US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

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

by cft • 3 months ago

218 223 3 months ago

https://social.coop/@cwebber/116408556882122186

Morromist3• 3 months ago

Its 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?

OhMeadhbh2• 3 months ago

I 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!"

Morromist3• 3 months ago

Yeah, 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.

dotwaffle• 3 months ago

Someone 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.

burnt-resistor2• 3 months ago

This 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.

varispeed3• 3 months ago

That 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.

rexpop2• 3 months ago

Dark money PACs and billionaire donors have indeed engineered a system where immense wealth dictates public policy, frequently hiding their identities behind 501(c)(4) "social welfare" groups. These organizations act as "dark money ATMs," allowing a tiny fraction of the ultra-wealthy to spend hundreds of millions of dollars entirely anonymously. To sell their profit-driven agendas, they construct "astroturf" front groups designed to simulate grassroots support, relying on market-tested public relations strategies to convince ordinary citizens that these initiatives are simply about promoting society's "well-being" and "freedom".

The collaboration between tech billionaires and state surveillance is also thoroughly documented. Silicon Valley venture capitalists and tech founders—such as Peter Thiel (Palantir) and Palmer Luckey (Anduril)—have aggressively integrated themselves into the military-industrial complex. By leveraging their immense wealth and political access, they have secured billions in taxpayer-funded contracts with the Department of Defense, ICE, and local police departments. Palantir, for example, got its start with seed funding and direct guidance from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, and now provides the digital infrastructure that enables federal agents to track and arrest individuals en masse.

Data monetization and the elimination of anonymity are the financial engines of this model. The modern digital economy operates on "surveillance capitalism," offering supposedly free services to harvest user data, craft highly detailed profiles, and monetize every click and interaction while entirely deemphasizing user privacy. In the political sphere, dark money networks have poured millions into their own high-tech data firms (such as i360) to assemble meticulously detailed, de-anonymized profiles on over 190 million active voters and 250 million consumers, enabling precision targeting and psychological manipulation.

Mass surveillance justified by "safety" is precisely how these technologies are deployed against the public. The software systems sold by tech companies to law enforcement agencies explicitly ingest commercial license plate reader (LPR) data, providing authorities with access to over 5 billion data points used to continuously and physically track vehicles and individuals across the country. This geographic tracking is fused with other aggressive domestic surveillance methods like digital dragnets, "Stingray" cell phone interceptors, facial recognition, and fake social media profiles—often using photos of attractive young women—to trick youths as young as twelve into accepting friend requests. Authorities use this access to map out social networks and establish guilt by association, heavily surveilling minority youth without any concrete evidence of criminal behavior.

Ultimately, these technologies fulfill the state's historical obsession with "legibility"—the utopian, often tyrannical desire of authorities to categorize, monitor, map, and standardize every aspect of human life so that the population becomes a closed, predictable, and easily manipulated system. By merging state power with Silicon Valley's data-harvesting capabilities, this infrastructure enforces control by turning human sociality and everyday life into an endless series of trackable, monetizable data points.

varispeed3• 3 months ago

Because of corruption, sorry lobbying. Big corporations want the data.

Izmaki• 3 months ago

They 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.

cik• 3 months ago

For 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• 3 months ago

they are work arounds to get what they are really after

Jtsummers• 3 months ago

Unfortunately 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.

DiabloD3• 3 months ago

I'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.

ipnon2• 3 months ago

I 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-resistor2• 3 months ago

You'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.

relaxing• 3 months ago

You can count on one hand the number of democrats in congress who could be part of the DSA.

But yes, Gottenheimer is a conservative democrat.

red-iron-pine5• 3 months ago

NJ

there is your answer, mate. lotta private interests swaying NY and NJ elections

foxfired• 3 months ago

Since 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

sheept2• 3 months ago

The 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• 3 months ago

Mark Zuckerberg and such?

verdverm• 3 months ago

We can also engage in direct action the other 364.9 days of the year. Call/email your representatives, go to a town hall, call the leaders of both parties of both senate and house, go to a march or protest. There are other ways we can be heard, be substantive and thoughtful, they tally and track messages which are not hyperbole or copy-paste. If you can make it personal, even better. It only needs to be a few sentences.

https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

Don’t forget civil disobedience, should the bill come to pass.

Ifkaluva• 3 months ago

We can also call representatives and give our opinions to them

bargainbin• 3 months ago

What 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?

miohtama4• 3 months ago

It's the opposite. This is for mass surveillance. Politicians love control and silencing anon Twitter critics.

ranger_danger• 3 months ago

This is for mass surveillance

Source:

sheept2• 3 months ago

How 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?

Cider9986• 3 months ago

no people in government with basic computer literacy? There are a few. See Wyden, Markey.

tzs5• 3 months ago

Where does this bill say it applies in that situation?

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

At 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• 3 months ago

intervening years

eek2121• 3 months ago

You are assuming that courts will shut this down. Guess what? The Supreme Court is responsible for these laws: https://publicinterestprivacy.org/paxton-age-verification/

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

There 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.

Longlius2• 3 months ago

Paxton's decision was incredibly narrow (because it specifically targeted sites that served pornography and only pornography) and it's unlikely the court is willing to grant anymore ground.

OhMeadhbh2• 3 months ago

Anyone have the text of the bill? It doesn't seem to be on congress.gov yet.

carefree-bob2• 3 months ago

I'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• 3 months ago

Yeah 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_roberts3• 3 months ago

Heritage foundation? Lol give me a break.

groovypuppy• 3 months ago

Meta

RobertoG• 3 months ago

Also, it's not only in the USA. In Europe too, all at the same time. Don't worry though, it's just conspiracy theory that those things are related.

miohtama4• 3 months ago

Here is a glimpse

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47530718

Here is some more breakdown

https://x.com/moo9000/status/2037184457069760717?s=20

carefree-bob2• 3 months ago

Thank you, that's informative. Interpol? Orwellian stuff.

Aurornis2• 3 months ago

Don't underestimate the grassroots popularity of these measures. Look at any Hacker News thread regarding age verification and you will find a lot of comments coming out in support of age verification. Most of them are assuming that age verification is something that will only apply to sites they don't use like Facebook.

There are a couple parallel moral panics intersecting on this topic. Again even on HN you'll find people parroting dodgy statistics about child trafficking on social media, proclaiming that short form video is equivalent to highly addictive drugs, or making sweeping claims that under-18s should be banned from having smart phones. It's apparent none of them ever considered that the age restrictions they've been inviting might apply to something they use. It's always assumed to apply only to the kids on the TikTok or something.

ButlerianJihad• 3 months ago

What 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• 3 months ago

If those people writing the Bills could sudo they would be very upset.

danwills• 3 months ago

Spot 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• 3 months ago

Programs don't run themselves though... well technically that's what AI agents do but forget that

hephaes7us• 3 months ago

Ultimately, there's people out there who don't expect you to have root access on your own computer.

Aurornis2• 3 months ago

Text 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• 3 months ago

Random 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/

[1] https://www.congress.gov/help/field-values/action-codes

[2] https://api.congress.gov/

edit: formatting

tom1337• 3 months ago

a bit off-topic but always great when you visit an official government website and are greeted with a Cloudflare captcha...

Ucalegon3• 3 months 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-bi...

boxed2• 3 months ago

Seems 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.

Ucalegon3• 3 months ago

I 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.

WarmWash3• 3 months ago

You know it's bad when they call it the opposite of what it is.

9cb14c1ec0• 3 months ago

I 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• 3 months ago

Another github repo to bypass another annoyance? They're so annoying.

einpoklum• 3 months ago

1. 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?

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

1. It would be

2. They haven’t thought about it and don’t care

dwheeler• 3 months ago

I suspect this is really a surveillance bill, but we won't know until the text is revealed.

junto• 3 months ago

Agreed. 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_roberts3• 3 months ago

We 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?

MichaelZuo2• 3 months ago

There are likely at least dozens of different lobbies that can gain some advantage from pushing this.

edoceo• 3 months ago

Is the advantage corporate money lining their pockets?

Or is there another one?

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html

greenavocado• 3 months 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• 3 months ago

If 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.

angoragoats2• 3 months ago

I 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.

hirako20002• 3 months ago

Do 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.

angoragoats2• 3 months 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.

timbit42• 3 months ago

OK, Blank Reg. You were right all along.

cmxch• 3 months ago

I see that Meta (if that’s still the case) is going for the gold here.

twoodfin• 3 months ago

The debates over these proposed OS mandates remind me of the Clinton-era Clipper chip:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip

May they meet a similar fate!

WarmWash3• 3 months ago

Interesting 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• 3 months ago

It 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• 3 months ago

What'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• 3 months ago

Personally 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.

nemomarx5• 3 months ago

I didn't even know a bill could be listed without the text being out.

Too early to discuss much though?

tzs5• 3 months ago

There 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.

nemomarx5• 3 months ago

4 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• 3 months ago

According 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.

hypeatei2• 3 months ago

I'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• 3 months ago

Google 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.

jmclnx2• 3 months ago

I'm not sure why Meta's lobbying is harped on so much when all of Big Tech benefits from this

Because meta will not have to spend real $ to add/support age verification, plus they get to point the finger at someone else for age issues.

pwg2• 3 months ago

Zuckerberg is just the fall guy

This is likely because of Zuck's testimony in the very recent court case where he testified exactly that the "best place" to do "age verification" was in the operating system.

This was but a few weeks before all these, largely very identical sounding bills, suddenly started appearing in state houses across the USA.

b00ty4breakfast• 3 months ago

because Meta's lobbying has been publicly identified. When the other companies are found to be spending millions of dollars to push these age verification laws, then they, too, will be harped on.

AlexandrB2• 3 months ago

Fall guy or not, Zuckerberg's influence on my life has been entirely negative. From addictive social media feeds, to anti-competitive acquisitions that ruin once good products, to crap like this - he's the worst, most destructive CEO in tech. Even Oracle at least provides some value through their database products. Meta can go die in a fire.

abracadaniel• 3 months ago

This is one of the issues with all of the steadily eroding privacy that get accepted because you’re allowed to opt out. It doesn’t take long before you’re the only one in your neighborhood who opts out, and that makes you very identifiable and suspicious.

stevenalowe• 3 months ago

Looks 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• 3 months ago

If 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.

someguyiguess3• 3 months ago

It's really a violation of all of the above.

gjsman-10005• 3 months ago

Ever 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.

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

Cigarettes 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.

cwmoore2• 3 months ago

I’m old enough to tell you I’m old enough.

cwmoore2• 3 months ago

Wait…what happened?

Now I’m not old enough to tell you I’m old enough.

bayareateg• 3 months ago

This is a stupid bill, but how is this an anti-LGBTQ issue?

nemomarx5• 3 months ago

discussion 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-10005• 3 months ago

It 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• 3 months ago

This. That crowd is constantly shoehorning themselves into non-pertinent issues as part of their pathological attention seeking behavior.

aurmc• 3 months ago

Anything 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-10005• 3 months ago

I find it interesting this criticism assumes age-appropriate LGBTQ content isn’t a thing.

hedora4• 3 months ago

Project 2025 includes a multi-prong plan specifically targeting LGBTQ and generally enforcing "christian values".

One of the prongs is requiring ID to go online. Another is to use a combination of media mergers with 'voluntary' government-controlled self-censorship to clamp down on unregulated speech.

So, its blast radius will be centered on LGBTQ issues, but it's designed to cover your comment too.

VadimPR• 3 months ago

US should first implement a national identifier that can be used for healthcare purposes before implementing age verification, that would be a lot more helpful.

mindslight6• 3 months ago

The 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• 3 months ago

Welllll, the land of GDPR keeps pushing for the chat control. Not sure there are any good guys left.

someguyiguess3• 3 months ago

Yes but they would need a functional healthcare system first.

Schiendelman2• 3 months ago

I 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.

usefulcat• 3 months ago

In the US, quality of health care is not really a problem. The problem is that the cost is too high, and also availability (in part because of the cost).

mcshicks• 3 months ago

There have been bills in the past like "The improved digital identity act of 2023" that never get out of committee. The latest incarnation seems to be "H.R.7270 - Stop Identity Fraud and Identity Theft Act of 2026". There almost always have one republican and one democratic sponsor. But they don't seem to rise to the level of urgency to get past the current dysfunction in congress.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7270...

throwa356262• 3 months ago

Oh, but that could be used for voting and we don't want that.

MisterTea• 3 months ago

I can see another group getting very upset "They want to see my what before letting me buy a gun!"

lokar• 3 months ago

It would give the federal government inappropriate control of state elections.

nemomarx5• 3 months ago

Voter ID changes would be a lot easier to swallow with a free national id that you don't have to register or fill out paperwork to get.

Maybe add in automatic voter registration to sweeten the pot?

duped2• 3 months ago

I don't know how many times this needs to be iterated, but voter ID has absolutely nothing to do with election security. It has everything to do with voter suppression, just like poll taxes and literacy tests. It gives poll workers discretion to turn people away.

There's a reason this idea is pushed solely by Republicans with the explicit goal of reducing the number of people who can vote, because fewer people voting is better for Republicans.

OutOfHere• 3 months ago

I guess we'll be selecting Canada or Mexico at the country selection screen.

t1234s2• 3 months ago

More likely Mexico

AlexandrB2• 3 months ago

Good 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-pine5• 3 months ago

in most cases it is same lobbyists pushing the same agenda for the same billionaires as the US

ultrablack• 3 months ago

Input age here:

someguyiguess3• 3 months ago

-32,768

hedora4• 3 months ago

0.000023s

Rooster61• 3 months ago

100'); DROP TABLE Age;--

red-iron-pine5• 3 months ago

lizard

jmclnx2• 3 months ago

This 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.

t1234s2• 3 months ago

Will this make Linux illegal?

Andrex• 3 months ago

Not if the software complies, which is in discussion.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Debian-Undecided-Age-Laws

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

Many 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.

jonahs197• 3 months ago

Will there be a shooting because of this?

hedora4• 3 months ago

Do ICE count?

nh23423fefe• 3 months ago

You will be charged with child endangerment if you let your kid use your phone.

gustavus• 3 months ago

It 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

binarymax• 3 months ago

Nonsense 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• 3 months ago

You'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• 3 months ago

The 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• 3 months ago

Age 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.

WarmWash3• 3 months 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.

iamnothere11• 3 months ago

As 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• 3 months ago

F 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• 3 months ago

This will be fun to implement in washing machines, and car ECUs; and for users that aren't humans, and...

HNisCIS• 3 months ago

It'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• 3 months ago

Still no text? What, are they uploading it via dial-up?

peteyPete• 3 months ago

Why 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• 3 months ago

The 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.

srmatto• 3 months ago

Google 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-secu...

- https://github.com/google/longfellow-zk

spicyjpeg• 3 months ago

The "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• 3 months 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• 3 months ago

Not sure why you are only crediting google. This is a big research area in cryptography.

mdni007• 3 months ago

A 17 year old can sign up to murder brown people in other countries but can't use Facebook

US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

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