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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[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

It's gonna take a revolution to stop that bill from happening. Seriously!

[–] stoly@lemmy.world 1 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I can't imagine that it survives a court challenge, though.

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[–] 4grams@awful.systems 79 points 12 hours 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 24 points 10 hours 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.

[–] FE80@lemmy.world 39 points 11 hours 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/

[–] chrislowles@lemmy.zip 12 points 9 hours ago

This coming up not a fortnight after his floundering interview with The Bulwark is some Curb Your Enthusiasm level comedy, there's not even really an "at best" to look for in American politics, a handful of progressive anomalies that came about after MONTHS of tireless campaigning that we can only pray result in a trend toward some kind of wave but that's it, pay the right Democrat just enough money and they'll be dancing like a GOP worm.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 42 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

"and for other purposes" umm

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 12 hours ago (1 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

[–] SippyCup@lemmy.world 13 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

This one literally just tacks it at the end of the proposal. As it gives no purposes other than "and for other"

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

yeah, I was following up on a bill introduced by one of me senators and was poking around this website https://www.govtrack.us/

I dont know why, but every bill has this phrase written at the end of it. It is ominous, and I dont know why theyre written this way, probablt some legal bullshit.

[–] Poojabber@lemmy.world 7 points 10 hours ago

Its the same reason even traffic laws are written ambiguosly. It gives everyone from cops to senators the ability to do what they want and then get away with it.

[–] Another3quenc@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Sorry for this stupid question, for a non American like myself. What does this mean for you?

[–] DFX4509B@lemmy.wtf 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

It means my devices are owned by the state should this pass, and the First Amendment will be rendered null and void so goodbye free speech and free expression.

[–] someone@lemmy.today 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

That's the real question: is coding protected speech?

Tornado cash started this. A fucking github repo was criminalized for just being code that wasn't executed. This is what happens from not fighting that.

If we can criminalize code or legislate what code is allowed and what code isn't, than computer code is not protected speech. And that's a horrible situation.

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[–] pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 10 hours ago

They're gonna call it The Super Duper American Act

[–] GroundedGator@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago (1 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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[–] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 8 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Why are they pushing Linux so hard? Many here are already on it. (sarcasm aside, ye this is not great news.)

[–] axet@lemmy.world 17 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] SippyCup@lemmy.world 8 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
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