Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems

Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by shablulman on Saturday February 21, 2026 @01:21AM (#47098001)

This shift toward OS-level verification is an interesting architectural pivot. It’s arguably more privacy-preserving to have a "local-first" verification—where the device confirms a threshold age without sharing the underlying identity documents with every third-party site.

The real challenge will be ensuring this doesn't inadvertently entrench the gatekeeping power of major OS vendors or create a single point of failure for identity tracking. However, from a data-minimization standpoint, it feels like a more robust approach than the current fragmented landscape of requiring users to upload sensitive IDs to dozens of different websites.

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by userbinator on Saturday February 21, 2026 @01:26AM (#47098019)

will be ensuring this doesn't inadvertently entrench the gatekeeping power of major OS vendors

Just say the quiet part out loud: this is absolutely going to happen, and this is why we need to fight our hardest to stop it.

Stop being distracted by and thinking about the technical points when the whole idea itself is bad, just like WEI and the other authoritarian ideas that originated with "trusted computing".

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by burnt-resistor on Saturday February 21, 2026 @06:23AM (#47099755)

Clipper chip meets digital national identity but way more authoritarian.

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by wqaatwt on Saturday February 21, 2026 @03:36AM (#47098722)

You still have a choice whether or not to use those websites. Not sure if having spying malware built in into every OS is preferable to that..

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by stubish on Saturday February 21, 2026 @02:22AM (#47098350)

Maybe better, but still doesn't address the underlying problem. Governments print bits of paper and citizens need to scan and upload them to be validated by a 3rd party. Lots of obvious waste there. Legislating this approach is just entrenching it. But I guess it is cheap for the government. Sane approaches require the government provide a service which 3rd parties can query age with (indirectly, via anonymizing proxy). No need for those bits of paper to be involved at all, disclosing far too much information.

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by wqaatwt on Saturday February 21, 2026 @03:39AM (#47098740)

> Lots of obvious waste there

Seems like a great thing then. People get annoyed, businesses that comply lose customers and money etc.

All that friction means these policies become inherently less popular regardless of anything else. While this crap work effortlessly out of the box is just outright dystopian

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by stubish on Saturday February 21, 2026 @06:12AM (#47099678)

People are already annoyed, which is why society is demanding the stuff already age restricted for decades or even centuries actually be restricted on the Internet. The battle has never and will never be about allowing kids free access to porn. The battle is about restricting it in a way that doesn't endanger them or their privacy. Failing to do that is what ends in a dystopia, where tech and governments use society's demands as an excuse to move us further into a surveillance state. Like the proposed laws being discussed, centralizing data in an easily subpoenable location.

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by Hizonner on Saturday February 21, 2026 @11:34AM (#47102280)

"Society" isn't demanding anything. A vocal minority of idiots, unfortunately overrepresented among the kind of people who tend to run for office, is demanding things, 95 percent based on stupid delusions and childish prejudices.

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Re:Colorado moves age checks from websites to operating systems by tzs on Saturday February 21, 2026 @09:40PM (#47107576)

> Sane approaches require the government provide a service which 3rd parties can query age with (indirectly, via anonymizing proxy)

The problem with that is that the government obtained logs from the 3rd parties they might be able to compare timestamps with the timestamps of the anonymous age queries and figure out what sites some people were logging into.

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