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HOW ABOUT SIMPLY NOT HANDING YOUR CHILD A SMARTPHONE, JESS?
If you’re worried that your kid might get a hold of a phone without your permission, as a parent you already have a problem with both authority and credibility which a government ban will not address.
Fediverse reactions
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California Wants an Age Tracker for the Whole Web
“California Assembly Bill 1856 is getting friendly press coverage because it now exempts Linux from the state’s age-tracking mandate. The part nobody’s talking about is that it simultaneously expands the surveillance to your web browser.” https://reclaimthenet.org/california-wants-an-age-tracker-for-the-whole-web
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New Zealand prepares biometric age credential for Govt.nz digital wallet | Biometric Update
Developed by Hospitality NZ and built on NEC’s Identity Cloud Platform, the system uses verifiable credentials to allow users to prove they are over 18 for hospitality and event access without disclosing unnecessary personal data. Or they could have used a piece of cardboard. https://www.biometricupdate.com/202605/new-zealand-prepares-biometric-age-credential-for-govt-nz-digital-wallet
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How Often Do Consumers Balk at Doing Online Age Authentication? | Technology & Marketing Law Blog
In search engine parlance, the “bounce” rate is the percent of searchers who click on a search results link and then immediately hit the back button … I’m going to analogize bounce rates to the rate that consumers fail to overcome age authentication walls, which I’ll call the “balk rate.” … https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2026/05/how-often-do-consumers-balk-at-doing-online-age-authentication.htm
Fediverse reactions
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Mandatory Age Verification + Lack of Account Memorialization = Horrific Insensitivity by Substack (& others?)
This, from Mark Nottingham; it’s easy to throw mud at Substack for implementing age verification in this way / for not implementing out of band account memorialization, but this underscores how age verification is a proxy for state mandated identity checks in systems that have no other reason to perform them & are not (should
Fediverse reactions
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UK Government King’s Speech proposes “Cyber ASBO” with obvious risk of scope creep into censorship
Nobody can convince me that by the time it gets through parliament something with this name & frame won’t turn into a general TCN to gag nerd speech about cryptography and security: The King’s Speech briefing notes also referenced proposed “Cyber Crime Risk Orders” […which] could give authorities powers to impose restrictions on individuals considered
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Don’t take away our freedom to play games when we want | 38 Degrees
Gamer’s Voice; and absolutely nobody is talking about “teaching our kids to laugh at, and circumvent, authority”. Quote: If ministers use these powers, it could mean: Young people locked out of games like Fortnite, Minecraft, League of Legends or Counter-Strike after set times such as 9pm; Families losing the ability to decide for themselves how
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‘Von der Leyen Announces the EU’s New Age Verification App Claiming it is “Completely Anonymous” & users “Cannot be Tracked”’ | …the EU is about to have its ‘Clipper’ moment
Who is going to be this generation’s Matt Blaze? 🙂 The Clipper Chip was announced on April 16, 1993, exactly 33 years ago, less one day:
Fediverse reactions
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From 2019: ‘If there were 5 million “bad people” on Facebook – terrorists, criminals, drug-dealers, whatever – that would be 0.2% of the userbase’
99.8% would not be “bad people”. This is “scale”. Occasionally people need reminding how this works.
Fediverse reactions