251–260 of 369 posts
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?…
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…
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/u…
This is not the bill you're hoping for: 1. The text implies software should get access to your date of birth, rather than talking about age groups. If it becomes the case that websites can get your precise date of birth, this will be the ultimate fingerprinting vector that will put the fight for online privacy dead in the water. 2. The text talks about "verifying" dates of birth. This can only imply the involvement o…
[1]: It says the parents verify the user's date of birth, which could just mean they get to say "yes, my kid is 12", and "a system to allow an app developer to access any information as is necessary" could just mean "is user over 18" if that's all that's necessary to comply with the FTC regulations.
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/u…
It's always the same pattern. There is no way to protect the children while also preserving freedom. The rationale behind it is irrelevant. For this to work everything would have to be locked down right? This is not in the interest of the people nor any children.
No. As long as the focus is on giving parents tools to parent their kids and not on the government taking over that responsibility completely then there's no need for the government to lock anything down. You just give the parents locks and let them do the locking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
well, and this bill literally only makes you prove age to ... set up the device. how are we in 2026 and phones dont have guest mode or "i handed it to my kid mode" apple's guided access is a terrible 1% solution to the problem. in one click i should be able to put my phone into some kind of locked down mode that exposes only what is allowed, starting with nothing unless whitelisted, with multiple profiles. in the sam…
> how are we in 2026 and phones dont have guest mode or "i handed it to my kid mode" They do. Android have had multi-user and guest profiles since Android 5. The only reason I really know this is because I heard how Google completely bungled it in Android 14 on Pixel devices[1] :D [1]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/10/android-14s-ransomwa...
To me that's faster and much closer to a safe "hand the device to a kid" mode.
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-colle... And https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250...
This. We need to stop calling this “age verification.” You are uploading your full ID. Not your age.
Writing like this is frankly so exhausting. I don’t think anyone not already in the choir could make it through.
Some people really need shit spelled out to them. This does a great job of doing that in a small package.
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."
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-... https://nophonehome.com/
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."
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 requi…
We already saw that: some eagerly implemented this stuff, some rejected.