New York just proposed the most invasive state-level age verification bill the US has seen. Senate Bill S08102 would extend age verification requirements down to the device itself: internet-connected devices, operating system providers, and app stores would all be required to implement what the bill calls “age assurance” before users can access their own hardware and software ecosystems.
Edit:
Meta is one of the lobbyists for the age verification bill.
Into the Metaverse: The Money and Motivations Behind Meta’s App Store Gambit
In May 2025, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representative John James (R-MI) introduced the App Store Accountability Act (ASAA), a bill that would require app stores to verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent for users under 18. Meta has bankrolled a wildly expensive lobbying campaign to enact ASAA and its state-level analogs, and instead of recoiling in horror at taking kid privacy advice from Meta, some lawmakers are credulously going along with it.
Confirmed by Bloomberg : Meta Clashes With Apple, Google Over Age Check Legislation
The struggle has pitted Meta Platforms Inc. and other app developers against Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, the world’s largest app stores. Lobbyists for both sides are moving from state to state, working to water down or redirect the legislation to minimize their clients’ risks.
This year alone, at least three states — Utah, Texas and Louisiana — passed legislation requiring tech companies to authenticate users’ ages, secure parental consent for anyone under 18 and ensure minors are protected from potentially harmful digital experiences. Now, lobbyists for all three companies are flooding into South Carolina and Ohio, the next possible states to consider such legislation.
in addition, there are Over 50 Child Advocacy Groups Unite to Demand App Store Accountability
Go back to do everything on paper. No more invoice through email and payment. Demand everything comes on paper. Pay cash. It drives corpos and administration crazy to go back to old school systems. It’ll probably do more than complain.
At this point, I’d be thrilled if just one thing – elections – went back to paper. I feel like paper ballots would have solved at least some of this current insanity already.
“Elon knows those vote counting computers!”
… I really don’t want to have to stop using all fucking technology now. Ffs this is absolutely disgustingly absurd. EVERYTHING GETS HACKED I am not tying my ID and real name to literally everything I do on an electronic device…
I’m usually left of centre, even a bit more to the left than that.
But all these liberal places passing these laws… They’re making it difficult not to change teams.
I don’t watch conservative mouthpieces on YouTube, just the literal reality of these badly thought-of, privacy nightmare laws… All a conservative would have to tell me is they would revert this, and I’d be hard pressed to vote otherwise.
They’re not getting the memo are they…
for starters, democrats are not leftists.
I’m not American lol
I’m saying they’re poisoning their own well with garbage like that.
Lol that’s like saying you’d vote in favor of voter suppression laws in exchange for gun rights… yeeaaah no don’t do that lol
Don’t trust conservatives
In Canada our cons are dumb, but not brain dead like the US’.
I don’t want to vote for them.
But once age verification garbage enters the picture, I become a one-issue voter.
So as a one issue voter, you’d vote for the people doing the thing you don’t like more than the other group, instead of those doing it less?
And you called your cons dumb…
Hey after I fight tooth and nail, write opinion columns, write to all politicians I have access to, and create petitions, if all of this wasn’t enough, what else is there to do?
It’s not a sure thing in Canada, and maybe a party further left will vote against it and oppose it, in which case yeah I’d vote for that.
Apparently Louisiana was the first state to really push for this kind of stuff so I seriously doubt conservatives in government would stop pushing stuff like this either.
It’s one of those things that’s going to be inevitable… It’s always “FoR tHe KiDs” but it’s really about knowing exactly what every citizen is doing at all times so they can come after you for whatever displeases them.
Just to point out I’m Canadian and regardless of who started it. Saying they’ll vote Republican to avoid this stuff comes from substantial ignorance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States
The only spin I can see from the right side is they want to be so ass deep into your tech stack that they don’t even have to ask to verify who you are.
I’m also Canadian lol. The point I’m making is that if it has me thinking like this, imagine people who were truly on the fence.
They’re shooting themselves in the foot.
If you’re Canadian then you know “left of center” in American units is still to the right of center everywhere else in the world.
It’s absurd to see a democrat doing something and blame liberals for it.
I was talking about Canada, should have mentioned that. Carney brought up that he wants to look at the issue, and God damnit I will fight this thing or at least the version that’s going to put all of our data at risk.
If it passes anyway, then I cannot in good conscience vote for any party who approved age verification like it is done in the UK, Australia, and some States.
Now, I’m definitely not the smartest with this topic, but identification would be better at the device level than the cloud, right?
Why do we need it at all?
I don’t know, why?
We shouldn’t
Oh, good to know👍
Parents can age check their kids manually. We should not identify every user on the internet.
No we can’t. We try, but kids are not 100% of the time in our sight. They are sitting in their chair “doing homework”, but when they see us coming they switch apps - who knows what they are doing. They are getting up at 3am when we are a sleep, again doing who knows what. Even if we put controls on, anytime there is a way to bypass the control (often a website that looks good enough to fool the automated approval system school has set up) that will spread to the entire school and all kids get access to that for a week in school before it is shutdown.
If you want age verification to work, you need a strong legal effort (international!) so that anyone who makes something online that gets kids (intentionally or not) faces a strong enough legal issue (read years in prison) that it is really stops this. Part of that is enough money for investigation so that it is a given you will be caught. I don’t think you can do this, and so the whole effort is pointless.
Network level content blockers are really easy to setup and they’d be even easier if bills targeted ISPs instead (requiring gateways have the tech built-in). It takes a pretty smart and determined kid to get around network controls and it can target specific devices so adults still have an unrestricted experience.
Weren’t the red hats the ones bitching about “the nanny state”?
Freedom for me, laws for thee
The same crowd that needs the second amendment to stand up to tyranny but are nowhere to be found when tyranny is actually happening?
