@bytebro

One U.S.A. state has passed the law, and there are about 8 months to go before the law comes into effect, with the chance of fixing its problems being slim to none given the way that legislatures work and the time left.

But there are at least 4 others (Louisiana, Colorado, New York, Illinois) where it's still pending in the legislature and people have a chance of fixing the problems before things become law there.

Some people are trying. They have a hard task ahead, because it's actually quite hard to find a legal framework that does not have unintended consequences. I've tried.

California legislators (and Texas, Utah, and Louisiana before them with version 1.0 of this, we being now on version 2.0) simply didn't think outwith the smart 'phone and Microsoft Windows worlds at all. Colorado legislators at least know that those are not the entire world, now.

#AgeVerification #USLaw #ColoradoLaw #IllionoisLaw #CaliforniaLaw #NewYorkLaw #LouisianaLaw #AppStoreAccountability

@bytebro

#UKLaw and #EULaw have not followed in the footsteps of the U.S.A.. The two legal approaches (3, in fact, as Japan has another one) are divergent, and the U.K. and E.U. are already on another legal path where the fundamentals differ. They already have laws.

In fact, their laws came first. The relevant U.K. law was passed when Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, for historical context. The E.U.'s was the year before that.

The fundamentals are things like exactly who is being legally required to verify, record, provide, and act upon information about people's ages. U.S.A. laws put these onuses on different classes of people than do U.K. and E.U. laws. Japan is different again.

One 'fun' part is that the U.S.A. laws differ on this from state to state, but #Debian Developers (and their counterparts in other Linux-based operating systems) always match the definitions regardless. Because they are both operating system and app store providers.

#AgeVerification #USLaw

Update. It's over. #Musk lost.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/03/elon-musk-loses-big-in-court-x-boycott-perfectly-legal/

"On Thursday, #ElonMusk lost his lawsuit alleging that advertisers violated #antitrust law by colluding on an ad boycott after he took over #Twitter, gutted content moderation teams, and disbanded the Trust and Safety Council."

#Boycotts #SocialMedia #X #USLaw #USPol #USPolitics

Cases in point:

1. Only Colorado bill SB26-051 has exemptions for intra-business apps if being used by employees of the business.

1. Louisiana bill HB977 requires the 'providers' of covered application stores to collect age data, connect minor to parent accounts, and send various notifications from upstream projects to users and their parents. Colorado and Illinois bill HB5511 place the requirements on the 'providers' of operating systems, instead. (Hello, #Debian Developers! You both 'control' a 'covered application store' per LA and 'develop' the operating system software on 'computers' and 'devices' per IL/CO.)

1. Louisiana explicitly requires that store providers maintain information about parent accounts in the accounts database. Colorado and Illinois do not.

1. Only New York bill 2025-S8102 rules out just asking the user for xyr age and trusting it ('user self-reporting of age').

1. Only Colorado has data exemptions for H.E. institutions.

#AgeVerification #USLaw #Unix