In late 2025, Congress is once again considering KOSA along with a package of other #BadInternetBills internet bills. EFF, Fight for the Future, ACLU, Woodhull Foundation, and dozens of other groups continue been sounding the alarm, and grassroots activisms have joined in to make it it clear that these bills are terrible ideas. Alas, Congress is now considering packaging them together—possibly into must-pass legislation. We're organizing to keep them from sneaking these bad internet bills through.
This community is for news stories, opinion pieces, and action links about these bad internet bills. Please help get the word out!
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Icon originally from Why we need to openly protest KOSA on Five Nights at Freddy's Wiki, used by permission.
The biggest issue with online age verification is that the data is being stored once it has been used.
Stored data will sooner or later be used for data mining, marketing or worse, and is always at risk of being breached.
GDPR has a great golden rule, only save what you actually need, age verification goes against that.
I am thinking about how you could verify your age anonymously online, and I can't really see it...
Zero knowledge proofs?
GDPR has a great golden rule, only save what you actually need, age verification goes against that.
It doesn’t have to go against that principle. Verification is the key word here; there’s no need to transmit my age or birthdate, rather the Boolean value of is age > x is all that’s needed. For all I care, a website can store that “1.”
The medium from which that Boolean value is derived is the crux. I’m not certain of the best way to do that. Off the top of my head the ID apps making their way into phones (such as state ID apps and the passport app now in Apple Wallet) could conceivably transmit a yes/no (and only yes/no) verification to a website asking.
bars at one point started taking a picture of drivers licenses. Danceclub type that is. Coincedentally that is around the time I stopped going to those.
It's like leaving it on the bar, for everyone to copy or steal.
palintir wants access to that data, plus companies meta isnt trustworthy with it either.
Why does online age verification exist at all? This is blatant age discrimination. And age is a protected characteristic under many countries' laws
Also, to avoid me having to copy my comment, if the same article is posted in multiple communities could you please crosspost it?