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
Now, I’m definitely not the smartest with this topic, but identification would be better at the device level than the cloud, right?
The device still syncs with the cloud for the first verification at minimum so the data is out there anyway.
How are you verifying the age at the device level? Unless it allows you just say your age, then it will require sending personal information to some ‘verifying authority’. Every age verification push is just an expansion of the surveillance state.
Anything the state does to ‘protect kids’ is bullshit until they ensure every child has food, medical care, proper education, housing, etc.
Age verification needs to be done by someone (probably a government agency, though it need not be) who has verified age. That someone needs to be legally liable (and able to enforce) the tracking rules for anyone who uses their system to verify age. You want to verify someone’s age with me, first you need to prove you are following our privacy rules - including our regular random audits.
It needs a better cryptologist than me to get the details of the above system right.
Of course if even if you have the above I’m not sure how you will get anyone to use it. Perhaps we can have schools put a hard block on any system that doesn’t follow the above system, but the vast majority of the web isn’t going to opt-in. Note in particular this includes a lot of the useful sites I as a parent want my kids to access so it won’t help me as a parent.
I’m not advocating. I’m asking a question. Not making a statement.
Does it not send off alarm bells seeing meta stated as one of the lobbyists? Do they really have a track record that makes you think device would be any better?
Oh, I wasn’t trying to be argumentative. I was just trying to answer that at the fundamental level there has to be someone trusted to verify your info, so the data can’t just stay on your device. Unless they just trust the user to state their own age which would defeat the purpose of the law.
The rest was mostly just because I’m so sick of the bullshit and I didn’t feel like making a separate comment in addition to replying to you. Sorry if I came off as hostile to you.
Why?
Why does there need to be age verification at all?
We’ve had computera since the 1940s, and never needed this. We’ve had the internet since the 1990s and never needed this.
Now that a pedophile is in the white house, and an entire network of pedophile politicians have been revealed, NOW they want to protect the children???
And you honestly believe that?
I don’t know if you’re intentionally misunderstanding what I am saying or what, but I’m not saying age verification is needed. I’m saying that for their age verification plan to function, there would need to be a verifying authority and identifying information would need to be passed from your device to them.
My first comment should have made it very clear that all of this is baseless garbage designed to further state surveillance goals.
Ok, so again I’m not very smart on this subject. Could we not make a universal id system that locally authenticates and only sends a confirmation to say, Facebook or pornhub?
Edit: like we already have id and driver license. Can’t the local system read that and verify without sending the information? Just the confirmation. Why do we need to send the info to the company? I’m again just trying to understand the issues we are facing.
Do you really trust your government to know every single account associated with you? Do you trust the current leader and future leaders of your country to have every internet activity easily linked to you? Countries like the US will no longer have to subpoena for that information like they recently did for reddit users critical of ICE.
So does it really make you feel better to have the government in control of a universal ID system?
Well to build a universal ID system, we would have to give everyone a unique digital ID that is then associated with their device. So even if it’s claimed it would only be used to verify age where required, its trivial to then use that unique ID to track other device activity and tie it to your real identity.
There has already been examples of law enforcement using cellphone tower data, commercial ad IDs, social media posts, and anything else they can get to track and locate people without warrants or legal justification. So this would just be another way to tie digital activity to your real identity.
I see. Thank you. I guess I’m my head I’m trying to relate this to showing id for alcohol in a liquor store but there just is no comparison. This shit is going to suck.
Yeah, it would be like having a giant version of your ID projected over your head all the time. And someone following you around recording everywhere you go and everything you do.
Would be some next level stuff where governments would be able to track and shut down protest attempts before it even happened. And identify those who have expressed critical views of their government and disappear them. And disappear people who bring up people being disappeared.
Until eventually just the thought of speaking freely in such a manner is killed off completely on the Internet.
JAQing off
Ok👍
yes yes yes hammer on the head
Why do we need it at all?
Won’t somebody please, think of the children
I think we have had enough of the rich thinking about children
I don’t know, why?
We shouldn’t
Oh, good to know👍
Look at it from the other direction: Why do most large software vendors now require “The Cloud” for licensing instead of it being on the Device?
So, if the Local can inevitably be tampered with or bypassed (just like other parental controls which they apparently think aren’t sufficient) what really is the point? Children’s safety isn’t improving. Who’s benefiting?
Not that “The Cloud” is safer or in any way better. Just trading liability, culpability, and making enforcement more difficult to bypass. “Oops, lost your data, we’re really [not] sorry. Here’s $2, get yourself something nice. No, no, you still have to give us your data and pray it doesn’t happen again. We promise it won’t. Maybe.”
no this creates serious privacy concerns. The people solving the problem are the ones causing the problem. They want to control you and crush free speech. Just stay in the saddle lean in and learn more. This will destroy anything left that is good about technology.