- kdhaskjdhadjk 6mo agoThe people pulling the strings behind all this do indeed have a clear understanding or ability to clearly think through the implementation and consequences of said implementation. They know exactly what they're doing and why.
- Ms-J 6mo ago[dead]
- kingdefeet 6mo ago[dead]
- srmatto 6mo agoGoogle did the hard work for everyone last year... >"In layperson’s terms, ZKP makes it possible for people to prove that something about them is true without exchanging any other data. So, for example, a person visiting a website can verifiably prove he or she is over 18, without sharing anything else at all." - https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-security/opening-up-zero-knowledge-proof-technology-to-promote-privacy-in-age-assurance/ https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/safety-secu... - https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk
- spicyjpeg 6mo agoThe "hard work" in question is a death sentence for computing as we know it today. All implementations of zero-knowledge proofs require device integrity assurance to prevent the otherwise anonymous tokens from being passed onto another user, and Google has a vested interest in pushing solutions involving remote attestation as they would double as an effective weapon against ad blocking, YouTube downloaders, pirated games, sideloaded apps that don't pay the Play Store tax and more. Requiring remote attestation on all internet-connected devices would result in the complete overnight death of desktop Linux, contribute significantly to e-waste and pave the road for further initiatives such as mandatory client-side scanning of all files (of the kind Apple attempted to introduce not too long ago, with massive backlash); I am not sure this would be preferable to simply handing over your ID.
- JumpCrisscross 6mo ago> Requiring remote attestation on all internet-connected devices Is that what this bill requires? If it’s just remote attenuation for social media, done by the OS, I think that’s fine.
- phi-go 6mo agoNot sure why you are only crediting google. This is a big research area in cryptography.
- Ms-J 6mo ago[dead]
- mdni007 6mo agoA 17 year old can sign up to murder brown people in other countries but can't use Facebook