11 ms·

US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

• xt00 6mo ago
  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?
  • 0xbadcafebee 6mo ago
    It is literally just Meta. https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-behind-metas-2b-lobbying-for-invasive-age-verification-tech https://www.gadgetreview.com/reddit-user-uncovers-who-is-beh... https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b... https://tboteproject.com/ https://tboteproject.com/
    • progval 6mo ago
      The investigation you linked to is entirely hallucinated by LLMs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47659552 (tboteproject and the "Reddit researcher" are the same person). They also added this page since I posted that comment: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproject.com/notice/notice/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj... where they claim their website is "under surveillance" because it got a few thousand requests from Google Cloud et al, most of them to a single page. This really shows how low their standards are.
      • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
        I share your wariness of the LLM garbage, but I believe the conclusions are correct. This has Facebook's stink all over it. I worked there and know of what I speak.
        • AlecSchueler 6mo ago
          So we should believe the hallucinations because they sound like something that could be true? Does the LLM in the middle somehow makes it more trustworthy than if GP had just shared their own pattern-matching conjecture?
          • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
            No. I think LLMs are garbage. Separately, and unrelated: I think Facebook is behind these bills. The LLM may be garbage and still sometimes produce a correct result.
            • AlecSchueler 6mo ago
              Ok, but then we should look for an actual source beyond "Don't worry that it's garbage, it smells ok in this case."
              • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
                You are arguing with something I did not say. Yes, it would be nice to know with certainty who is behind these bills. It sucks how much opaque money influences American politics. Josh Gottheimer's press release[1] on HR8250 mentions the "Meta Parents Network." I don't know what that is, but it does have "Meta" in the name. Buffy Wick's noise about AB1043 claimed it was passed with the support of tech companies. I have spoken directly to one person close to AB1043 who told me Facebook argued against AB1043. I have doubts. But if true, I suspect they were not arguing in good faith and had ulterior motives. In the end, no matter who is secretly lobbying for or against age verification bills all over the planet, the bills are terrible, and we should fight them. [1] https://gottheimer.house.gov/posts/release-gottheimer-announces-bipartisan-parents-decide-act-to-protect-kids-online https://gottheimer.house.gov/posts/release-gottheimer-announ...
        • troad 6mo ago
          There's an SMBC strip that makes your exact point, except they intended it as satire, whereas you seem to mean it in earnest. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaaah
      • progval 6mo ago
        I typoed the second link and can't edit anymore. Correct one: https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproject.com/notice/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260411112604/https://tboteproj...
    • axus 6mo ago
      I was relieved to hear it was an emotionless mega-corporation catalyzing this, and not a sudden competence of evil bureaucracies in the USA and Europe.
  • kmeisthax 6mo ago
    Facebook. There's a wave of child endangerment lawsuits incoming and they want to head that off at the pass by having governments shift all that liability over to the OS vendors.
    • progval 6mo ago
      How does that help Facebook? They already have plenty of signals to guess their users' age, what would they do with an other one? They are not going to ban children anyway.
      • yborg 6mo ago
        It helps them by making it somebody else's responsibility to get it right and thus shields them from liability.
        • progval 6mo ago
          So it lets them know for sure who is a child. What liability does that shield them from, and how?
          • ben_w 6mo ago
            FB etc. may argue "device says this user is an adult", even though device may say that only because the parents don't set up separate user accounts e.g. shared family iPad, or because the kids being more tech savvy in the first place like we all were when I myself was a kid.
        • Frieren 6mo ago
          The OS should start labeling everybody as a child by default. Forbid Facebook to show ads and any harming content by default. The OS has little less to lose with this approach than FB.
      • kmeisthax 6mo ago
        Every one of these age assurance laws basically says: 1. The OS vendor must provide an age bucket using the minimum amount of data necessary 2. App vendors (i.e. Facebook) must use the OS vendor's age buckets to determine age The idea is that the next time Facebook gets hit with a child endangerment lawsuit, they can say "Well, we used the age buckets the government told us to, and they said the plaintiff was 18+, so we're not liable". This, of course, assumes that most social media and Internet regulation will continue being targeted at children only, both because courts are reluctant to enforce 1A on laws that censor children[0] and because the current political class actually benefits from the harms Facebook does to adults. Like, a good chunk of government surveillance is just buying data from Google and Facebook. [0] The root password to the US constitution is "th1nk0fth3cHIldren!!1" after all
  • groovypuppy 6mo ago
    Meta. Specifically to undercut Apple.
    • riffraff 6mo ago
      How does this undercut apple? This entrenches apple's position as a provider of "verified" devices.
    • politelemon 6mo ago
      Nope. Apple have been enthusiastic in their implementation of it even without it being required in several countries.
      • b112 6mo ago
        One thing which companies don't like, is a law suit. https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/business/character-ai-google-settle-teen-suicide-lawsuit https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/07/business/character-ai-google-... If something is codified in law, they can comply with the law fully, and yet not have any real backlash from users. This can also shield them from many lawsuits. Conversely, if they start ratcheting down age-verification on their own, users will become quite upset. If they don't ratchet it down, then... as you can see, potential lawsuit. And this isn't just about LLMs, once the concept of "a platform is liable for harm" happens, it's about everything. Including content other people slap into an app store. And the US has been talking about section 230 removal, countries around the world are reducing such exclusions, so the wind is blowing towards even more liability for platforms. If you look at Google's recent moves to identify all developers prior to install on Android, there may even be some of this in that. How can they ban someone from publishing illegal material, or material Google will be liable for, if they don't even know who the publisher is? They'll just slide into a new account. (Note, I said "some" not "all", there is often not just one reason for an action) So I suspect that the push is from all online platforms of any size or scope. It will shield them, protect them from liability, whist at the same time redirecting user ire at the legislation, not them. HN types might still brood, but the average person won't have insight. "Protect the children" as a reason works for the average person, it works very very well, and really, that's what a lot of these lawsuits are about. So I point back to such lawsuits as the start of all of this. And I see it as why there is a push from Apple, Google, Meta and so on. And simply because I'm saying "big corp wants this, not just Meta", doesn't mean I'm saying "Meta isn't doing anything". Meta can be pushing this, hard, whilst at the same time every other large corp can be working towards the same outcome.
  • hulitu 6mo ago
    Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft. Maybe with a push from 3 letter agencies, because it makes their life easier.
    • jona-f 6mo ago
      Yes, time for pitchforks and guillotines is long overdue. Alas, wrong crowd.
      • RobotToaster 6mo ago
        "god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion" - Thomas Jefferson
        • mapt 6mo ago
          And then didn't (publicly) come out against suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion.
          • Ancapistani 6mo ago
            ... which is entirely consistent with his statements. Here are more of his own words from the same letter: > And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it’s natural manure. The blood of patriots and tyrants. He never expected rebellion to go unchallenged, he was advocating that we should maintain the spirit of rebellion as a guard against tyranny.
  • close04 6mo ago
    It must be OS responsibility because that’s the only place that allows the next step. Everyone is so concerned with kids pretending to be adults, what about adults pretending to be kids? Any service that has any kind of private chat or picture sharing option will be a playground for “verified” kids. Next step, “we must go further with the verifications until everyone is verified everywhere”. This is where the OS part comes in. Wish it was sarcasm.
    • jasonjayr 6mo ago
      MS is ratcheting up the 'mandatory Microsoft account' on Windows, probably for this reason. The 'identity strongly bound with the device' stuff on corporate devices is being tested and secured in that environment, and it is almost certainly one step from being forced onto non-corporate devices, once they 'have to' by law.
    • Neikius 6mo ago
      This is actually a very good point.
    • hakfoo 6mo ago
      The "children's version" has to be engineered to assume some adult users anyway-- since you're going to have some types of helicopter parents logging into the same platforms the kids are on to make sure they're all right. So the threat model of "what if a paedophile gets a Club Penguin account" is already wargamed out. In many cases, this consists of dramatically limiting user-to-user comms, hyper-aggressive filtering, sometimes even to restricting to pre-canned messages only. (I'm sure someone is already encoding morse code ethnic slurs into patterns of friendly gestures, but that's another story).
  • iamnothere 6mo ago
    Detailed here: https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html
    • Teknomadix 6mo ago
      This should be a pinned top comment.
  • pwg 6mo ago
    > is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this Very likely, given the legal liability they are already facing from the "addictive" court cases that are turning against them. Moving the liability for "age verification" away means they will not also be facing a huge number of court cases accusing them of showing an underage person adult age content provided they followed the law's proscribed "ask the OS for the user's age" requirements. Also, note that only a few months ago Zuckerberg was in court testifying that the single best place to perform "age verification" was in the operating system of a device. Now, like mushrooms after a long rain, at roughly the same time up pop bills in nearly every statehouse, Congress, even Brazil, that all read nearly identically and that all are so broad as to require "the OS in anything with a CPU do age verification". The nearly identical text in each highly implies a single lobbying entity is behind all of them (it would be quite the coincidence that 50 state houses, plus Congress and Brazil, all write nearly identical bills independently). And the connection back to Zuck's court testimony of "age verification is best done in the OS" highly implies that the single lobbying entity is Meta, or funded by Meta to obtain this outcome.
    • Neikius 6mo ago
      Does it matter as long as you can set whatever age you want?
• vscode-rest 6mo ago
  Writing like this is frankly so exhausting. I don’t think anyone not already in the choir could make it through.
  • wakawaka28 6mo ago
    Some people really need shit spelled out to them. This does a great job of doing that in a small package.
    • vscode-rest 6mo ago
      I doubt this sort of rhetoric will convince a modern audience. Reads like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”.
      • wakawaka28 6mo ago
        It's not the rhetoric that should convince you, it's the logic. The rhetoric here is purely to liven it up.
        • vscode-rest 6mo ago
          Same could be said for SITHOAG. Yet, modern preachers have found far more success with other approaches. Consider: if the tone of your writing will put off anyone who disagrees with you, what’s the value in “livening it up”? Again, it’s preaching to the choir.
• Dwedit 6mo ago
  People lend phones or computers to kids. The age associated with the user account means absolutely nothing.
  • big-and-small 6mo ago
    And there obviously gonna be market for "verified" devices. Not like there is anything at all that could stop people of any ages looking at porn.
  • skybrian 6mo ago
    Identify devices, not people. Distinguishing between child-locked and unlocked devices is something any website should be able to do easily. Adult-only should be a config setting. Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids. Then it's up to parents take sure their kids only have locked devices. (Or not, if they're okay with it.)
    • GuestFAUniverse 6mo ago
      What for? I use family link for my kids devices. It works good enough. Everything else seems way too intrusive. Apple is horrible in this regard. Their solutions never really work. A joint venture for an (optional) cross-platform family app would be more than enough. This, plus a (voluntary) content rating that's offered via an API (could even be simple meta data on a webpage). Done.
      • stephbook 6mo ago
        Nice. How does pornhub.com "verify" your age when accessing it from your family computer's Ububtu account "my kids account"? Oh, there is no config to retrieve, no We API to speak to. "I'm 18 or older"-button it is. Is that a workable solution?
        • Neikius 6mo ago
          Well let's postulate parent set age on that up Ubuntu account to 13. Pornhub will query browser spi, which will query os API. Very elegant. Ofc as soon as you give your child root access it is over but that is on you
• ranger_danger 6mo ago
  That means porn sites won't require me to independently verify my age right? Right?
  • sorahn 6mo ago
    We still have to provide a way for people that don’t have (smart) phones, but I would absolutely implement asking the phone instead of a 3rd party when available. We don’t gain anything from asking a 3rd party. In fact it costs money per request.
• greyface- 6mo ago
  So, who's gearing up to sue the FTC for a declaratory judgment that this is unconstitutional?
  • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
    Is that an option? Tell me more. Yes, I am looking to sue to stop this insanity. If you're a lawyer reading this, please reach out.
    • greyface- 6mo ago
      It's an option if you can articulate an injury under the bill. I suspect non-commercial "operating system providers" arguing infringement of speech would be best positioned to be plaintiffs. This is not legal advice.
• hackinthebochs 6mo ago
  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.
  • greyface- 6mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_obedience https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anticipatory_obedience
  • phendrenad2 6mo ago
    Well, perhaps your mental model of the actual objections to it are incomplete. There are a few problems and I'm curious what you have to say about them. First, "The benefit of this is that it can short-circuit support for more onerous age verification". Do you think that it "can" or that it "will"? Big difference. It could also go the other way, right? Opening the door to a more onerous version? Why do you think that isn't worth considering? Secondly, "This is probably the least bad out of all possible ways to implement age checking". What about parental controls that exist already? Someone seriously tried to tell me last time that parental controls "suck", but that's irrelevant, they don't have to suck, and in fact anything can suck. That's just happenstance. So, assuming parental controls were correctly implemented, why do you think this is "least bad" including parental controls? Thirdly, this "age verification" doesn't actually verify anything, because underage people can just choose "adult" anyway. What do you have to say to that? In that case, parental controls actually give you more power, and make this new age check completely obsolete. Thoughts? Lastly, maybe you're not from the USA, but we have a concept of "free speech" which includes the idea that people cannot be "compelled" to certain speech. If people were required to add a "sign here to confirm you're an adult" in every romance novel, that would be fine right? It's also a nothingburger, right? But then, you've compelled people to put something in every published book. Actually, that's a bad analogy. We should say that ALL BOOKS require this signature field on the first page. After all, we don't know what kinds of expletives and horrible things people might have written in the margins of the book (assuming it's being sold second-hand). That would be okay with you, right? Nothingburger? But it compels people to write something, and that's a door most legal scholars know not to open. > The writing has been on the wall for some time now: the era of completely unrestricted internet is coming to an end. And books..? And the newspaper? What if a child reads about a horrible murder in the newspaper that keeps them up at night? What if the government outlaws books and newspapers because they can contain bad things? We'd better add a "adult/ not adult" checkbox to the first page to "short-circuit support for more onerous age verification".
• yabutlivnWoods 6mo ago
  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/ https://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
  • qazwsxedchac 6mo ago
    Short answer: No. Apple already caved in advance. Longer answer: In the UK, Apple already implements age "verification" at the OS level, starting with IOS/IPadOS 26.4. If Apple had not implemented this, it would still be in compliance with UK law. Apple is anticipatorily obedient. A company like Apple has visibility of the legislative pipeline in its markets. Looks like the UK was a test bed. Lots of OECD countries, all at the same time, are pushing for online age verification or OS-level age verification, both equally intrusive and implemented in privacy-violating ways by conflating identity verification and age verification. The end result is not protecttion of minors, but abolishing anonymity on the Internet. Social media companies claim to want the former, but in reality just want to shift liability to OS and device vendors. Governments happily accept the "side effect" of being able to find and root out dissidents.
    • kmlx 6mo ago
      i think Apple turned on age verification in Singapore, South Korea and the UK: https://support.apple.com/en-us/125666 https://support.apple.com/en-us/125666 what a dystopian world we live in.
    • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
      > abolishing anonymity on the Internet. This is what Facebook wants.
      • ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
        > abolishing anonymity on the Internet. Firstly, you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means. On the Internet, especially forums such as HN, you are "pseudonymous". That is, you made up a name for yourself, and that's how you're known to others. At the very least, we are all identified by IP addresses, which are again, fairly stable and unique pseudonyms. There are nearly zero truly anonymous corners of the Internet, because anonymous communications are chaotic and anarchic. Secondly, it was the NSF who mandated that everyone accessing the Internet must have an associated and authenticated account with an identity that is known to their provider. These rules went into effect in the early 1990s. Perhaps they have been discarded or observed only in the breach, but truly, nobody is a stranger on the Internet. Even if nobody knows you're not a dog, your ISP or your coffeehouse still know who you are, when you connected, what device and so forth. So, please let us stop pretending there is "anonymity" here, or that there ever has been. Whatever you've done in the past, it will eventually be unmasked. Yes, people on Discord and Wikipedia alike are freaking out over this prospect, but it was always going to happen. We've been laying down a very permanent record for over 50 years. Eventually it will all be correlated with real identities, Facebook or not.
• abdelhousni 6mo ago
  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)
• AnIrishDuck 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  • ronsor 6mo ago
    The problem is with government mandates. Apple and Google already ship OSes with comprehensive APIs and parental controls. There's not even any porn on the iOS App Store by policy. Creating liability for random OS and app developers is absurd, and foreign porn websites aren't going to comply with this anyway.
    • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
      This. If your child needs a helmet to use the internet, as the politicians announcing HR8250 seem to think[1], Apple or whomever is free to offer that as a feature. There is no need for this to be legislated, especially when the legislation does not work in open source environments. [1] Not hyperbole. They said that. It was an analogy, but one that highlights how ignorant of the technology the authors of these bills are.
    • deaux 6mo ago
      Reddit and X are on the stores. I guess browsers are on the stores, at least on Android where they aren't necessarily Safari reskins.
      • kcb 6mo ago
        You can just configure the device to not give the child the ability to download apps without approval.
  • hsbauauvhabzb 6mo ago
    You wouldn’t drop a toddler in the cbd and expect them to be fine, why would you expect a device to be any different? You need to be a parent and stop expecting the people around you to do it for you. Edit: and there are already device level parental controls.
  • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
• jmholla 6mo ago
  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-verification-bill.pdf 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.
• ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
  Discussion on the bill source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203
• bloppe 6mo ago
  > 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.
  • Random_BSD_Geek 6mo ago
    Thank you for the laugh in these dreadful times. :D
  • ButlerianJihad 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    • bayindirh 6mo ago
      Long live Linux!
      • deleted 6mo ago
        [deleted]
  • RobotToaster 6mo ago
    This is horribly vague. >a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device. It leaves open to interpretation if it applies to all computers, or just general purpose ones. Does a car count as a mobile device?
    • pjc50 6mo ago
      Car is clearly a mobile device; it has a touchscreen and an IMEI. Going to be fun when my washing machine asks me to upload a scan of my passport to the CIA before it will open the door.
      • 6mo ago
• pkphilip 6mo ago
  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-verification-app-to-protect-children-online/a-76788202 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-chief-urges-bloc-wide-push-on-age-v... Pure coincidence? It is all going according to plan.
• dizzy9 6mo ago
  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?
• kotaKat 6mo ago
  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.
• asxndu 6mo ago
  Why is Meta funding this? What exactly do they benefit from doing this?
• svillar 6mo ago
  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-collection-customer-accounts.html https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/15/banks-citizenship-data-colle... And https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250?overview=closed https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250...
  • hammock 6mo ago
    This. We need to stop calling this “age verification.” You are uploading your full ID. Not your age.
    • ranger_danger 6mo ago
      Where does it say a "full ID" must be uploaded?
      • red-iron-pine 6mo ago
        how do you validate citizenship and authenticity without a full ID?
        • lrvick 6mo ago
          A privacy preserving cryptographic digital ID that supports zero knowledge proofs. ...in a world where any legislator ever consulted with cryptography and security engineers on this sort of thing. What we are going to get is people printing fake IDs on paper and holding them up to a camera.
        • ranger_danger 6mo ago
          Where does it say citizenship must be validated?
        • cmiles74 6mo ago
• jim_lawless 6mo ago
  Related HN post "Ageless Linux- Software for humans of indeterminate age" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47381791
• anthk 6mo ago
  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 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.
  • iamnothere 6mo ago
    With the dawn of this bill I am finally building out my airgapped network. I’ll be passing messages to and from the former internet using NNCP bundles. I’m planning to work on some interesting solutions for async communications over Nostr, with some alternate paths through radio for emergencies. Finally looking into steganography as well. Hope to see you all there.
• drivingmenuts 6mo ago
  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".
• everdrive 6mo ago
  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.
  • anthk 6mo ago
    I mainly post in Usenet and IRC, and download PD movies (seriously) and books. I don't pirate any more because even current pirated media it's somehow a free advertisement for these people. From Gutenberg, PD comics from the golden era -and pulp scifi-, noir movies, old weird science/fantasy series in B/W and whatnot, I'm pretty much covered. Ironically most current scifi media can be traced to...Bradbury novels, PKD's paranoia and some Weird Science comics. Once 1984 gets into PD, that's it. It is in Canada, but you can read it online as long as you don't download or share it: https://gutenbergcanada.ca/ebooks/ebooks/orwellg-nineteeneightyfour/orwellg-nineteeneightyfour-00-h.html https://gutenbergcanada.ca/ebooks/ebooks/orwellg-nineteeneig...
• harrisoned 6mo ago
  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.
  • HerbManic 6mo ago
    If they are smart about it, they probably wont make older systems illegal but will merely let other parts of tech advance to the point that old systems become practically useless online. Like running a PowerPC mac online today, yeah you can just barely do it but very few do.
• nickslaughter02 6mo ago
  This will be required in firmware eventually.
• snaking0776 6mo ago
  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=ygUXY2hhbm5lbCA1IGJyYW5kb24gc2NvdHQ%3D https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XQs59YY-e2I&pp=ygUXY2hhbm5lbCA...
  • shevy-java 6mo ago
    IF it were for the kids - but I don't think it is. > Making it slightly harder to access the internet fixes nothing. This assumes it is about the children. But if you do not think so then it opens up new alternatives suddenly, be it from tracking people, to targeted ads or any other information that could be gathered and eventually either monetized or put in tandem with other information. We'd get age graphs that way too. Before that we could speculate to some extent, but with mandatory age sniffing and id-showing at all times, those who track people and benefit from it, benefit now even more.
    • snaking0776 6mo ago
      Agreed. I’m sure some house members will vote for it because they only had a random staffer read the bill and heard that it gives them a good talking point in the next election. I just wanted to point out what’s maybe obvious to everyone that this won’t help kids. I’m sure this is being pushed by Meta/whatever other ad dependent business wants to pass off liability of verifying age with the added benefit to everyone in power that it’s easier to track everyone as a result.
    • cmiles74 6mo ago
      The proving-your-age thing seems like a weasely way to talk about it. As you mentioned, providing a legible photo of your US state ID is a lot more data than your birth date!
• josh-sematic 6mo ago
  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…
  • tzs 6mo ago
    That's pretty much the California law.
• dev1ycan 6mo ago
  It is just crazy how much of a tech billionaire centric the US government is, they can come up with Thanos' idea of wiping out 50% of the population and politicians would do it as long as Zuckerberg or anyone else in the techno bubble asked for it.
  • guzfip 6mo ago
    > they can come up with Thanos' idea of wiping out 50% of the population and politicians would do it as long as Zuckerberg or anyone else in the techno bubble asked for it. Stay tuned. With mass unemployment/underemployment there’s gonna a be a lot of “extra” people.
• micromacrofoot 6mo ago
  the US will kill every third space by any means necessary their dwindling to irrelevance, like the UK, could not happen faster
  • AlexandrB 6mo ago
    Have you thought about what replaces the US once they're irrelevant? Because it's probably something much worse.
    • LightBug1 6mo ago
      Agreed. But at the rate we're going, the US and "worse" will likely have converged ... "TOO LOW, PULL UP. TOO LOW, PULL UP" Take your country back before it's too late.
    • micromacrofoot 6mo ago
      at least it's an ethos
• kahrl 6mo ago
  "The age check is the entry fee for owning a computer." No, the fee is your identity and a record of your every thought and action.
• hofo 6mo ago
  Not a mandate at this point. The bill was only introduced on April 13th.
• laughing_man 6mo ago
  I'm glad I got to see the era where the internet was useful and exciting. I feel like every major change since about 2010 has pushed it more toward blandness and made it less useful. This will be a big one. They're building the groundwork for a world-wide dystopia.
  • iamnothere 6mo ago
    Come join us on what I will call the “scatternet”, the globally distributed, offline-first, async network full of all the things that made the old Internet great. Save a few ISOs of still-free OSes and hoard a few extra cheap computers. (You might also want to get a 10Mhz capable radio.)
    • rolph 6mo ago
      BBS was born, BBS has risen, BBS will come again.
    • nhecker 6mo ago
      Why the 10 MHz radio?
      • iamnothere 6mo ago
        For sporadic medium-long distance communication over packet radio. 10MHz isn’t too crowded and can be easily used for regional communications (and occasionally long distance) via atmospheric bounce. It also works well at low power and the antenna is shorter than other long distance modes like the longer wave HF bands (20m+).
        • brightball 6mo ago
          Running a network of old school BBS's over radio would be great
        • rickydroll 6mo ago
          Are you thinking of 100mhz (3m)? Sending data by radio is messy, slow, and generally disappointing. Start your journey by reading up on the Aloha system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALOHAnet.
• Bender 6mo ago
  I read the bill and I feel like it's missing any technical details. It's almost like they read my suggestion [1] but then left some parts out. The technical parts. As I read it one can just enter whatever name, age and other details in the setup of a computer they desire. It's missing any checks for a header on the server to detect adult content labels. What am I missing? What forces me to enter my real information? Are operating system developers going to be granted access to the DMV databases? Or forced to use some third party that scratched the back of some politicians? If I block connectivity to this will I not be able to log in? If someone performs a successful DDoS to the site will I not be able to log in? It feels like several pages of the bill are missing. How does the OS know it is visiting an adult site? [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46152074
  • iamnothere 6mo ago
    They have dropped all the decision making for the details in the lap of the politically controlled FTC. Which also means that future FTCs could change the rules based on political goals.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
  • stephbook 6mo ago
    The site "reclaimthenet" calls it age "verification", but it's not a "verification" at all. There's your mystery. All the bill wants is that you can set up an iPhone for kids, an children account on Ubuntu (YOU decide whether it's a children's account) and then, presumably, the browser vendors implement an AgeAPI that allows website operators to query the user age. Your device tells us you're 10 years old. Access to Instagram denied. Your device tells us you're 16. You're not allowed to visit gambling-porn-and-industrial-accidents.org It's, of course, exactly the opposite of the "identity-tied age verification government-control, ID-document-leak" dystopia that the scare crowds here are peddling. But you'll never hear a word of acknowledgement from them. These people act as if those "I'm 13 or older, i can create an Instagram account and waste my life" or "I'm 18 or older, let me watch porn and strangle my girlfriend" buttons are the peak of civilization.
• shevy-java 6mo ago
  Right now the lobbyists are winning. I hope Josh Gottheimer will get a lot of money for his work there. I also remember a few weeks ago, people such as Poettering and others said this is all harmless, nothing bad would ever possibly happen. Lo and behold, now it is the new mandatory law. All people will soon have to go for age sniffing, in order to access information. Linux is only for the Underground now.
  • frogperson 6mo ago
    I wish there were a way to fire lobbyists. There is no feedback loop, they can be as bad as they want and never suffer a minute for taking away peoples rights.
• BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
  Well I'm going to keep using GrapheneOS and whatever version(s) of Linux refuse to comply. Makes me even more glad that I've already transitioned off Windows.
  • Neikius 6mo ago
    Just make your OS say you are 99. This is all fine until they put some Id verification in. Then anything open is cooked.
    • hightrix 6mo ago
      Sounds like a business opportunity. A simple tool to create an ID that passes checks with any information on it you'd like.
• kardianos 6mo ago
  I hope people realize that most of these bills are being introduced in blue states by Democrats. Republicans may not like porn, but they put the onus where it belongs, on the operator, not on the OS.
  • cubefox 6mo ago
    > A bill introduced by Representative Josh Gottheimer in the House on April 13 Josh Gottheimer is indeed a Democrat.
    • stogot 6mo ago
      I noticed when the party name is hidden in news articles, it’s often that party as I always have to go look for the rep’s page
  • NoGravitas 6mo ago
    The federal one was introduced by Democrat Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and cosponsored by Republican Elise Stefanik (R-NY). This push is extremely bipartisan.
  • kgwxd 6mo ago
    Oh geez, wish I had vote for Republicans then :/ The difference isn't really in the politicians, it's in the base, and how they will react to acts like this. Democrat voters will shame them, endlessly. They may not have alternatives to vote for, but they won't change their opinion to match whatever dweeb they were forced to vote for. Republican voters will always be on board with whatever they're told to be on board with.
  • NekkoDroid 6mo ago
    > Republicans may not like porn, but they put the onus where it belongs, on the operator, not on the OS. While that might be true, I can't agree with the implication that this is better in any way. Having the onus on the operator forces you to have to send some form of verification out to all such operators you want to visit and they have repeatedly shown they are NOT capable of securely and privately handling that information.
• Ajedi32 6mo ago
  Based on the few snippets quoted in the article, I think as written this bill gets closer to a good, privacy-preserving, non-authoritarian version of "age verification" than any of the attempts so far. What it seems to be aiming for is essentially mandatory parental controls at the OS level. No ID checking or government/third party involvement, it just uses whatever age the parents enter when they set up the device/user account for their kid. And apps don't actually get that info so there's very little privacy impact, just exposing an API that would allow apps/websites to query "is this user underage?" seems like it would satisfy the law as written. The only remaining issue I see here is that I think the law may be a bit too heavy handed in how it tries to legislate this system into existence. Trying to tell Bob Hacker writing an OS in his basement what features his code has to include feels a little too authoritarian for my tastes. Probably there are some economic or regulatory levers that could be pulled instead to ensure this system gains mainstream adoption without criminalizing ordinary software development. Again though, I didn't read the whole bill, just the article, so I could be wrong here on some of the details.
  • ronsor 6mo ago
    > Trying to tell Bob Hacker writing an OS in his basement what features his code has to include feels a little too authoritarian for my tastes. This is the one thing that risks getting the law struck down by a court.
    • cvoss 6mo ago
      Exactly. People often forget that Congress can only exercise a limited domain of enumerated powers. The big one is regulating Interstate Commerce, which is already huge because of how interconnected the country is today, and is even bigger because of creative stretching of its reach (did you know that the Civil Right's Act's ban on discrimination by businesses is within Congress's Interstate Commerce power, because somebody might patronize your business from out of state?). Anyway, I suspect Bob Hacker has a strong case that such a law as applied to himself would be beyond the scope of Interstate Commerce. Until he tries to sell or make his OS widely available, at least.
• m4ck_ 6mo ago
  I look forward to having to age verify the dbus and chrony and root accounts on every linux-based "smart" device in the future. That should be fun. Will my children be able to use my smart oven/thermostat after I verify I'm 18+ on those devices? I also wonder what verification will look like for containers and and VMs that might have a short life. Maybe that's how we keep IT jobs for a little while longer? Human age verification on every local account every time a container or VM is spun up.
  • Neikius 6mo ago
    Obviously it does not make sense to age verify root stuff. Also as root you can set whatever age you want to your accounts.
    • m4ck_ 6mo ago
      I agree, but the law is pretty vague. Root is a user on an operating system on a general purpose computer after all.
• ergonaught 6mo ago
  Much of the USA accepts "gun deaths" as an unfortunate but acceptable price that must be paid for the widespread freedom to own guns. When those same people are hysterical about Protecting The Children, you should understand that "protecting the children" is a distraction from whatever the actual intent may be. The general public is thoughtless, and there's little reason to think the decision-makers are much more thoughtful, but Protecting The Children is merely this age's Trojan Horse.
  • edg5000 6mo ago
    Yes, it's a recurring pattern also seen in European politics.
  • bluedino 6mo ago
    > Much of the USA accepts "gun deaths" as an unfortunate but acceptable price that must be paid for the widespread freedom to own guns. Much of the USA recognizes that "gun deaths" are caused by criminals who aren't going to follow any gun laws in the first place.
    • beej71 6mo ago
      This response, however, does not really address protecting the children.
• gnarlouse 6mo ago
  Listen, I would actually be willing to support something like this, but Jesus Christ when will we put somebody in congress with a CS background who can literally just chime in and say "use Zero Knowledge Proofs for this, people might actually buy that you're not just building a surveillance state."
  • mistrial9 6mo ago
    there is a significant population in management, court and law enforcement that does support state-mandated registration using full profile ID for using public infrastructure. It was on the railroad system in the USA, and was part of the profound shift to individual cars.
  • C6JEsQeQa5fCjE 6mo ago
    > when will we put somebody in congress with a CS background who can literally just chime in and say "use Zero Knowledge Proofs for this, people might actually buy that you're not just building a surveillance state." Well that would be counter-productive to actually building a surveillance state.
  • aes25423 6mo ago
    ZKP doesn't solve the problem of issuers colluding (or being forced to cooperate) with verifiers https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-alone-are-not-digital-id-solution-protecting-user-privacy https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/zero-knowledge-proofs-... https://nophonehome.com/ https://nophonehome.com/
    • ranger_danger 6mo ago
      eIDAS in Europe uses ZKP and seems to be working.
      • aes25423 6mo ago
        I have no idea what you mean by that. 1) It's one thing to use secure auth to access government services, banks etc. that need to know beyond reasonable doubt who you are to function at all. It's something else entirely to require every person in the EU (not just citizens) to ask the government for permission to speak online. 2) What does eIDAS fundamentally have to do with ZKP? There's one reference to ZKP in the 2024 update (https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:L_202401183 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...) which merely says states "should" use it. Doesn't mean much of anything by itself. To my knowledge, the ZKP-based AV shit is only being prepared to run and hasn't been in use yet - https://www.politico.eu/article/online-age-checks-are-coming-europe-children-social-media/ https://www.politico.eu/article/online-age-checks-are-coming...
• deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
  They should mandate age verification from the other direction- make serving certain content to children a liability. They'll quickly figure out how to verify age all by themselves. No need to legislate implementation details.
• BatteryMountain 6mo ago
  This is so dumb. There are 100 other ways to protect children that would be more effective than this. Not only will this approach not actually protect children, this will violate the privacy of billions of people. It will introduce identity theft at mass scale (good luck solving that on short notice) and it will make activist/journalists/military/political opposition vulnerable. Perhaps this is the purpose. Who would benefit from such a scenario...mmm?
  • Neikius 6mo ago
    As a parent this is perfect. I am baffled why this is not a standard yet. So setting an account age in Netflix works but the child can access anything. Make new accounts even. So I have to block half the internet. Somehow. On a shared computer. And all companies would have to get your ID and track that. It's crazy. This compromises 0 privacy until it requires an ID. EU solution actually does and only supports specific devices.
• LightBug1 6mo ago
  LOL, fuck that
• diogenes_atx 6mo ago
  If this legislation becomes law, it will be interesting to see how the Linux hacker community reacts. Laws are virtually meaningless if there is no practical way to enforce them and if there are enough people who oppose them. Just take a look at the history of file sharing over the past three decades. For this new law to prevent the proliferation of Linux distros that are not in compliance with age verification requirements, there would need to be very powerful enforcement mechanisms, including criminal prosecution. Even then, it's difficult to see how severe criminal penalties and/or civil liabilities could stop hackers from building and distributing illicit versions of Linux. It's just basic economics: demand creates supply. Linux moves into the black market with new distros of Clandestine-OS.
  • egorfine 6mo ago
    > interesting to see how the Linux hacker community reacts We already saw that: some eagerly implemented this stuff, some rejected.
• bibimsz 6mo ago
  who asked for this?
• aes25423 6mo ago
  > "Once the operating system knows your age with verified certainty, it can tell any app to deliver, restrict, or withhold content accordingly." Instead of "age verification", call it (and everything like it) Epstein law. The government wants the information of who is a kid and who isn't broadcasted to all the apps, safe AND malicious. There's no good reason to let random developers freely collect lists of kids out of those people who choose to try an app. It's Epstein law. Being able to easily bypass an age gate makes such info unreliable, verification removes the unreliability such that the data can then be used for both good and evil reasons.
• _doctor_love 6mo ago
  In East Germany under the Soviets, typewriters were registered with the government. I'm surprised we haven't seen a repeat of that for computers.
• ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
  Multiple discussions this week on the bill: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203
  • tzs 6mo ago
    Those were all almost completely useless because they were before the text of the bill was released.
• rolph 6mo ago
  "To require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system, and for other purposes." - And For Other Purposes. am i the only one seeing that? i see a lot of discussion pro and con age verification, there should be much more concern about the purpose of that phrase for other puposes. is some one actually trying to sneak a catch all like that into it, or is it a bargaining chip. [see we removed "for other purposes", its all better, now we can pass it]
• js2 6mo ago
  Here's the bill straight from congress.gov: https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr8250/BILLS-119hr8250ih.pdf https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hr8250/BILLS-119hr8250ih.... https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250... It's short and in plain language. The article is longer than the bill. Here's the totality of the requirements: (a) REQUIREMENTS.—An operating system provider, with respect to any operating system of such provider, shall carry out the following: (1) Require any user of the operating system to provide the date of birth of the user in order to— (A) set up an account on the operating system; and (B) use the operating system. (2) If the relevant user of the operating system is under 18 years of age, require a parent or legal guardian of the user to verify the date of birth of the user. (3) Develop a system to allow an app developer to access any information as is necessary, collected by the operating system to carry out this section and any regulation promulgated under this section, to verify the date of birth of a user of an app of the app developer. --- This part from REGULATIONS is also nominally important: (B) Data protection standards related to how an operating system provider shall ensure date of birth collected by the operating system provider from a user, or the parent or legal guardian of the user, to carry out this section and any regulation promulgated under this secion— (i) is collected in a secure manner to maintain the privacy of the user or the arent or legal guardian of the user; and (ii) is not stolen or breached. ---
  • bloppe 6mo ago
    I find it somewhat easier to read here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/text https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250... I appreciate the brevity of the bill, but it delegates a lot of discretion to the FTC to regulate things like "How an operating system provider can verify the date of birth of a parent or legal guardian", so it's up to the discretion of someone in the executive branch as to whether GNU and/or Linux will have to scan your driver's license and upload that scan to some government contractor's servers, say.
• sbochins 6mo ago
  All these bills about age verification have nothing to do with protecting kids. This is just an easier pill for folks that aren’t privacy minded to follow. In the end, all your online activity and offline activity (flock cameras) will be tracked, because it gives our politicians and national security apparatus the type of power they crave.
• cestith 6mo ago
  If all they wanted was to prove you were over 18 or over 21, those can be checkboxes rather than birthdates. It’s clear the bill’s author is an idiot or insincere.
• dang 6mo ago
  Recent and related: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47772203 - April 2026 (223 comments)
• lrvick 6mo ago
  I compiled most of the operating systems I used from source code as a minor, and will parent the same way. I do not know how one age verifies a Linux From Scratch install, but I sure hope politicians try and give me a good laugh.
• rolph 6mo ago
  just occured to me, there will be some cohort that gives this the windows treatment, refusing to update, or upgrade versions, and retain present OS. the next step if this bill passes seems to nessecarily involve excluding holdouts from content rated beyond toddler safe.
• xp84 6mo ago
  “Parents Decide Act” What a crock! Parents actually getting to decide could be trivially accomplished by a first-boot date of birth prompt, at which time the device goes into ‘child mode’ until the date that birthdate becomes the age of majority. Undoing that (say to repurpose the device for an adult) should require the parent who set it up to also do the wiping, much as existing “iCloud Lock” etc requires the owner’s consent to reset. If a kid is old enough to buy their own phone or whatever and lie that they’re an adult… I’m not that worried about it. Teens have enjoyed sneaking into R-rated movies and raiding Dad’s Penthouse Magazine collection for generations. It’s fine. Now, whatever this BS is… this has nothing to do with parents deciding.
  • jonaharagon 6mo ago
    Reading the actual text of the bill, it seems like a first-boot date of birth prompt and everything else you’ve described is exactly what the bill is asking for actually.