Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year • Hacker News Board

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#371

Post by K0nserv » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

stvltvs wrote: post #367

gambiting wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure. But that doesn't answer my original question - which 3rd party provider do you trust more with your own data more than the government[which in most cases already has this data]

Data ownership is just one area of concern. Controlling our access to the internet is another. If age verification was an open standard, we could hope for competition so that we could jump ship from a bad actor. If one blocks our access, we would have alternatives. In theory. Not so with a centralized government-mandated service.

Who is in charge of certifying implementers? What happens when I provide an implementation and don't verify anything at all?

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#372

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:48 PM UTC

MichaelZuo wrote: post #363

johnnyanmac wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope our freedom's aren't relinquished on a platform as fortified as "It is what it is".

This doesn’t make sense? How does “freedom” relate to an electrical utility deciding whether to cut service?

"Freemdom" is accepting that mostly marginalized people get their power cut because they are marginalized. Your reaction to that is to shrug and move on instead of investigating the systems below that keep the marginalized as so.

Even if we take marginalization out of it, this is the same kind of system that let's Healthcare recklessly utilize AI Systems to automatically reject patients' care, with a Herculean effort required to find a human to talk to. Its easy yo shrug until you are hallucinated into their crosshair.

But sure, that's "freedom".

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#373

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:51 PM UTC

epihelix wrote: post #365

johnnyanmac wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I bet I'd struggle to install almost all modern popular apps on a 10 year old phone. No Youtube, no Roblox, etc. They simply wouldn't update nor connect. That's one problem solved by the fact that phones operate on a deprecation model, as opposed to Windows OS.

I'm writing this on a seven year old phone (an S10e), running a community ROM with A15, and I have no issues at all in installing any apps. This device is my daily driver (it has a headphone jack and SD card support, and a relatively easily replaceable battery, and is small and light - so it's better than most modern flagships for my needs). A pixel would have much better community ROM support still. These old flagsh…

>There is only a "depreciation" model if you don't unlock your bootloader

That's fair. I also think most kids won't know how to unlock a bootloader (and if Google has its way, that won't be an option anyway).

> a seven year support cycle makes it very easy to obtain cheap, old, fully supported phones, if that's your jam.

Is that iphone support? I think only the biggest flagships get 7 years of official support (and can maybe run 2-3 more years before app version itself out, without external intervention). From what I saw, most budget phones are lucky to get 5 years of support, and will break down well before than anyways.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#374

Post by autoexec » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 7:57 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #368

autoexec wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only acceptable solution would be for apps and websites to simply include a recommended age. Allowing parents to configure their children’s devices to block services that require users to be older than the specified age or that do not provide an age rating. That just entertains the false justification for what is ultimately about surveillance and control. There are privacy preserving alternatives to accounts an…

What might those be? Everything I've seen is ineffective or can be compromised. I think letting parents parent is probably the best option, but will require better/easier/free tools and education to help lock down different categories of harm.

There's nothing that can't be worked around or compromised in some way. Even the face scans and ID scans being used today are being circumvented.

In the end we do need parents to parent, but websites should help. The easiest way would be for websites to send an HTTP header to the client so that censorware can know to block or allow it accordingly.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#375

Post by hulitu » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:13 PM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #29

sunaookami wrote: post #27

This coordinated worldwide effort at the same time is very creepy.

It just means politicians read the news.

It just means politicians are paid at the same time.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#376

Post by hulitu » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:15 PM UTC

warkdarrior wrote: post #297

ooterness wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buy a separate tablet and a roll of duct tape. If you're careful, you can completely cover whatever obsolete nonsense is built into the car.

Is there an open-source alternative to Android Auto? It cannot be a regular tablet app, its UI has to be adapted to car driving (bigger buttons and simplified UI, at a minimum) and it should make use of the car ECU data.

> Is there an open-source alternative to Android Auto?

You mean an app that doesn't work ? There are plenty of those.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#377

Post by afdbcreid » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:25 PM UTC

stvltvs wrote: post #313

gambiting wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole idea is that the government gives you a cryptographic token that proves you are over 18, but that token can be used anywhere. They don't get to say what websites can look at it, because...how would they.

The concern isn't that an authoritarian government locks you out of some age-restricted sites, it's that it locks you out of them all.

The government can just arrest you and lock you out of all sites. It's not like they cannot do it today.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#378

Post by dgellow » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:26 PM UTC

K0nserv wrote: post #24

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #16

I find myself stuck on the fence with age checks. Companies have show that they are incapable or unwilling to address the problems they cause. And market forces are not working to correct things. It’s also pretty obvious that saying “parent should take responsibility” is also not working. Just observe the world around you to know it’s a non starter. This is where regulation is supposed to come in. At the same time, c…

I don't want the market solving this. If we are going to do age checks it should be based on public key cryptography, be open source, and handled by the government. You verify with the government (or don't since they already know your age), you get some form of cryptographic attestation, present said attestation to websites/apps. I'm not a fan of age verification in the first place, but I am extremely not a fan of ra…

Why not just let the parents set an age on the device via parental controls? Why do we need a whole cryptographic system and the government in between, for something that is really just a way to say « this device doesn’t want to have adult content »? It’s way simpler to have that at the device level, and would enable even adults who don’t want adult content to block it for themselves

Edit: I just realized that’s exactly what Android is announcing in the article, so that’s pretty neat

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#379

Post by bilkow » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

dageshi wrote: post #276

duskdozer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Through a Google account. It's not some device check.

Well it's google and google does everything through their accounts. But the principle of this can work on everything. Own an iphone, apple can do the same tied to the apple account. On a windows machine you can do the same tied the user account login for the child. People will no doubt pick holes in something like this, but it's the least intrusive, least effort solution to the problem that will actually work.

> It does all this while leaving everyone else undisturbed.

> it's the least intrusive, least effort solution to the problem that will actually work.

Currently, I have no account tied to my phone or my computer(s), except for an older iPad. Also, I have never sent my ID to any FAANG company. This would force everyone (including adults) to tie an account to their devices and a government ID to their accounts. Bans (which Google does not justify, a lot of the time) would gate users from using apps and possibly sites.

In other words, this helps solidify Google's control over Android users. The problem would be the same for Apple, Microsoft, etc, and in many cases it already is the same.

I get that most people probably have a cloud account for their own devices, and I think that's OK. But currently there is the option not to use their services, and I think that's the fundamental issue, they're effectively removing that option by making apps block users who don't have an account, in the guise of age verification (together with Play Integrity, etc). That option is fundamentally linked to the right to privacy, as once you're required to use certain services to be basically integrated into society (making payments, communicating with others, watching turtle documentaries according to the post) you're not effectively able to exert that right anymore.

There are also other related rights and freedoms here, like the rights to repair, tinker and innovate, that are affected by this action, which helps cement an ecosystem where every app requires Play Services, and as such, is hard to be ported or emulated into other ecosystems, and other actions from Google and Apple.

Re: Google will expand age checks on Android worldwide till the end of the year

#380

Post by soulofmischief » Thu, Jul 30, 2026, 8:32 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #134

shevy-java wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed - Flock cameras showed this. They also actively undermine the US constitution. Will be interesting to see whether the remaining judges have any power to change this or whether they were also integrated into the new dictatorship model.

Surely it's not the camera per se , it iss the people who are installing them. One key driver is lack of efficient law enforcement. Do you force people not to give up their own liberties? In a democracy? Although better privacy laws would cut off the access of non-customers to the data of those customers devices.

So much of this discussion is moot because the point is there is a slippery slope. It doesn't matter if there's an unconstitutional war on drugs which creates distrust and massively diverts law enforcement away from serious crime and instead towards ruining the lives of poor families. It doesn't matter if we're in a new age of McCarthyism or not, or if we're in the middle of a hyperfascist political coup and I don't even feel comfortable protesting in public in my city now that people are getting 30-year felony sentences for moving boxes and the city's new cameras and police drones can track me from my home to anywhere downtown and back.

These things could be true or not. It's the fact that they could be true which means that we cannot allow ourselves to slip into an unretractable surveillance capitalist hellscape. That means people must have avenues to stop things like this.

Petitioning city hall doesn't seem to be working; in fact, it's waking many people up to the fact that their local governments are not working for their interests, as mayors openly discuss banning discussion about data centers.

Laws exist because some people won't play nice otherwise. It is asymmetrical to put the burden of defense of liberty on the individual. The individual is the last line of defense against the government, and when it is the individual's turn to act, it's because law has already failed.

We need to act, and fix the law, so that I don't have to act like a paranoid psycho around others in my life who are wholly unequipped to understand or even care about this problem.