#Tag
"The proposed laws hammer Apple’s App Store and Google Play with compliance requirements but reportedly spare social media platforms [...] a competitive strategy that shifts liability from platforms to operating system makers."
"The proposed laws hammer Apple’s App Store and Google Play with compliance requirements but reportedly spare social media platforms [...] a competitive strategy that shifts liability from platforms to operating system makers."
Ageless Linux, a "technical provocation disguised as Linux distro," circulates among developers and privacy activists 🧩.
Built on Debian, it rejects age verification laws to defend open-source freedom from regulatory overreach 🔒.
🔗 https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260316-agelesslinux-noncompliance-age-verification/
#TechNews #Linux #Privacy #OpenSource #FOSS #Debian #AgeVerification #Regulation #Security #Freedom #Software #DigitalRights #UserFreedom #Technology #Innovation
Ageless Linux, a "technical provocation disguised as Linux distro," circulates among developers and privacy activists 🧩.
Built on Debian, it rejects age verification laws to defend open-source freedom from regulatory overreach 🔒.
🔗 https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20260316-agelesslinux-noncompliance-age-verification/
#TechNews #Linux #Privacy #OpenSource #FOSS #Debian #AgeVerification #Regulation #Security #Freedom #Software #DigitalRights #UserFreedom #Technology #Innovation
Guess it might be time to download a few different Linux distributions...
E.g. #AgeVerification
Get them before this "papers please" crap gets added.
🤬
Guess it might be time to download a few different Linux distributions...
E.g. #AgeVerification
Get them before this "papers please" crap gets added.
🤬
🌐 With the introduction of #ageverification laws in many U.S. states, these systems use automated scanning to verify the authenticity and legitimacy of your ID.
🏳️⚧️ Transgender and gender diverse people from Kansas will effectively have to out themselves to every platform that requires age verification. This is sensitive information that many #trans people guard closely, as being outed publicly can put them at risk of violence and harassment. ‼️
https://www.theverge.com/policy/892075/age-verification-kansas-id-trans
🧵 (2/3)
Reddit seems to have deleted a post with 7400 upvotes and the title:
"I traced $2B in grants and 45 states' lobbying behind age‑verification bills"
.... US Corpos do not want us to see this but luckily we still have this github repo.
Here the relevant reddit post that was removed:
And here the github repo
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
🌐 With the introduction of #ageverification laws in many U.S. states, these systems use automated scanning to verify the authenticity and legitimacy of your ID.
🏳️⚧️ Transgender and gender diverse people from Kansas will effectively have to out themselves to every platform that requires age verification. This is sensitive information that many #trans people guard closely, as being outed publicly can put them at risk of violence and harassment. ‼️
https://www.theverge.com/policy/892075/age-verification-kansas-id-trans
🧵 (2/3)
A redditor (Ok_Lingonberry3296) traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and lobbying records across 45 states to figure out who's behind the age verification bills.
The answer is Meta - a company that profits from your data writing laws that collect more of it.
Page: https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file
Page backup: https://archive.ph/2026.03.13-193015/https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings?tab=readme-ov-file
Reddit discussion: https://web.archive.org/web/20260313143853/https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rshc1f/i_traced_2_billion_in_nonprofit_grants_and_45/
#Meta #Facebook #AgeVerification #privacy #surveillance #dystopia #socialmedia #technology
This is the post. Very interesting.
"traced $2 billion in nonprofit grants and 45
states of lobbying records to figure out who's
pehind the #AgeVerification bills. The answer
involves a company that profits from your data
vriting laws that collect more of it. y
OK_Lingonberry3296 in linux
|-|Ok_Lingonberry3296 |S 60 points 7 hoursago
The Heritage connection is documented and it qoes deeper than most people realize. #HeritageFoundation funded three of the six
named organizations in the Digital
Childhood Alliance coalition, which is
tne group pushing these bills
nationally.
Those three are NCOSE (National Center on Sexual Exploitation), the institute for Family Studies, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. The last two received $50,000 each specifically for a "Protect Kids Online' initiative that produced the policy research underlying the ASAA framework.
Here's also a direct personnel pipeline. Annie Chestnut Tutor worked as a legislative assistant to Senator Mike Lee, where her portfolio included tech and telecom policy. Lee introduced the federal ASAA. Tutor then moved to Heritage Foundation as
a policy analyst, where she now publishes reports advocating tor the same bill her former boss introduced. Her testimonial was on the DCA website from its verv first dav of
existence, before the organization was even publicly announced. She shaped the bill in Lee's office, advocates for it at Heritage, and endorsed the coalition pushing it trom launch day. On top of that, Tiffany Justice, co-founder of Moms for Liberty (another DCA coalition member). was hired as Executive Vice President of Heritage Action for America in July 2025. So two of DCA's six named members are now functionally the same
organization at the leadership level. Meanwhile, a Heritage Foundation fellow named Dustin Carmack, who authored the Intelligence Community chapter of Proiect 2025, was hired by Meta in May 2024. So there's personnel flowing in both directions.
On your point about the EU and UK: the
comparison actually helps illustrate
the problem. The EU's Digital Services Act and related frameworks include explicIt exemptions for open source software. None of the US bills do. California AB-1043 defines "Operatinc system Provider" as anyone who
develops, licenses, or controls an OS
on any general purpose computing
level. That language covers
Volunteer-maintained Linux
distributions.
Six US states have enacted or introduced bills from the same template and not one contains a FOSS carve-out. Whether that's intentional or
just negligent drafting, the effect is the
same. We will upload more files regarding the Heritage Foundation platter this week"
Reddit seems to have deleted a post with 7400 upvotes and the title:
"I traced $2B in grants and 45 states' lobbying behind age‑verification bills"
.... US Corpos do not want us to see this but luckily we still have this github repo.
Here the relevant reddit post that was removed:
And here the github repo
https://github.com/upper-up/meta-lobbying-and-other-findings
"We’ve been saying this for years now, and we’re going to keep saying it until the message finally sinks in: mandatory age verification creates massive, centralized honeypots of sensitive biometric data that will inevitably be breached. Every single time. And every single time it happens, the politicians who mandated these systems and the companies that built them act shocked—shocked!—that collecting enormous databases of government IDs, facial scans, and biometric data from millions of people turns out to be a security nightmare."
"We’ve been saying this for years now, and we’re going to keep saying it until the message finally sinks in: mandatory age verification creates massive, centralized honeypots of sensitive biometric data that will inevitably be breached. Every single time. And every single time it happens, the politicians who mandated these systems and the companies that built them act shocked—shocked!—that collecting enormous databases of government IDs, facial scans, and biometric data from millions of people turns out to be a security nightmare."
Here is the age verification bill tracker, found in the official website of the advocacy group called the Free Speech Coalition (FSC). Beware of the "dystopian" #AgeVerification laws. So watch out for them. #DigitalRights #DigitalFreedom #PrivacyFirst
https://action.freespeechcoalition.com/age-verification-bills/
The age-assurance industry shouldn't exist.
Stop age verification now, and tell your governments and service providers they cannot trust these predatory corporations.
Thanks for getting the word out about this @Em0nM4stodon ! @Paulatics do you know the timeframe for likely action on the Canadian online harms bill?
We just successfully prevented the Washington state legislature from passing several age verification laws, so it certainly can be done! A couple of key takeaways:
"For vulnerable communities, a biometric scan or an ID upload can serve as a huge obstacle, especially for low-income, unhoused, and undocumented people who already have to navigate an increasingly digital world, with less access to tech tools."
Online ID Checks Censor Abortion Information Age-Verification Laws Seek to Erase LGBTQ+ Identity from the Internet are also good at highlighting harms to vulnerable users.
Discord is the poster child for age verification's privacy problems. Discord Breach Sparks Age Verification & Third-Party Privacy Concerns highlights the risks of hackers getting at age verification data. Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir co-founder and panopticon architect Peter Thiel Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web highlights how broadly age verification vendors share the data. US laws typically have clauses that put some limits on retention and sharing but in practice they're not enough.
Lobbyists have succeeded in convincing legislators that age estimation software works well ... but actually it doesn't. Error rates are high, and higher for people of color; and people. As a result, even if the vendor claims they're using some fancy-shmancy approach involving biometrics or selfies, in practice a lot of people have to send in their government IDs (with all the aspects of fraud that involves). My [updated written testimony for Appropriations[(https://privacy.thenexus.today/hb-1834-approps/#updated-written-testimony) discusses this, based on the data from the Australian Age Assurance Technology Trial (search for "You've probably heard lobbyists and vendors talk about how accurate today's age systems are, but reality begs to differ") and also talks about the privacy issues.
@eff's Why Isn’t Online Age Verification Just Like Showing Your ID In Person? counters one of the most common talking points of age verification proponents (although, I'm not sure how effective it is, so it might be worth taking another crack at this).
It's critical to highlight age verification's impact on 2SLGBTQIA_ communities. But, 2SLGTQIA2S+-focused organizations have so much on their plate that this may not be on their radar. So as well as contacting legislatures, reach out to 2SLGTQIA2S+-focused orgs, try to get them involved, and brief them on the issues.
If enough Canadians contact
their local representatives, as well Mark Carney's office this week, we might be spared from this authoritarian mass-surveillance measure called "Age Verification" in Canada.
The time to fight back is NOW: https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/social-media-ban-for-kids-under-consideration-in-online-harms-bill-carney/
Privacy is a human right essential to safety and democracy. If we do not fight to protect it, we will lose it.
#AgeVerification #MassSurveillance #Privacy #Democracy #HumanRights #Canada #CanPoli
Thanks for getting the word out about this @Em0nM4stodon ! @Paulatics do you know the timeframe for likely action on the Canadian online harms bill?
We just successfully prevented the Washington state legislature from passing several age verification laws, so it certainly can be done! A couple of key takeaways:
"For vulnerable communities, a biometric scan or an ID upload can serve as a huge obstacle, especially for low-income, unhoused, and undocumented people who already have to navigate an increasingly digital world, with less access to tech tools."
Online ID Checks Censor Abortion Information Age-Verification Laws Seek to Erase LGBTQ+ Identity from the Internet are also good at highlighting harms to vulnerable users.
Discord is the poster child for age verification's privacy problems. Discord Breach Sparks Age Verification & Third-Party Privacy Concerns highlights the risks of hackers getting at age verification data. Discord's age verification rollout has ties to Palantir co-founder and panopticon architect Peter Thiel Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web highlights how broadly age verification vendors share the data. US laws typically have clauses that put some limits on retention and sharing but in practice they're not enough.
Lobbyists have succeeded in convincing legislators that age estimation software works well ... but actually it doesn't. Error rates are high, and higher for people of color; and people. As a result, even if the vendor claims they're using some fancy-shmancy approach involving biometrics or selfies, in practice a lot of people have to send in their government IDs (with all the aspects of fraud that involves). My [updated written testimony for Appropriations[(https://privacy.thenexus.today/hb-1834-approps/#updated-written-testimony) discusses this, based on the data from the Australian Age Assurance Technology Trial (search for "You've probably heard lobbyists and vendors talk about how accurate today's age systems are, but reality begs to differ") and also talks about the privacy issues.
@eff's Why Isn’t Online Age Verification Just Like Showing Your ID In Person? counters one of the most common talking points of age verification proponents (although, I'm not sure how effective it is, so it might be worth taking another crack at this).
It's critical to highlight age verification's impact on 2SLGBTQIA_ communities. But, 2SLGTQIA2S+-focused organizations have so much on their plate that this may not be on their radar. So as well as contacting legislatures, reach out to 2SLGTQIA2S+-focused orgs, try to get them involved, and brief them on the issues.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
The UK Information Commissioner's Office and Ofcom are pushing for tech companies to strengthen age checks.
It's disastrous that the ICO wants to somehow 'protect children’s data' by compelling 13-18 year olds to use poorly regulated digital identification products that could put their biometric data at risk.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/social-media-ico-protect-children-b2936462.html
#ageverification #privacy #digitalid #ofcom #ico #onlinesafety #ukpolitics #ukpol
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