You do not have to put in your state issued identification to use a browser

This Bill would require OS providers (e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft; plus anyone who “develops, licenses, or controls” an OS such as loading an OS on raspberry pi) to verify users’ ages when setting up a new device, instead of self‑attested DOB fields.

The only practical way to “verify” age at scale will be ID‑based or third‑party identity providers, creating de facto mandatory identity for using general‑purpose computers and phones.

This bill is moving from “every bar checks ID at the door” to “your driver’s license is checked once when you buy the car, and then the car tells every business what age bracket you belong to forever."

...who knows what even will count as legitimate govt ID?

That's just the bare tip of the turd.

Your phone, your appliances, your car.

This is Nazi Orwellianism.

SCOTUS has already ruled on it.

For the same privacy rules cited re libraries. Don't ask me to rationalize SCOTUS's refusal to respect precedent.I got nuthin' for that.

Why are you using a pseudonym here on DU?
This bill, if it become law, is you telling the government who you are and allowing it to track whom you associate with and what you say and do on the Internet. It also allows the government to block your ability to access the Internet if you do not comply. It gives the government full control over what you see and do on your computer or phone or anything that connects to the Internet.

It is incredibly dramatic invasion of privacy and chilling of free speech and association.

This is being done for totalitarian control, that is all. Total surveillance.
If they cared about kids, Epstein would have been in jail 25 years ago….and a whole lot of powerful people along with him.
If they cared about kids, many victims would not have been victims.

They LIE.
And going along with this in the hopes that it will protect kids is just naive.

With Australia having an age limit on the major social media platforms, they must have installed some kind of checks. What does a bot do? And is the easiest way for a kid to access them to pretend to be a bot?

Not seeing the big deal. It’s not your SSN. Millions share my DOB. This just keeps people from lying to get around it. Age restrictions exist for reasons. Assail the reasons if you don’t like age barriers.

Until you lose your identity to the because it is so easily accessible.

You have no idea how lenient the internet has been in regards to operations without personal identification.

In short, there will be no internet, and no DU, if this is allowed.

Unless you want the DU member list to be perused by the Feds on a daily basis. And, their visits to find out what you meant with every single post. And, arrests for not being nice to the President and his cabinet. And, your identity being passed around on the internet with a bit of a quote that is taken out of context, but definitely came from your account. And, being fired by your employer because your accounts were hacked and since they know who you are, they just blame everything that the hacker does with your account on you, since they know who the account belongs to. And, being arrested as a pedo because you accidentally clicked on a picture that you were trying to scroll past and since they know exactly who you are, they decide you must be looking at CP and come for you. All because you have no expectation of privacy anywhere on the net, and the people who passed this shit will be constantly trying to arrest anyone who does not worship them, thanks to this new crap.

Is that okay with you?

Because, I have to say... I am not a fan. I know how much they get away with as things stand now. It will get 1000 times worse if they pass this.

Do you like getting salespeople calling you about stuff because your viewing habits are connected to your name and they used their algorithms to deduce that you must like this stuff and therefore need to be flooded with offers about it? That would just be the tip of the iceberg.

retroactive to the first time you used the internet.

It’s absurd that anyone thinks this is a good idea, or that it’s no big deal.

Are you currently uploading an image of your state or federal identification? Because they is what they mean.
You are not just pressing a button that says "I'm over 21" you are uniquely identifying yourself and where you go and what you say on the Internet is ties to you.

As it stands, the government is currently trying to force Reddit to reveal the identity of a poster because he was critical of (frozen water) and they consider that a crime.
If this was already law they would just know who the person is and can then go arrest people who are critical of them.

This website would die overnight. They could just come are you if you are critical of the government or corporation that is favored by the government.

It is incredibly dramatic invasion of privacy and chilling of free speech and free association.

Ignorance is most definitely not bliss.

Read into a bit.

Bet you'll change your mind.

Everything will be in the cloud if we aren't careful.

The government is saying they need to be able to track what everyone does with any connected devices and some "Democrats" thinks that's a great idea. Do you all realize Leave It To Beaver wasn't a documentary? Kids got bullied in school before the internet. There were porno mags and movies before the internet. Kids accessed them and snuck into R-rated movies. Maybe we should try policing kids' access to guns as much as we're trying to police their thoughts.

This is the largest Orwellian surveillance attempt to date.

This is orders of magnitude above and beyond what has already been done.

the comments to this post. DU'ers are the best at sniffing out fascist bullshit.

This website will become a ghost town if it passes.

One day, in the future, hopefully we will all be around to see it, a book and study done to figure out how the Republicans went from "a government small enough to drown in a bathtub" to "government big enough to control almost every aspect of your life ie fascism"

25 February 2025

Will also restrict abortion information access and more.

(sorry, cannot link, but the title will get you there)

I am so disheartened to see defense of these bills on a Democratic site. Those defending these bills might want to take a look at just who is proposing them, and why.

Also read The Guardian article "The World Wants To Ban Social Media For Children, B
But There Will Be Grave Consequences For Us All" Taylor Lorenz, 2 March 2026

Come on, people. We can do better.

Since the Gov uses Microsoft for 98% of its computing, I guess anyone using theose services will have to "Register?"
Maybe like:
FBI
ICE
Representatives
Senators
Lobbyists
All Cabinet Members and Staff
All Right Wing Sites! Hehe heh
And LOTS more!

This can open up privacy to a hell of a lot of people, execs, CEOs, Banks etc who don't want their info known and possible info on THEIR families and relatives and will claim to need exceptions. And many of "us" old time users" know what can be gleaned, "legally or not", "covertly or not" from such simple data.

Looking forward to the personal info on FOX TV People and others like Jones, Bannon and myriad others on the right.
Once these people realize the implications to them you will see the bill go down.

That a Democrat is a sponsor on this crap shows how bad some in our party are (Fetterman cough cough)

The only ways this can happen is by forcing it at hardware levels or at entries to the Internet.

At the hardware level by introducing into the Bios a age verification prompt to start the computer OS. The Internet Open Source community will immediately work around it with Open Source Bios replacements, which BTW already exist. The response to that will be to try to force hardware manufacturers to block access to the Bios which will then lead to consumers being unable to easily install firmware updates to computer systems and devices. All eventually leading to a huge backlash by unhappy consumers and a growth of Open Source hardware alternatives and Bios replacements.

At the ISP level by forcing users in this country to use a login prompt before entering the Internet. Trying to mandate that will obsolete every firewall/router currently in use and cause havoc with manufacturers which may partly explain the recent effort by the Trump administration to block foreign made firewall/routers.

In any event what this really is underneath is an move towards total censorship and a loss of personal freedoms for the average computer user.

Its bullshit.

Its a very good time for those freedom loving users of computers and the Internet to make the move to Linux and Open Source. I guarantee you that the cowardly heads of Microsoft and Apple and computer hardware manufacturers will grovel at the feet of fucking Trump and throw money at him just like the heads of Facebook and Amazon did earlier.

They'll make it a criminal offense to utilize any device circumventing the technology.

I guarantee it.

Prison profits are up, but the investors are eager to profit even more.

Except I just don't think manufacturing will comply and stop making IOT type devices, from TVs to refrigerators, will just stop being internet capable or have things like the Google TV OS on it.

Ultimately, this will die. The alternative is a murder/suicide of the tech industry and the Internet and we are a tech driven world.

At least that is my hope.

I'm an currently working IT professional with over 30 years of experience and I can tell you this law would be technically impossible to implement it at the scale it implies and even just implementing it on Internet connected devices would be so incredibly expensive manufacturers of IOT devices, from TVs to Refrigerators, that they would just stop making them.

If I'm being honest, I think that is their goal: to isolate people and control information people see and hear.
If you cannot access the Internet, then your only source of information is mainstream media which is now entirely controlled by Republicans.

The staggering scale of this is almost impossible to visualize in this day and age of Kubernetes containers, use-based instantly created operating environments which then disappear again after use, and applications which actually process all your data remotely, almost without your knowledge.

I expect Microsoft, Apple, Google and many others to send this piece of garbage to the trash bin in their comments and lobbying as soon as possible.

In the government’s own explanation of the first Amendment:

An issue that united Liberals and Conservatives against it and ultimately bombed with the public.

This is Orwellian surveillance in the extreme.

This is as bad or worse than FLOCK because the surveillance is always with you and always logging your activity without any chance of privacy.

I don't trust that those will be used. You could create an anonymous token that only stores a true/false value for over 18 or not, or whatever if they want like 18+, 16-18, below 16, etc.

Yes you need the id for the initial validation, but that could be deleted and never stored.

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

They've been shooting for this since they installed the IP siphon tools at the main switches world wide under FISA.

This is magnitudes of order worse.