How and Why to Fight Back Against #SocialMedia Bans

Several U.S. states are pushing to ban young people from social media entirely. This marks the latest wave of #censorship bills masquerading as “children’s online safety” measures, with states like #Massachusetts , #Idaho , #Minnesota , #NorthCarolina , #SouthCarolina , #Illinois , and EFF’s home state of #California leading the charge.

Just a few years ago, lawmakers supporting age-gating laws insisted their efforts were narrowly targeted at limiting young people’s access to adult content.
#agegating #ageverification
#privacy

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/how-and-why-fight-back-against-social-media-bans

California’s AB 1856 would exempt open-source operating systems from AB 1043 age-bracketing rules after amendments approved by the Assembly. 🐧
The bill still expands age-gating to browsers and websites, raising privacy, anonymity, security, and speech concerns cited by EFF. 🔒

@eff

🔗 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/one-step-forward-two-steps-back-cas-ab-1856-exempts-open-source-expands-age-gating

#TechNews #Bill #AB1856 #AB1043 #OpenSource #AgeGating #AgeVerification #EFF #Privacy #Security #Anonymity #FreeSpeech #Transparency #DigitalRights #Internet #FOSS #California #OS

I wonder how the members of the Special Panel On Child Safety Online convened by @EUCommission President #VonDerLeyen think about the fact that the Commission has already made up its mind independent from the expert advice they have been requested to prepare. 🤔

#AgeVerification #AgeGating #MinorsProtection #ChildSafety #DSA

未成年者向けのAI規制が、身分証明必須のインターネットをもたらす

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://p2ptk.org/privacy/5611

Hello good morning ✨ In This Edition:

📟 Short-Form Content:
Of eyeballs for "human verification;" yes can I please get a venti oh shoot I didn't prompt it right; and age gating 🤝 Android getting locked down 🤝 anti-3D printing bills.

📰 Long-Form Content:
Age Gating isn't It, Fam

🌞 Good News!:
Open printers and repairable e-readers; the people are pushing back on slop factories and mandatory ID apps; the EU bans their staff from using AI-generated visuals in official comms; disentangling yourself from "Sign in with Google."

📯 The Post-Script:
Do I belong in tech anymore?; Sam Altman and eyeballs; and how our digital devices put our privacy at risk.

https://technically-good.ca/newsletter/007-2026-04-26/

#tech #newsletter #TechnicallyGood #ageGating #ageVerification #digitalSovereignty #privacy

Weekly output: Internet Archive, Roblox parental controls, Google travel-search tools, T-Mobile yanks free WiFi from United flights, Mark Vena podcast, talking to local user groups, AST SpaceMobile

LAS VEGAS–I’m typing this from a press room in the Las Vegas Convention Center barely three months after I spent too much time in that facility for CES. Credit or blame for this trip goes to a different Washington-area trade group, the National Association of Broadcasters. Tuesday, I will be moderating an NAB Show panel about the state of content creation that features two people who are better at Instagram than me: Juliana Broste and my fellow former USA Today columnist Jefferson Graham.

4/13/2026: Journalists Applaud the Internet Archive’s Role In Preserving the Public Record, Fight for the Future

A staffer with Public Knowledge e-mailed me a few weeks ago to ask if I would be willing to sign a letter supporting the Internet Archive’s efforts to preserve the history of the Web and possibly provide a quote about how I’d used the Archive. Having repeatedly relied on the Archive’s Wayback Machine to link back to my own past published work, I said I would be happy to do that–having already donated $100 to that San Francisco non-profit in January.

4/13/2026: Roblox Adds Account Restrictions for Younger Users, Expands Age Verification, PCMag

I attended a press roundtable Monday morning featuring some Roblox trust-and-safety executives, allowing me to enrich this writeup of the platform’s changes with quotes from that conversation.

4/15/2026: T-Mobile Grounds Free In-Flight Wi-Fi Benefit for United Airlines Passengers, PCMag

I had the dumb luck to see this change firsthand on a flight from Denver to San Jose Tuesday, then needed the rest of that day to get some responses from T-Mobile and United. The airline’s switch to free Starlink connectivity will fix this problem, but we are months away from that rollout reaching a significant fraction of United’s mainline fleet.

4/17/2026: Like It or Not, Google Wants to Be Your AI Travel Buddy This Summer, PCMag

I wrote up this post off an embargoed copy of Google’s announcement that we had to correct the next day because I had missed two of the finer points of this bundle of news. In my halfhearted defense, it is more work than you might realize keeping track of Google’s ongoing efforts to infuse AI into its existing services.

4/17/2026: How NTT Research’s Upgrade 2026 Helps Silicon Valley Get Ready for The Future, Mark Vena

My industry-analyst pal had do a quick video from NTT Research’s Upgrade conference in San Jose, Calif.–with that firm covering my travel costs–about some of its initiatives.

4/18/2026: 2026 Consumer Electronics Show and Lots More!, Potomac Area Technology and Computer Society/Osher Lifelong Learning Institute Personal Computer User Group/Washington Apple Pi

Despite that title–picked by the organizers at PATACS, pronounced “Pat-Aces”–I spent more time talking about other topics. Among them: my switch from Evernote to Obsidian just in time for CES, the sad state of tech policy in Washington, and my takes on self-driving cars and what’s befallen the Washington Post. As I have in previous appearances before these folks, I showed up with a bag of trade-show swag and gave away all of it.

4/19/2026: Blue Origin Rocket Launches, Then Loses AST SpaceMobile BlueBird Satellite, PCMag

I watched the third launch of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket on my phone as I was walking up to the security checkpoint at Dulles early Sunday morning, started writing up what I thought was a successful launch, then learned–via painfully slow inflight WiFi–that New Glenn’s second stage had failed to deliver AST’s mobile-broadband BlueBird satellite to the intended orbit. This is a real black eye for Blue that should outweigh its achievement in reflying a New Glenn booster and then landing it on a barge in the Atlantic.

Age gating isn't it.

1. it is a thinly-veiled surveillance information grab
2. it's a digital sovereignty issue
3. online communities can be Good, Actually
4. ... it's probably not going to work
5. age gating means dancing around the real issue of holding Big Tech accountable

(also includes tips for how to get in touch with your representatives if you are Canadian and would like to voice your opposition. The time to do that is right now!)

https://technically-good.ca/blog/2026-04-age-gating-isnt-it/

#ageGating #ageVerification #surveillance #privacy #socialMedia

438 Experts Said Age Verification Is Dangerous. Legislators Are Moving Forward With It Anyway.

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://www.techdirt.com/2026/04/14/438-experts-said-age-verification-is-dangerous-legislators-are-moving-forward-with-it-anyway/