[HN Gopher] Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy co...
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Michigan 'digital age' bills pulled after privacy concerns raised
Author : iamnothere
Score : 201 points
Date : 2026-04-13 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thecentersquare.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thecentersquare.com)
| groby_b wrote:
| HTTP 451
|
| "We recognise you are attempting to access this website from a
| country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including
| the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation
| (GDPR) and therefore cannot grant you access at this time. For
| any issues, e-mail us at info@franklinnews.org or call us at
| (847) 497-5230."
|
| This is extremely funny given it's an article about privacy
| concerns :)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I love seeing this, and love seeing regulations working exactly
| as wanted! What I see is basically "We're unable to serve this
| website without compromising your privacy, so instead of
| pretending or giving you a choice, we give you this message so
| you can turn around".
| ciupicri wrote:
| Right... as if can trust some random American or other non-
| European website that it really respects the law. What are
| you gonna do if it breaks the GDPR law? GDPR ruined the
| Internet.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| I'd argue greedy capitalists ruined it. They were also the
| cause of GDPR
| philipallstar wrote:
| They also built it out.
| troad wrote:
| > "We're unable to serve this website without compromising
| your privacy... "
|
| More accurately, "we do not have the staff or funds to figure
| out what every single random law around the globe requires of
| us, and since foreign countries are not a realistic
| advertising market for a local Michigan newspaper, there's
| really no reason for us to try."
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Well, you don't have to do any of that stuff if you either
| are upfront about selling user data and ask if it's OK, or
| if you just don't do that stuff at all.
| troad wrote:
| European law imposes a great deal more obligations on a
| business than that. This claim is simplistic to the point
| of disingenuousness.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Since obviously there is no "European law" in the first
| place, I think it's pretty safe to assume you have no
| idea what you're talking about.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Interpol would like a word.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > Interpol would like a word.
|
| Also not a "European law" by any measure or
| understanding, that's a international organization that
| does police cooperation across the continent (and
| further), it isn't even a law enforcement agency... Not
| exactly sure how you could confuse that with laws, but
| here we are.
| throwaway920102 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Markets_Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Services_Act
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Reg
| ula...
|
| Here are three.
| master-lincoln wrote:
| But to know that you would have to study the laws of
| other countries or in this case EU which costs money and
| in this case is not an obviously beneficial investment.
| soopypoos wrote:
| they blocked a continent without seeking any advice?
| forgotaccount3 wrote:
| Why not? That continent is not their target audience.
|
| It probably wasn't worth the effort to block foreign
| countries just from random unnecessary compute cost to
| serve a site to them, but when those countries start
| being serious about penalties you could face for serving
| their residents? Now it's justifiable to block non-US
| countries.
| soopypoos wrote:
| the thing is "We don't want to get legal advice" is a
| ridiculous justification for acting on legal advice
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm sure they (or whoever sells the product they use to
| publish) _did_ get legal advice, of the "what is the
| cheapest way to ensure this isn't an issue for us" and
| the response was "block 'em all, let God VPN them out."
|
| After all, using a VPN doesn't absolve companies of the
| GDPR.
| soopypoos wrote:
| Yes so the informed choice they made was "block gdpr
| countries" vs "be transparent about our use of personal
| data".
|
| Every site that gdpr-blocks itself is saying that they
| intend to extract value from your data and they don't
| want to tell you how.
| throwaway920102 wrote:
| No, it can also be saying "I simply have too many other
| things to do than worry about what the correct data
| retention or ban appeal or DSA statement of reasons
| requirement or DSA statement of reasons transparency DB
| API or UK Ofcom age verification requirements or..."
|
| Sometimes if you're just one person and the EU isn't a
| core market and you are a small business or non-profit,
| it's easier to just say, ok you know what, no thanks to
| all this for now.
| soopypoos wrote:
| The signal remains the same:
|
| "Will you sell my data?"
|
| "This interview is over. (I'm very busy.)"
| charcircuit wrote:
| >since foreign countries are not a realistic advertising
| market for a local Michigan newspaper
|
| This may be true for in house ads, but there are ad
| networks that already are able to personalize ads and have
| ad inventory for such foreign countries.
| ataru wrote:
| It's illegal for us to steal from you, so we won't invite you
| inside.
| hypeatei wrote:
| What does GDPR get you that browser settings and an extension
| don't? I'm genuinely curious how random websites refusing to
| serve content / spamming cookie banners is a good thing?
|
| The data download and removal side of GDPR seems useful for
| more "entrenched" use cases where you have an account and a
| long history on a service but... fly-by website visits should
| not be this heavily regulated. Blocking cookies and scripts
| is trivial.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| I should not _need_ extensions for a business to respect my
| privacy. It 's as simple as that.
|
| If you look at it through an equity angle, needing
| extensions relegates the negative effects to those that are
| already not "well off" -- the technologically illiterate
| who don't know what to do or know someone who does.
| hypeatei wrote:
| So someone's refusal to make a couple clicks to install
| an extension necessitates: 1) millions of users having to
| click to get the annoying popup off their screen, 2)
| installing an extension to block those anyway, and 3) a
| more fractured internet where website operators outright
| refuse to serve content because of liability? I'd bet a
| very large sum of money that the technologically
| illiterate don't read anything on those popups and click
| "Accept all cookies"
| 3form wrote:
| How does someone's refusal to install an extension
| necessitate millions of users having to close the popup?
| I guess you mean someone as in "vast majority of
| population"?
| Minor49er wrote:
| Why is the government making efforts to increase
| technological literacy not an option?
| 3form wrote:
| A proper course in technological literacy would also
| necessarily include the fact that browser extensions are
| quite possibly not safe.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > I'm genuinely curious how random websites refusing to
| serve content / spamming cookie banners is a good thing?
|
| They refuse to allow visitors to visit their website
| without taking, processing and selling their data and
| letting those visitors know that this is happening. That
| they outright block me instead of doing those anyways,
| clearly is a good thing and in my benefit.
| ciupicri wrote:
| There's also your IP address. No browser setting or
| extension is going to hide it. There are of course VPNs and
| proxies, but they're different things.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Or "we don't care about respecting stupid laws in your
| country. If you don't like being blocked, take the issue to
| your politicians."
| embedding-shape wrote:
| But that's the thing, making them outright say "we don't
| care about respecting stupid laws in your country" (which
| for us means "we need to continue to be able to sell user
| data without notifying we do this") is not an "issue",
| that's the whole benefit of it in the first place.
|
| Anyways, it sounds like a win-win here, they get to not
| care, and we get to be rejected with clear reasons why, so
| again, benefits all around.
| plandis wrote:
| A US based non-profit news organization isn't going to spend
| money to pay lawyers to ensure they meet a regulatory burden
| that doesn't affect their core demographic.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Neither are they gonna lose the potential of getting the data
| of any of their visitors, hence they're in this catch-22.
| wongarsu wrote:
| A burden that's proportional to how much user data you mine,
| process and/or share with third parties. Hence the irony
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > A US based non-profit news organization isn't going to
| spend money to pay lawyers to ensure they meet a regulatory
| burden that doesn't affect their core demographic.
|
| I like being covered by gdpr. Though I really cannot see any
| country's gdpr peops taking _anyone_ in the US to court. A
| very simple "Fuck you" (along the lines of The Pirate Bay)
| would end any legal conversations. It would be different if
| the news organisation had an office in the EU. Anyway, i have
| a vpn, so....
| bombcar wrote:
| The UK is not part of the US (yet?) nor the EU, but they're
| currently fining US companies - it doesn't surprise me at
| all that many take the easy answer of "ban them by IP".
| msla wrote:
| > The UK is not part of the US (yet?) nor the EU, but
| they're currently fining US companies
|
| Are they going after money they have in the UK or are
| they delusional enough to think they can successfully
| fine a company with no ties to the UK?
| bombcar wrote:
| The latter - https://xcancel.com/prestonjbyrne/status/203
| 4551030453539149
|
| We await the larger rodent.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I wonder why do they censor the content? It's not like the EU
| can enforce GDPR in US.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Of course. Suddenly we are concerned about privacy and the catch-
| all strikes again.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| This all feels coordinated towards another goal.
| fooqux wrote:
| Maybe I'm just a cynical bastard, but after reading the article
| I can't help but agree. They saw the light _way_ too easily and
| the sponsors didn 't push back at all. That's how it's
| _supposed_ to work, yeah, but it 's a far cry from anything
| I've experienced in my entire lifetime. Something's up.
| al_borland wrote:
| > The right to opt out of its sale, and
|
| Why the right to opt-out, instead of requiring sale of data to be
| opt-in?
|
| I'm not sure how this stuff happens on the backend, but if I sign
| up for something and there is an opt-out page buried somewhere, I
| assume they've already sold my data by the time I can get to the
| opt-out page. I still make a best effort, but once it's sold,
| it's really too late. There needs to be an option to never sell
| it in the first place.
| noir_lord wrote:
| This annoys me with Apple devices, iCloud and all it's related
| backups of..well everything are _on_ by default and it doesn 't
| ask at any point in the setup of the device.
|
| You have to then go into settings -> icloud and disable the
| main one and then like 30 individual ones.
|
| There should be a big toggle at the top that says "Disable All
| Cloud Backups" they can feel free to throw in a warning.
| al_borland wrote:
| The phone backup is one toggle. The 30 individual ones are
| for syncing data for apps.
|
| If you aren't using iCloud for any of this, why use it at
| all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an iCloud
| account, can't you? Without any cloud sync, I'm not sure what
| the value is, just sign out.
|
| I'm sure you'd lose the ability to download apps, but most of
| those are also using iCloud to sync data.
|
| For what it's worth, Apple seems fairly decent about not
| opting users in to new stuff. When they released Messages
| syncing via iCloud, I had to explicitly turn it on for my
| various devices. The same was true for several other things.
| noir_lord wrote:
| > If you aren't using iCloud for any of this, why use it at
| all? I believe you can still use an iPhone without an
| iCloud account, can't you?
|
| Nope, You have to have an apple account tied to a physical
| phone number or you can't _sign in on the device or use it
| at all_ and they _opt you in_ to the 5GB free plan and yes,
| the 30 sliders is apps but that doesn 't alter the fact
| that I want to be _asked_ before they exfiltrate my data,
| technology should exist to serve the user and part of that
| (at least in my opinion) is respecting privacy.
|
| Yes you can sign out and you can untoggle the boxes but
| that is rather my point, it's _opt out_ not _opt in_.
|
| I don't want default exfiltration of data from my devices
| to a faceless American corporation without that been _my
| choice_.
| ramgine wrote:
| I daily my work MacBook without an Apple account or phone
| number. And no, it's not in ABM, or any other MDE. App
| Store is unavailable because of the missing account, but
| it does not prevent me from using the device like you're
| claiming.
| gitpusher wrote:
| I don't disagree. But defaults are important, and you are in
| a tiny minority with wanting to disable iCloud. 90% of people
| using Apple phones want or expect things to be magically
| backed up for them
| noir_lord wrote:
| Not saying they shouldn't have that, Apple feels it
| necessary to ask if I want Siri, if I want a Dark theme and
| if I want to give them payment details during device setup,
| I feel like "Do you also want us to back all your data up
| to a remote computer" could be on that list.
| dml2135 wrote:
| This is just... not true? I'm curious what you mean, because
| iCloud _cannot_ be on by default since it requires you to set
| up an iCloud account. You 're asked to sign into iCloud
| during device setup, which you can decline.
|
| Do you mean that, after consenting to and signing into
| iCloud, all of iCloud's feature are enabled by default?
| trollbridge wrote:
| Microsoft likes to do the "opt out for the next 30 days",
| including uploading all my spreadsheets to Copilot to be
| training data.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| "Can we do X, Y, Z?" Yes? Or maybe later?
|
| It's so annoying. No means no, not "pester me later"!
| bombcar wrote:
| Consent used to be "Yes" or "No" now it's "Yes" or "I'll
| give in later"
| salawat wrote:
| There's a reason the tech industry is said to be rapey.
| Such fundamental misunderstandings of consent likely do
| not ultimately stop at the digital.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Woman in tech (rare here, I know) and I can confirm, they
| don't stop at digital
| al_borland wrote:
| That would be enough to get me to spend those 30 days
| migrating all my spreadsheets to a new format.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Google Sheets is slower/has enough usability issues it's
| not an option and OpenOffice is missing a few features too,
| not to mention neither really can do VBA at all, nor do
| they have PowerQuery. So Excel it is.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is this stuff... like, good? I don't know anything about
| the MS ecosystem. If you could start from scratch, would
| using something more like Python, pandas, that sort of
| stuff, be viable?
| nemomarx wrote:
| You're not going to get non technical coworkers like the
| finance department entering their data or reports in
| pandas. So it depends on how much labor you want to put
| in helping them do it, I guess?
| array_key_first wrote:
| No, none of it is good, excel is basically a bad tool for
| almost any job. There almost always exist a better thing
| for everything people use excel for.
|
| But excel has inertia, and it's the only programming non-
| programmers are able, or rather willing, to do. So we're
| basically stuck with it.
|
| And yes, I consider crafting and maintaining excel
| workbooks programming, even if no VBA is involved.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Excel works, the VBA macros with random business rules
| work, people with business knowledge know how to use it,
| the workflows are set up.
|
| If we were starting from nothing it wouldn't be built,
| but the value of what already exists is massive.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Sure, if you never have to collaborate on them with anyone
| else.
| jrm4 wrote:
| For the record, I think it's important to highlight this as "hey,
| the system actually works" sometimes. All the fatalism and
| whatnot with government.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| What's with the bipartisan push for these bills all of a sudden?
| lioeters wrote:
| It's an international coordinated effort to undermine every
| single citizen's privacy, an agenda being pushed for years,
| again and again in every country and state, by a coalition
| including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., corporations that
| profit greatly from mandatory identity verification online.
| It's only a matter of time until they buy out enough
| politicians to push it through and force future generations to
| live under their panopticon. Same with digitization of money.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| I hate privacy, even down to the idea itself. I will buy out
| politicians, and push relentlessly until every trace of
| privacy is eliminated from the world. I love being watched.
| The idea of a panopticon makes me feel amazing and I want to
| force it on everyone until the end of time.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I'm reading your comment as sarcasm, but I do have a non-
| sarcastic hot take on it.
|
| If we have to live in a panopticon I think access to the
| data should be available to everyone. That eliminates the
| power imbalance and/or makes the idea of the thing
| distasteful to powerful people who might actually try to
| restore privacy and eliminate the panopticon.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Power is then moved to whomever owns the most computer
| power and perhaps education
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| That's what it is now. Computing power is just a proxy
| for capital.
| potsandpans wrote:
| > If we have to live in a panopticon...
|
| So that's where we are now? "If we have to live in the
| torture nexus, let's at least make it equitable"
| bee_rider wrote:
| I can see why people fall into the trap of calling for an
| equitable torment nexus: it is both cynical (it supposes
| everyone in power is corrupt and everyone at the top
| would oppose an equitable torment nexus) and also
| naive/optimistic (it supposes that we have any hope to
| actually impose an equitable torment nexus).
|
| But I think the latter factor wins out, so we should just
| oppose obviously bad things in a non-clever fashion.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I don't see it as cynical. I'm just accepting the obvious
| reality.
|
| I have no power to stop what's happening. I might as well
| make the best of it for myself and my family, and hope it
| becomes so bad that people who actually do have the power
| to stop it do something about it. Maybe it'll rise to the
| level that enough individual citizens will call out for
| change, but I continue to be amazed at what people will
| put up with in the name of convenience, continuation of
| their lifestyle, and, as it relates specifically to
| surveillance capitalism, shiny digital doodads and
| baubles that bring them temporary joy.
|
| Capital being speech in the US, since I'm not a
| billionaire I have very little influence.
|
| I have optimism and hope for people doing good things
| locally, but absolutely no hope large-scale problems will
| ever be fixed. I feel like the US political system
| experienced some phase change in the last 50 years, has
| "solidified", and is now completely unable to do anything
| meaningful at scale. The New Deal couldn't happen today.
| The interstate highway system couldn't happen today. The
| Affordable Care Act started off as a watered-down,
| weakened version of what it could have been (because
| anything more radical would never have passed), and the
| private interests have had 20 years to chip away at it,
| sculpting it into a driver of revenue. Heck, we can't
| even build mass public transit at the level of cities.
|
| Private capital, meanwhile, soldiers on accomplishing its
| goals in spite of (or because of) our political gridlock.
|
| I'd love to feel differently.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| That's called cynicism
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| The fact that you couldn't identify it as sarcasm/satire
| is indictive of not having an accurate understanding of
| your opponents position. If you want to defeat your
| opponents, understand their calculus.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If those wish to preserve privacy want to be effective,
| there needs to be a pragmatism in understanding differing
| opinions. Reducing opponents to caricatures and fighting
| those is a losers strategy. It will guarantee defeat.
|
| Being able to accurately articulate a position one
| doesn't possess themselves is necessary to effectively
| countering it.
| randcraw wrote:
| That coordinated effort also includes the buying up of US
| media sources by billionaires and gigacorps to control the
| content of not just news sources and social forums, but every
| electronic window we have onto the world.
|
| Remember, the panopticon observed people who were in a
| prison.
| blix wrote:
| The effort significantly predates the recent changes in US
| media ownership. I would actually argue that the ownership
| change is mostly orthogonal to the ongoing trend of
| centralization and top-down manipulation of digital
| information sources.
|
| A shift change of the prison guards more than a material
| change to the prison.
| bombcar wrote:
| They likely don't even really care about the panopticon -
| they see a way to build a moat that even billion-dollar
| startups won't be able to easily cross.
|
| Regulatory capture is real.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > a coalition including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc.,
| corporations that profit greatly from mandatory identity
| verification online.
|
| This is not being pushed by private companies. There is no
| money in it. It is being pushed by governments, and those
| governments use those private companies as (willing) vehicles
| to do things that it is illegal for them to do directly. And
| it is not being pushed by the _democratic_ portions of
| governments, which have been minimized and weakened to the
| point of invisibility. None of this makes it to the ballot,
| "both" sides support it.
|
| Since the turn of the millennium, all powers have been pushed
| to the Executive, in every Western country. And the Executive
| wouldn't be the Executive if he/she weren't completely
| compromised. Governing with 20% of the support of the public
| is the _norm_ now in Western governments and institutions. If
| more than 20% of people support you, you 're a "populist
| dictator."
| EmbarrassedHelp wrote:
| Age verification isn't free. If you sell age verification
| services then you can get obscenely rich off the government
| forcing people to use services like yours.
|
| Sam Altman owns an identity verification company for
| example.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > undermine every single citizen's privacy
|
| Well, we might as well be realistic - none of us have had any
| privacy for a very, very long time. It's just that our
| governments can't quite yet use it against us the way they'd
| like to without revealing the scope. The goal here is really
| just to add some additional plausibility when our privacy
| _is_ violated.
| shagie wrote:
| Sun On Privacy : Get Over It (1999) https://web.archive.org
| /web/20171008211256/https://www.wired...
| Arainach wrote:
| It's Meta:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_b...
| xienze wrote:
| It's not called a uniparty for nothing. Vote red, vote blue,
| we're all gonna end up in the same place eventually, the only
| difference is the timeline (pretty interesting that the first
| states pushing this stuff are California, Colorado, Illinois,
| etc. -- not exactly who you imagine being concerned with "think
| of the children", is it?). All the bickering between the two
| parties is pro wrestling kayfabe at the end of the day.
| WarmWash wrote:
| People connect to the internet and do bad things (or have bad
| things happen to them)
|
| They need to pay a service provider to have the capability to
| do bad things (or be exposed to bad things)
|
| Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to identify
| these people (or block the bad things).
|
| For any politician the line of thinking will be something like
| that. It comes off as incredibly long hanging fruit that would
| have broad positive impact for the whole of society. Like the
| apple in the garden of eden, just walk over, take a bite, and
| you'll be a political hero without having to do much work at
| all.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Why can't we just ask/compel the service provider to
| identify these people (or block the bad things).
|
| Isn't that basically what's happening? Service providers,
| such as Discord recently for example, are asking for
| identification to prove users are of a certain age. If you
| punish service providers for providing services to minors
| then they will need to do age verification.
| Aurornis wrote:
| It has reached the level of moral panic, so it's the current
| topic everywhere.
|
| Even on Hacker News, threads about children and social media or
| short form video will draw a lot of comments supporting harsh
| age restrictions, including an alarming number of extremist
| comments in favor banning under-18s from using the internet or
| phones.
|
| It's not until the discussion turns to implantation details
| that the sentiment swings firm negative. The average comment in
| favor of age restrictions hasn't thought through what it would
| mean, they only assume that some mechanism will exist that only
| impacts children and/or sites they don't care about.
|
| As soon as the implantation details come out and everyone
| realizes that you can't restrict children without first
| verifying everyone's age or that "social media" includes
| Discord and other services they use, the outrage starts.
|
| We're now entering the phases where everyone realizes that
| these calls to action have consequences for everyone because
| there is no easy solution that automatically only impacts
| children.
| ButlerianJihad wrote:
| > the discussion turns to implantation details
|
| Do not try and derail this thread with facts about vaccines!
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. I've been similarly baffled.
|
| The call to ban children from social media seemed like it was
| coming loudest from tech people - like HN users.
|
| How did they think this was going to work?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _threads about children and social media or short form
| video will draw a lot of comments supporting harsh age
| restrictions_
|
| I think there should be age restrictions. I prefer to do it
| in a privacy-preserving way. But I'm also not happy about
| conditioning the former on the existence of the latter.
| EmbarrassedHelp wrote:
| Outside of better parental controls and restricting
| accounts based on self declared age, there isn't a way to
| perform age verification anonymously or privately.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _isn 't a way to perform age verification anonymously
| or privately_
|
| Totally, no. Better than having users upload IDs with no
| use restrictions on the social-media companies? Yes. The
| harms justify, in my opinion and the opinion of lots of
| Americans (and importantly, those able and willing to
| call their electeds), a little bit of privacy
| encroachment for using a totally-voluntary product.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| One component is to stop building tools that exploit
| impressionable minds.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| They exploit _all_ minds. But adults can make that choice
| responsibly. Kids cannot. We age gate alcohol and
| cigarettes. Social media is no different.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Well hackernews wont like this but the answer is because it's
| enforcing the status quo. Verifying age for age-related
| materials and services. Some internet related services had a
| defacto exemption from following the laws because the
| enforcement logistics just werent there. A physical store that
| sells porn has to ID whereas online you dont, for example.
|
| In addition there are more services, such as social media,
| becoming age-gated.
|
| The enforcement hurts the sensibilities of people like us on
| hackernews but it's common sense to a lot of people. We live in
| very polarizing times, but as you've noted, it has bipartisan
| support. The easiest explanation is the hackernews-friendly
| take of lack of enforcement mechanisms is the more radical one.
|
| Personally I think it's a bit sad but inevitable. The laws are
| just catching up. And there will absolutely be some good coming
| from it, such as holding companies liable for breaking the law.
| harvey9 wrote:
| Physical stores look at your id, they don't take a copy. Same
| for home delivery of alcohol at least in the UK.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| They may or may not. Just like online services may or may
| not make a copy. That is besides the point - the point is
| they verify age because it's already illegal to distribute
| porn to minors.
| harvey9 wrote:
| No, the do not make a copy and that specifically is the
| point I am making. The guy looking at my id while
| standing in my porch is doing something ephemeral.
| altairprime wrote:
| Facebook is theorized to be paying an advocacy group to launch
| these, so that they can externalize the legal problems of
| social networking onto age verification and piecemeal state
| laws; simultaneously lowering their damages costs in future
| lawsuits and also raising the drawbridge over the newly-
| difficult compliance moat against future competitors.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 's with the bipartisan push for these bills all of a
| sudden?_
|
| There is popular fury against the big tech companies for
| harming our children. That makes it politically advantageous to
| put forward solutions. Electeds are responding to that
| incentive.
|
| Tech privacy "advocates" are notoriously useless at civic
| engagement, so most of the time I assume the electeds had
| nobody to talk to other than parents' groups, who are going to
| pick the simplest solution to put to pen: the companies have
| liability to age gate.
| tangotaylor wrote:
| I think part of it is because many affluent parents have
| children with major mental health issues: anxiety, depression,
| bipolar, thoughts of self-harm, etc. and many of these parents
| blame social media. The affluent have way more sway over
| policymaking, and since social media seems easier to control
| that other vices, they're exerting their control.
|
| The suicide rate in Palo Alto, for instance, was so high that
| the CDC investigated it (around 2016). The situation hasn't
| improved much since then.
| https://elestoque.org/2025/12/07/opinion/community-members-t...
|
| Another example: in the California Assembly hearings for AB
| 1043 (their age verification bill), one mom offered testimony
| in support by saying it was social media that enticed her
| daughter into developing anorexia.
| nickslaughter02 wrote:
| Pulled?
|
| > _Bill sponsors Rep. Brad Paquette, R-Niles, and Sen. John
| Cherry, D-Flint, are now working with advocacy groups on
| potential replacement legislation, according to the MFEI._
|
| https://archive.is/hI3wJ
| nonethewiser wrote:
| If it's illegal in the United States to ask someone's age before
| distributing porn to them online because of the first amendment,
| why can physical porn stores ask for id? Is that also
| unconstitutional?
| shafoshaf wrote:
| It is not illegal to ask a user's age in the US online. Can you
| let us know what your source is?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > It is not illegal to ask a user's age in the US online.
|
| Note that this is not what I said. You overgeneralized it - I
| will assume without bad intention. The question is if it's
| illegal to require porn companies to verify the age of their
| users.
|
| > Can you let us know what your source is?
|
| The Free Speech Coalition and Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson
| of the Supreme Court, to start. That was their minority
| opinion in the suit filed against Texas for requiring online
| porn companies to verify the age of users. The plaintiff
| argued it was a violation of the first amendment - it is a
| common argument.
|
| https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/06/court-allows-texas-law-
| on...
|
| The argument against the legality of these laws has always
| been highly suspect. There is a common sentiment that these
| laws are not good - but when pressed to explain why they
| aren't legal you get crazy arguments like this, that it
| violates the first amendment.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Fwiw, you did not say the same thing here and in your first
| post. Your words are meaningfully different.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| You should try to engage with the substance of the post.
|
| The claim made by some is that its illegal to require
| porn companies to do age verification due to the first
| amendment. It's really the only legal theory I've seen
| that supports the claim that the Texas law and others are
| unconstitutional. The rest just amounts to "it's bad so
| they should rule against Texas and others."
|
| If his comment was based on some different understanding
| lets state it so we can clarify, but I think I already
| have. Of course its not illegal to ask someone's age on
| the internet. Is that truly what you believed I was
| saying?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I was just trying to explain the confusion of the
| original response, I'm not interested in the topic. They
| originally said "it's illegal for a company to verify
| someone's age", but their follow up post was "it's
| illegal for the government to force companies to verify
| age"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > If it's illegal in the United States to ask someone's age
| before distributing porn to them online because of the first
| amendment, why can physical porn stores ask for id? Is that
| also unconstitutional?
|
| The laws typically don't require them to check ID but instead
| punish them for selling to minors. You then have several major
| differences from the online case:
|
| In a physical store where they're neither de facto nor de jure
| required to check your ID when you're clearly an adult, many of
| them then don't. There is no feasible way to do the same thing
| on the internet so instead it effectively becomes requirement
| to ID everyone, which is different.
|
| In a physical store the clerk can already see your face and
| hear your voice. It's already hard to be anonymous while
| interacting in person. A law that compromises anonymity in a
| context where it was already compromised is different than a
| law that compromises it in a context where it wasn't.
|
| In a physical store, someone who checks your ID is a human
| being. They're probably not even going to remember you, are
| just a store clerk even if they do, and you can see if they try
| to photocopy your ID or similar and refuse to allow it. Or, you
| may have a human relationship with that person and trust them
| not to share your identity with their employer or anyone else.
| For an online service it's a computer operated by a
| corporation, and then there is no way for you to tell they're
| not storing the information, which they have a perverse
| incentive to do so they can tie all of your future and past
| interactions with them to your ID. This results in a much
| stronger chilling effect.
|
| Moreover, a lot of these laws predate the sort of databases
| that now exist. If someone started making surveillance cameras
| that could undetectably read the barcode from your government
| ID if you took it out anywhere in the store and then record it
| in a database to associate with your activity, your typical
| defense from that would be to not take it out while you're in
| the store. At which point a government mandate to show them
| your ID would have different implications than it did in 1975,
| which could affect its constitutionality.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > In a physical store they're neither de facto nor de jure
| required to check your ID when you're clearly an adult, and
| many of them don't. There is no feasible way to do the same
| thing on the internet so instead it effectively becomes
| requirement to ID everyone, which is different.
|
| 1) Not true. The burden is on the seller to verify age. Sure,
| they can try to do it visually but if they fail they are
| still liable.
|
| 2) Even if true, nothing changes in a legal sense if they
| lose the ability to informally verify age because thats not a
| legal right of the consumer. It's just an incidental feature
| of buying in store which some people value. There may be a
| difference there, but its not a legal one.
|
| 3) Texas law didn't mandate age verification by ID
| specifically.
| pessimizer wrote:
| This wasn't even a debate two years ago. People were still
| complaining about Secure Boot and needing Microsoft's permission
| to install Linux, and about locked phone bootloaders. The fact
| that this "need" has been manufactured _was_ the victory.
| Michigan holding back for a moment doesn 't matter when they
| already took California, and Europe is actively hostile to
| privacy - advocating for it there is starting to verge on the
| criminal.
|
| Now the claw is closing, and government and big tech are
| combining. We're either going to let this tiny inbred elite
| track, monitor and rule every portion of our lives, or we're not.
| There are no solutions through government, and there are no
| technical solutions.
|
| Right now you should be buying more computers than you need and
| datahoarding.
|
| It is disrespectful that they can pretend with a straight face
| that they've suddenly discovered privacy concerns. The people who
| pay them _started_ by priming them with the best arguments and
| lines that their "media" guys could come up with to dismiss
| those concerns and to paint the people bringing them up as
| Chinese terrorist pedophiles. They probably just figured out that
| they need to wait after the midterms, eliminate a few people and
| get a few others in, then they could get it passed attached to
| something else. While they're consciously planning, we're simply
| reacting and ascribing to ignorance and incompetence what is far
| better explained by malice.
|
| The entire purpose of these laws is to destroy privacy. It isn't
| _churches_ and _puritans_ lobbying for them. There 's _no_
| visible constituency lobbying for this, just a bunch of people
| who have been softened into going "well, if it helps..."
|
| People need to ask themselves who's getting this stuff done?
| There are so many things that 70-80% of the electorate are loudly
| clamoring for that can't even get acknowledged by anyone in power
| or in the mainstream media, but _this_ stuff gets passed?
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