US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification • Hacker News Board

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#111

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:09 AM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #27

Dwedit wrote: post #8

People lend phones or computers to kids. The age associated with the user account means absolutely nothing.

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.)

> Vendors shouldn't sell unlocked devices to kids.

This part is neither necessary nor sufficient.

Put aside the Orwellian premise of "devices are locked by default". People keep making the analogy to things like cigarettes, but if a kid wants a steady supply of cigarettes then they need a steady supplier. If they want an "unlocked device" they just need money and Craigslist, once. It doesn't matter what you make Walmart do and it correspondingly doesn't make any sense to involve them.

If your kids have enough unsupervised money to buy electronics then you're either fine with them being unsupervised or you already have bigger problems than a used laptop.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#112

Post by mapt » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:11 AM UTC

kmeisthax wrote: post #5

xt00 wrote: post #2

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?

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.

Microsoft just force-updated my operating system (despite declining every option and prompt) and the first thing I noticed working differently was it offering, in an OS popup, to "connect" the computer to "Facebook".

These people have root access to all our webcams.

I don't think we can tolerate these entities to continue to exist.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#113

Post by basisword » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:12 AM UTC

yabutlivnWoods wrote: post #50

qazwsxedchac wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

"In the UK..." Good thing I live in the US?

Looks like you missed the point. Apple won't fight this in the US because they aren't fighting it anywhere else and already caved.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#114

Post by mapt » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:14 AM UTC

RobotToaster wrote: post #46

jona-f wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, time for pitchforks and guillotines is long overdue. Alas, wrong crowd.

"god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion" - Thomas Jefferson

And then didn't (publicly) come out against suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#115

Post by basisword » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:15 AM UTC

AnIrishDuck wrote: post #20

[flagged]

Or just don't give your child unfettered access to screens. There is zero reason your child needs x unmonitored hours with YouTube or Netflix or a browser or anything else.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#116

Post by snaking0776 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:19 AM UTC

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=ygUXY2hhbm5lbCA...

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#117

Post by iamnothere » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:19 AM UTC

xt00 wrote: post #2

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?

Detailed here: https://agelesslinux.org/lobbyists.html

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#118

Post by iamnothere » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:21 AM UTC

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #67

Random_BSD_Geek wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> abolishing anonymity on the Internet. This is what Facebook wants.

> 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 anon…

My coffeehouse running an obsolete consumer router and accepting only cash actually has zero record of who I am.

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#119

Post by josh-sematic » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:24 AM UTC

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…

Re: US Bill Mandates On-Device Age Verification

#120

Post by iamnothere » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 11:26 AM UTC

anthk wrote: post #98

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 mes…

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.