US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed • Hacker News Board

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#201

Post by Longlius » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:07 PM UTC

eek2121 wrote: post #43

iamnothere wrote: post #9

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.

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/

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.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#202

Post by mindslight » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:23 PM UTC

rimliu wrote: post #125

mindslight wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Uh, okay? I wasn't talking about "good guys" but rather a way to reign in the abuses that are already occurring even with our rudimentary identification systems.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#203

Post by chainingsolid » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:43 PM UTC

duped wrote: post #174

throwa356262 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

So how would you recommend ensuring only citizens vote and only do so a max of once per election?

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#204

Post by Schiendelman » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:47 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #168

Schiendelman wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"If we focus on a subset of the population that is lucky, we have a great healthcare system." Got it! Sorry for the sarcasm, but that's how your comment reads. Do those lucky people have healthcare insurance tied to their employment? Are they afraid to go to a demonstration or advocate a union, because they could lose their job and thus healthcare? A good healthcare system treats everyone equally, no matter where the…

The problem is none of these criticisms are most easily solved with "the healthcare system". The healthcare system itself functions quite well.

For instance, almost every bit of infrastructure (virtual or physical) in the US costs twice as much per capita as Europe. That's not something that's wrong with "healthcare". It's not even likely to be a good idea to change that.

Blue states have largely already solved the access issues with subsidies; low income folks do get surprisingly good very cheap access in states like New York and Washington.

Calling out it being "private" isn't even in the top ten things that would improve health outcomes more easily.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#205

Post by mindslight » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

srslyTrying2hlp wrote: post #134

mindslight wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the people who will use the law as a club to enforce their morality will assert that there is no such thing.

I'm currently reading Foucault's history of sexuality, and the reason you might want this is because population! Obviously we are facing a population crisis, and we will need more bodies for the factories and retirement homes. Or at least this was the idea in the 1800s. We might have morally coated it with religion, but biopower is a real thing. The current hypothesis is that the ever evolving LGBTQ+ is a way to sell…

I'm wary of reasoning that boils down to using utilitarian arguments to back up moralistic fundamentalism - especially when there are so many other things that would achieve similar results but continue to go unaddressed. We could start with making sure every child has abundant access to food and healthcare so they grow up as healthy as possible. We could address the economic treadmill wherein two incomes have become de facto mandatory, causing many straight women who want kids to put it off indefinitely. And if increasing our population is a desirable goal, we could even use public money to outright subsidize the cost of caring for kids. Never mind America-first policies like immigration to increase our own population at the expense of other countries.

> You can imagine that with every new gender, there is a facebook ad and amazon order to be sold.

This is veering off into conspiratorial thinking land. Of course there is an element of truth to it. But that same element of truth applies to basically every other meme as well.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#206

Post by duped » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

chainingsolid wrote: post #203

duped wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So how would you recommend ensuring only citizens vote and only do so a max of once per election?

The same way we do now, checking their voter registration. Voter fraud isn't prevalent enough to require overhauling major systems and policy.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#207

Post by nobody9999 » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

declan_roberts wrote: post #50

siliconc0w wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heritage foundation? Lol give me a break.

From Project 2025[0], published by the Heritage Foundation:

   Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it 
   should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be 
   classed as registered sex offenders.

[0] https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeade...

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#208

Post by downrightmike » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

Morromist wrote: post #2

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?

they are work arounds to get what they are really after

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#209

Post by tzs » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:15 PM UTC

chainingsolid wrote: post #203

duped wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So how would you recommend ensuring only citizens vote and only do so a max of once per election?

What we do now works fine. Numerous studies, including by people that had a strong interest in wanting to find problems, have found that the amount of ineligible voters that slip through is insignificant.

Voter registration records are generally public and are scrutinized by partisan organizations that want to try to disqualify voters that they think will vote for a different party.

The voter ID laws Republicans are trying to pass would stop at most a negligible amount on ineligible voters, but would also disenfranchise several million citizens, most of whom are poor and/or elderly and/or minorities.

If Republicans would propose a voter ID law that also includes funding to provide free IDs to every citizen who does not have one (including covering the costs of obtaining the necessary documentation for those IDs), then most people objecting to the current proposals would drop their objections.

Re: US national level OS-level age verification bill proposed

#210

Post by tzs » Wed, Apr 15, 2026, 7:21 PM UTC

bargainbin wrote: post #6

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?

Where does this bill say it applies in that situation?