[HN Gopher] H.R.8250 - To require operating system providers to ...
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       H.R.8250 - To require operating system providers to verify the age
       of any user
        
       Author : cft
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2026-04-14 22:18 UTC (41 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.congress.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.congress.gov)
        
       | Morromist wrote:
       | Its going to be funny when there are married 17 year olds driving
       | cars with guns and children but who can't install linux or access
       | facebook without calling their dad.
       | 
       | Why are so many bi-partisan bills so bad?
        
         | EvanAnderson wrote:
         | > Why are so many bi-partisan bills so bad?
         | 
         | I assume near equal money going to both sides.
        
         | OhMeadhbh wrote:
         | I don't think that's what this bill is about. I think they want
         | to be able to attach a government issued ID to logins for
         | various services. They tried claiming it was to fight
         | terrorism, but that didn't really work so now they're saying
         | "it's for the children!"
        
       | Jtsummers wrote:
       | Unfortunately all we have are the title and sponsors right now.
       | I'm much more interested in the text of this bill which is not
       | posted here yet. I don't expect it to be particularly reasonable,
       | but at least we will have something to discuss once the text is
       | available.
        
         | coffeefirst wrote:
         | Yes. The key word is "verify."
         | 
         | If all they have to do is ask the user's age on account setup,
         | we're talking about a spec for parental controls.
         | 
         | If you need to scan ID and call a third party we have a
         | problem.
        
       | DiabloD3 wrote:
       | I'm not sure who Josh Gottheimer of NJ is, but he seems to be one
       | of those stealth "fake" Democrats. Too centrist to be a
       | Republican, but also too centrist to be part of the DSA.
       | 
       | He seems to also support H.R. 7540.
       | 
       | I think the Democrats in his district need to seriously consider
       | primarying him and replace him with someone that doesn't bend to
       | foreign or corporate whims.
        
         | ipnon wrote:
         | I really think left-right and honest-dishonest are useless
         | dimensions to evaluate Congress members on. The job practically
         | requires ideological fuzziness and truth stretching to get
         | anything done. This is a feature: legislatures that require
         | high ideological purity tend to become rubber stamps. DPRK is a
         | good example.
        
       | foxfired wrote:
       | Since voting is that power we say we have in the US. Does the
       | public get to vote on this? If not...
       | 
       | > Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the
       | politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your
       | opinion to a pollster - Neil Postman
        
         | sheept wrote:
         | The US is a representative democracy, not a direct democracy.
         | You don't get to vote on specific federal policies, you vote on
         | the people who vote for those policies.
        
       | bargainbin wrote:
       | What if the user is another machine? Sorry, my API won't talk to
       | another API unless it's old enough to drink.
       | 
       | How do we still have no people in government with basic computer
       | literacy?
        
         | miohtama wrote:
         | It's the opposite. This is for mass surveillance. Politicians
         | love control and silencing anon Twitter critics.
        
           | ranger_danger wrote:
           | > This is for mass surveillance
           | 
           | Source:
        
           | sheept wrote:
           | How is all the tracking we have today not already sufficient
           | for mass surveillance? What does age verification add if the
           | goal is just more surveillance?
        
       | iamnothere wrote:
       | At the very least, if this passes, the resulting court challenge
       | will provide precedent that shuts it down in all 50 states at
       | once.
       | 
       | The downside will be riding out the intervening months before the
       | court decision comes through. Stock up on ISOs and full git
       | clones of your favorite OS sources.
        
       | OhMeadhbh wrote:
       | Anyone have the text of the bill? It doesn't seem to be on
       | congress.gov yet.
        
       | carefree-bob wrote:
       | I'd love to know which funds/wealthy individuals are bankrolling
       | this rush of age verification mandates. It's certainly not a
       | grass roots phenomenon.
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-14 23:00 UTC)