TLDW:
Brazil is requiring OS level age verification by march 17th, 2026.
New York about to vote on a law that would “require all manufacturers of internet-enabled devices, operating systems, or application stores to conduct commercially reason-able and technically feasible age assurance for users at the point of device activation.”
In order to “incentivize” age verification, The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has announced that they will ignore COPPA violations for software performing age verification.
The irony knows no bounds, the one half decent reason age verification could exists for is so these companies have no more excuses to ignore coppa because now they can just pretend everyone is a consenting adult.
The fact that there will be a signal implying a user is an adult will give all sorts of bad actors plausible deniability, perhaps even legal protection, for exploiting children, who will of course be bypassing it