Tag

Age Verification

Articles and publications tagged Age Verification across the Atmosphere.

19articles5publications

Articles

Publications

TechdirtOct 15, 2026

Eleventh Circuit Says Cliffhangers Are ‘Features,’ Not Speech, As It Greenlights Florida’s Social Media Age Gate

Apparently we're in an era where the courts just decide to ignore precedents they don't like. And that leads us to ridiculous results like yesterday's ruling in the Eleventh Circuit allowing Florida's HB3 social media age verification law to move forward. But to understand how messed up it is, you need to know the history...

11th circuit1st amendment

Mathew's newsletterOct 9, 2026

Proof of human

It turns out that drawing the line AI shouldn't cross in my reading/thinking/writing stack and exploring the meaning behind "Verified Human" are two sides of the same coin.

age verificationaster

TechdirtOct 7, 2026

Judge Blocks Utah’s Demand That Websites See Through VPNs

Over the last few years, with Congress completely incompetent and a massive moral panic about tech raging, states have stepped up to try to regulate the internet any way they can. Even after the Supreme Court reminded states that the First Amendment still exists online and their varied attempts to regulate speech faced serious constitutional...

adult contentage verification

TechdirtSep 29, 2026

EU Kids Act Won’t Keep The Internet Accountable And Trustworthy

The EU Commission draft law to restrict young people’s access to the internet that it presented last week will come at a high cost: it will put online services behind age gates, expand the use of intrusive age verification, and undermine the privacy of all users. The EU Kids Act aims to protect children from...

age verificationeu

TechdirtSep 25, 2026

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Some Assembly Required

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation's Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on...

age verificationai

TechdirtSep 4, 2026

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: License To Spill

age verificationai

TechdirtSep 3, 2026

Hackers Had A Live Feed Of Every ID This Verification Company Scanned. For Over A Year.

From the very beginning of this recent obsession with identifying everyone online (yes, they like to call it "age" verification, but it always ends up as identity verification), we've been pointing out that it was a huge privacy nightmare waiting to happen. Or maybe it wasn't waiting. Maybe it was already happening. This week a...

age assuranceage verification

TechdirtSep 2, 2026

Meta’s $17 Billion Settlement Is A Bad Deal For Teens And All Social Media Users

Meta’s settlement with 52 state attorneys general is a bad deal for all internet users, and especially for teens. That’s what we said the day the settlement was announced. In this post, we go through the Settlement’s provisions in detail and explain why that is so, including how: The Settlement embeds age assurance technology and...

age verificationprivacy

TechdirtAug 31, 2026

Would The Next George Floyd Video Survive Meta’s New Teen Safety Rules?

Earlier this year, one of the smartest internet rights people around, Heather Burns, suggested the "Darnella Test" regarding any kind of "kid safety" rule online. It's named after Darnella Frazier. You might not recognize her name, but you've seen her work. She was the 17-year-old who was walking to the corner shop when she happened...

age verificationdarnella frazier

TechdirtAug 21, 2026

Zero Knowledge Proofs Aren’t Age Verification Silver Bullets

Age verification (laws and regulations requiring platforms and websites to assure or estimate that a user seeking to use an online service is of a certain age) is everywhere. At the time of writing, about half the states in the US have some internet age verification law in place, and dangerous proposals, from the KIDS...

age verificationcentralization

TechdirtAug 19, 2026

French Constitutional Council Blocks Under-15 Social Media Ban, In A Ruling That Should Concern Every Other EU Country

Even as the wider EU was grinding through a long, drawn-out process to figure out which regulatory levers to pull on kids' safety online, France decided to YOLO it earlier this summer by jumping at the chance to ban all social media for kids under 15. This kind of thing has become popular with out...

age verificationemmanuel macron

TechdirtAug 10, 2026

New Mexico Judge Appoints Himself Meta’s New Product Manager

Earlier this year, following the initial verdict in the state of New Mexico's case against Meta (arguing that Meta caused harm to children by doing things like encrypting messages), we noted that even if you believe that Meta is a terrible company (as I do), that Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted (ditto), and that the...

age verificationbryan biedscheid

TechdirtAug 6, 2026

Why Are Gay Bars Building Databases Of Their Patrons?

Recent reports have raised alarm about the use of PatronScan, an ID-checking and face-scanning system, at multiple LGBTQ+ bars in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. Much of the attention has focused on reports that the system photographs patrons as they enter venues and questions about whether those images are used for facial recognition. A broader privacy...

age verificationcalifornia

TechdirtAug 3, 2026

The SCREEN Act Threatens Privacy Far Beyond Adult Websites

The Senate Commerce Committee is set to consider S. 737, the SCREEN Act, a sweeping age-verification bill that would require online services to verify users’ ages before they can access any sexually explicit content. If this bill passes, it will force millions of adult internet users to give up their anonymity, privacy, and security before...

age verificationdata security

TechdirtJul 13, 2026

The UK’s New Under-16 Social Media Ban Will Cause More Harm Than It Prevents

Recently, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet by announcing a ban on social media for users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027. The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about...

age verificationkids

The Emu Café SocialJun 18, 2026

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 06-18-26

I missed Pook-Emu Bee links yesterday and am late today, but we can hardly let a backlog grow... so let us link today. [caption id="attachment_6010" align="aligncenter" width="975"] A black Cybertruck seen parked in Brooklyn Heights. I took this photo on June 18, 2026.[/caption] 1. Peeved NYC students, teachers, parents beg mayor to cancel school for...

age verificationbelarus

The Emu Café SocialApr 21, 2026

Pook-Emu Bee: Links For 04-21-26

Let us see what is happening around the world wide web with today's collection of Pook-Emu Bee links. 1. Brussels launched an age checking app. Hackers say it takes 2 minutes to break it. (Emile Marzolf, Ellen O'Regan, and Eliza Gkritsi for Politico EU. April 17, 2026.) Maybe the EU just wants everyone to be...

age verificationbarry bonds

yaso.isApr 11, 2026

Age verification, verifiable credentials, and the privacy tension rising from the debate

I left a job in March 2025 after years of engineering and researching privacy and identity at the forefront of the KYC industry, more specifically with biometrics and liveness identification. KYC is the infrastructure built to verify who someone is before granting them access to a transaction. That same year, I was invited by the Ministry of Justice (by the secretary of Digital Rights, Dr. Lilian Cintra), to join the technical committee contributing to what would become Decree 12.880, which regu...

Digital public infrastructureidentity

DocumentariesMar 8, 2026

Age Verification is spreading across the internet and not everyone is happy about it

A quick look at why governments want it, why AI made things more tense, and why companies should think carefully before adding it

age verificationgovernment

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