Today’s decision in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton is a direct blow to the free speech rights of adults. The Court ruled that “no person—adult or child—has a First Amendment right to access speech that is obscene to minors without first submitting proof of age.” This ruling allows states to enact onerous age-verification rules that will block adults from accessing lawful speech, curtail their ability to be anonymous, and jeopardize their data security and privacy. These are real and immense burdens on adults, and the Court was wrong to ignore them in upholding Texas’ law.
It doesn’t exist, but that is what some are suggesting and hoping is going to be made with these laws being passed. It would be a really good thing for the internet and websites/apps as a whole tbh if a system like this is made, and it’s not like it would be difficult.
The sites wouldnt need your information, they would just verify that the person attempting to access the site is authenticated as being 18+.
How do you verify someone is 18 without your information?
By verifying with a central age verification system.
What has been thrown around, and what should hopefully be the solution, is that a government agency (as a last resort) or a independent trusted authority makes a system where you create an account and verify your age with your documents with them. Then they have public APIs for sites to hit - you give the site a unique key (preferably you would generate individual keys that are tied to your account for every site) and all that site does is hit that API going “Is the person that this key belongs to 18+?”, and the response is yes or no.
Simple, secure, private. The site you’re accessing doesn’t know who you are and doesn’t get your details. The age verification site also doesn’t necessarily know the site you were using, and this should not be logged either.
Lmao. Yeah, the government is going to implement this? Assuming it is actually secure, when do you expect this to release? A decade from now?
Would be incredibly easy to make secure, as it wouldn’t even need to store the verification documents or anything personally identifiable once your account is set up.
I think if the government is actually serious about doing this they will need to do it, or outsource it to someone who will. I don’t actually think these laws will take effect in December.
This could even be done incredibly easily via myGov for example. It has everyone’s information including DOB. I could build an age verification API for that in a night with time for a good snooze.
Do you agree that it is possible without all of the porn sites getting your information now at least?
Theoretically possible? Sure. Though I don’t trust the US government with this information either.
Then there a completely different problem to be concerned with: https://chinamediaproject.org/2025/06/04/chinas-slow-march-toward-cyber-ids/
Less button clicks to just use a free online vpn