this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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So, OS-level age-gating is going federal, which will effectively kill your rights to device ownership and what's left of free speech and expression.

Enjoy your free speech while you still have it because this is a clear attempt to erase that right.

SOPA never died, it just went into hiding until time to reemerge, and now's that time, this is basically SOPA in a save the kids trenchcoat.

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[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 52 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Motherfuckers want this so they can more easily find kiddies to groom and rape.

Start selling the narrative folks, this is not gonna be a clean war

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[–] 4grams@awful.systems 81 points 6 days ago (1 children)

If this thread is any indication, we’re cooked. If this many people are willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt, after what we’re dealing with…

This will not be benign, it will seem innocent at first, but we’ll have given up yet another seemingly simple thing that will eventually be used against us.

[–] mPony@lemmy.world 26 points 5 days ago

evidently Palantir wasn't able to use all available data and a few glaciers to find out who was saying mean things about Important People With Money. This oughta fill in those gaps.

[–] Formfiller@lemmy.world 130 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

They can’t even arrest the pedophiles in government but they want to mass surveil us for everything.

[–] Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org 25 points 6 days ago (9 children)

The rules have always been for us, not for them.

The police are enforcers for the elites, they don't stop crime, they extract fines from people and provide a deterrent to anyone standing up for themselves.

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[–] Aqarius@lemmy.world 30 points 6 days ago

Those are not contrary, but complementary things.

[–] architect@thelemmy.club 23 points 6 days ago

Yea so you quit taking badly about the pedophiles in government.

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[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 189 points 6 days ago (22 children)

No it wont. Because we're gonna light shit on fire until this goes away, ICE melts, and the hostages are released from the internment camps. Right?

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 94 points 6 days ago (5 children)

lol. americans don’t do shit

[–] Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip 93 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (26 children)

My guy, people have been out in the streets ripping people out of the hands of ice

I get its fun to be cynical in the current moment but americans have absolutely been doing shit. I know, because there are folks in my community organizing, and they're doing so in the image of other community organizing efforts across the country

If you're reading this go find a way to get involved IRL. Meet your neighbors. Join food not bombs or a soup kitchen. Get involved in ice watch. Find your local DSA or PSL chapter and see if they're people there and projects that you feel like you can build with. See if you have a local SRA chapter. See if your area has any tool libraries or community gardens you can participate in. Lots of states have a stop cop city, or stop detention centers project, go see if your area has one you can get involved with. People only do shit if people like YOU decide its worth doing

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[–] cmbabul@lemmy.world 29 points 6 days ago (8 children)

Generally you’re correct, but the string of warehouse fires over the past week all across the country has me hopeful that folks are finally hitting the long long long long long overdue breaking point.

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I fucking hope so 🏴🏴🏴🏴

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[–] NutWrench@lemmy.world 48 points 5 days ago (4 children)
  1. This bill is being pushed by Meta and they are NOT going to stop with age verification. It is not about "protecting children" and it never has been. It's always been about surveillance and control. Meta wants to know who you are, where you are, what you buy, what you download, who you associate with and what your politics are.

  2. If Meta succeeds in putting all this on your computer at the operating system level, then what is the point of even having a VPN anymore? Also Meta will sell this information to anyone who asks for it.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Meta is pushing this because their platforms are overrun by bots. Ironically because partly of the AI tools they have created. And advertisers have caught up and aren’t willing to pay top dollars anymore on Meta’s platforms. Hence why Meta desperately wants a way to proof that their traffic comes from real people.

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[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 153 points 6 days ago (4 children)

And written by a Democrat. They really have become useless. First they regularly forget that they are opposition for a reason, and now they even betray their voters with the most stupid law humans can cook up.

[–] DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 81 points 6 days ago

They're bought and paid for by basically all the big industries just like the GOP.

[–] Asafum@lemmy.world 25 points 6 days ago (1 children)

And written by a Democrat.

They are literally never your ally. A lot of us refuse to accept that we have 2 parties that don't give one solitary fuck about us because it means we have no say whatsoever in our government, but Democrats prove time and time again that this is the case.

The most we get are a handful of "representatives" that somehow managed to beat AIPAC and all the corporate interests that buy the rest of them, but that handful isn't enough to actually force meaningful change or to prevent the worst from happening. :(

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[–] jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 140 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Or a parent could, I don't know, just parent their own kids instead of expecting the government to.

[–] Th3D3k0y@lemmy.world 39 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I got so many downvotes last time I suggested this, it was just comical to me how many people get pissed at the implication that they aren't watching their kids, while not watching their kids.

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[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 109 points 6 days ago (4 children)

"Parents Decide Act"

Yet text of it has basically nothing about parents in it, just government data collection lol

[–] Jhex@lemmy.world 49 points 6 days ago (1 children)

that's just another American Value, naming bills as sarcastically and ironcally as possible

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[–] FE80@lemmy.world 43 points 6 days ago

Donate here: https://www.eff.org/ https://epic.org/ https://cdt.org/ https://www.aclu.org/

Get off Android if you can: https://grapheneos.org/ https://lineageos.org/ https://e.foundation/e-os/

Pick a Linux distro to try on a beater laptop (save yourself some trouble and just use Ubuntu to start): https://distrowatch.com/

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 45 points 6 days ago (1 children)

"and for other purposes" umm

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I was reading a list of bills and whatnot from March the other day. They all say "and for other purposes" they all say that

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[–] qaeta@lemmy.ca 27 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Parents ALREADY decided. They decided they didn't give enough of a shit to use the parental controls already available to them. No legitimate reason to push this shit on everyone else.

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[–] lemmyng@lemmy.world 77 points 6 days ago

https://5calls.org/

Tell your reps that this bill doesn't get a chance to breathe if they ever want your support in future elections.

[–] hackitfast@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Disgusting. This is my representative, I unfortunately voted him in.

Our president is a pedophile and we still get the "for the children" bullshit. How about making a law requiring tracking the data on the Epstein class phones instead?

I sent a letter to him, hopefully enough people do.

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 62 points 6 days ago (3 children)

To paraphrase someone:

You need to win every time. I need you to lose only once.

Anyone thinking that this won't pass this time, or next year, or the year after that or the year... They will push this as a new thing, wrapping the same bullshit lies in a new paper each time...

Eventually it'll pass, it always does. All they need is patience

The only possible cou ter to this is to enshrine the right to own a computer and internet access into your constitution or something like that.

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[–] emmy67@lemmy.world 42 points 6 days ago (4 children)

This is how the democrats lose the next election.

GJ snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Again

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[–] someone@lemmy.today 22 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I disagree with all of you. Now that our benevolent theocratic autocratic overlords have decided to track everything we say and do and escape is impossible, I completely support their brave new dystopian agenda. All hail the wonderful leaders!

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[–] minorkeys@lemmy.world 60 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Remember when windows implemented a feature that took a screenshot of your PC every 5 seconds or whatever? Now they know exactly whose screenshots those are and basically surveille your PC use as if watching from behind your back? Yeah...we know what they want. They want to effectively disarm our ability to use computers to challenge them. God knows what they're planning to implement after this goes through. It's not just about the laws they're passing, it's about what those laws enable them to do. Sure windows rolled back that feature, but it's still there. They didn't remove the code, they just changed what triggers it and if the PC user knows or not.

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[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 19 points 5 days ago (1 children)

maybe for you...but not for me.

I'll switch back to a dumb phone and run a Linux distro so obscure nobody's seen it for 25 years.

fuck em. I'll never comply with this shit.

[–] falcunculus@jlai.lu 17 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Step 1: make some kind of surveillance & control system that is voluntary

Step 2: make life for those who dont want it less convenient (you are here)

Step 3: make non-participation in the system be in itself suspicious and a cause for further investigation

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[–] grumpusbumpus@lemmy.world 16 points 5 days ago

Obligatory: the Democrats are not here to save you.

Fascism with a smug smile instead of a sneer.

[–] LostWanderer@fedia.io 45 points 6 days ago (10 children)

We will keep defeating these nasty bills, we have to keep pushing and not just giving into what the government wants. As what the government wants is nasty as fuck! There will be means to circumvent such changes, Ageless Linux is working on categorizing the methods of evasion, keeping track of what Linux distros are deciding and doing in regards to Age Verification.

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[–] FireWire400@lemmy.world 32 points 6 days ago (1 children)
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[–] GroundedGator@lemmy.world 21 points 6 days ago (2 children)

This might be the most anemic open ended bill I have ever read. On its face, it has no teeth. The most well defined portions of the bill are to make sure that applications have access to age data. Making this look more like a way for corporations to gather data and verify real people as opposed to online personas.

There is zero regulation actually defined and instead they have a 180 day period to define the regulation and a year for it to be contacted and implemented. The bill could pass tomorrow and we still wouldn't know what age verification looks like.

As scary as these efforts are, they are also a bit humorous to me. By and large software exists independently of its creator, especially in the FOSS space. There would be no way to require an individual to install an OS that supported this or even use an updated browser that supported it.

Ultimately, the only way to really enforce any sort of age verification system is to force all content providers to have an age verification step. This presents as OS level, but you have to give people a reason to upgrade in order to implement. If Wikipedia suddenly required some sort of OS based age verification protocol to access its content, it would become a lot harder to avoid.

They are putting this at the OS level, but I think this is a way to back into removing anonymous access to the Internet.

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[–] mazzilius_marsti@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Using parental control is too hard so leave it to the government huh

what a fucking joke

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[–] yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 24 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (13 children)

still have no idea how they will implement this, with phones that can be rooted or running something like lineageOS or others.

But in any case, I am glad I am not from the US.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@slrpnk.net 36 points 6 days ago

The EU is pushing very similar things...

Literally Meta has been caught paying people through shell orgs all around the world to pass this kind of legislation.

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[–] lemonskate@lemmy.world 26 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I've seen a lot of people saying how this will be unenforceable and so isn't something we need to worry about.

Except this could be enforced. Google came out with a proposal a few years ago for a method of validating the a request came from a "trusted" (aka, signed and with secure boot enabled OS), ostensibly to combat bot traffic. They dropped it after push back, but it still provides a blueprint for how this could be enforced.

https://github.com/explainers-by-googlers/Web-Environment-Integrity

If web platforms are mandated by law to enforce something like this then the web could be effectively restricted to only approved operating systems. There could still be a dark web, but with the weight of the law behind it, once anything gained momentum access to it could be shut down at the service provider layer.

This shouldn't be dismissed as a threat because it's "unenforceable", because it is.

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[–] willington@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

That bill had just been introduced. It is a loooooong way from passing. No need to panic. This is not our doom yet.

Now is the time to give those representatives a call, mention the bill number, and tell them in a few logical and polite sentenses why this bill is a terrible idea.

Fuck this bill. And it's not going to be too late to use the less polite methods later. We lose nothing by trying to be polite first.

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