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Apple Is Bringing Age Verification To Texas This Week (theverge.com) 51

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
joshuark shares a report from The Verge: Apple will introduce age verification in the App Store for users in Texas starting on Thursday, June 4th. The move, as spotted by MacRumors, comes just days after a federal appeals court allowed Texas' App Store Accountability Act to go into effect while a lawsuit against it proceeds. People in Texas who are creating a new Apple account will need to verify they're over 18 using a credit card or government ID. Apple may also automatically verify users' age using the age of their account and whether they have a credit card on file.

Despite Apple's attempts to push back on app store-level age verification, the company has announced plans to implement age checks to comply with laws in places like Utah, Louisiana, Brazil, Australia, Singapore, and the UK. Google is required to make similar changes to the Play Store and is also introducing age-checking tools for developers. Last December, a judge blocked the App Store Accountability Act (SB 2420) from taking effect, but an appeals court has now reversed this decision -- at least while the court figures out whether the law is constitutional. Even if this law gets struck down in Texas, a federal version with the same name is still making its way through Congress and could impose age verification at the app store nationwide.
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Apple Is Bringing Age Verification To Texas This Week More

Apple Is Bringing Age Verification To Texas This Week

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  • I'm mixed about this. Even with age verification procedures, "borrowing" your parent's credit card or license is trivial, depending on the implementation. On the other hand, I don't necessarily want kids under a certain age to be viewing hard-core porn and kink websites. Still, how many of us straight guys didn't "borrow" a father's Playboy magazine to look at images of the female body in junior high and later before online porn exited?

    • Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Funny)

      by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Thursday June 04, 2026 @12:31PM (#66175300)

      On the other hand, I don't necessarily want kids under a certain age to be viewing hard-core porn and kink websites. Still, how many of us straight guys didn't "borrow" a father's Playboy magazine to look at images of the female body in junior high and later before online porn exited?

      I did for the articles.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      to be viewing hard-core porn and kink websites

      sounds unrelated
      pretty sure both there's a whole shitload industry and community answers that will tell you what ARE more plausible solutions that are less about tracking the population and more about keeping a device from doing that

      not including the OS settings checkbox we've already had for decades for people who "don't necessarily want kids under a certain age to be viewing hard-core porn and kink websites"

    • Re:Mixed Feelings (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sinij ( 911942 ) on Thursday June 04, 2026 @01:24PM (#66175422)

      I don't necessarily want kids under a certain age to be viewing hard-core porn and kink websites

      To abstract: I don't want X bad thing, therefore I am going to accept Y bad thing. You need to establish that impacts of X >>> impacts of Y.

      My view is that massive hit to privacy for everyone does not justify marginal reduction of exposure of minors to adult material. Why marginal? Because age verification alone is not going to eliminate/prevent it.

    • Apple already doesn't allow apps where the primary focus is porn. This is ostensibly so apps can provide an age-appropriate experience (that aspect is actually kind of a good thing), but it's mostly about enforcing social media age restriction laws.

      The whole reason why it's trivially easy to bypass with a parent's ID or credit card is because, if you look at Texas's social media age laws - that's exactly how it's supposed to work. If you're under 18, you're not supposed to be on social media without your

      • It sounds to me like the idea behind that law is to make it possible for parents to control what their children are able to use on the Internet while keeping enforcement for the most part up to the parents. That way, if the parents really want to prevent their children from seeing any adult content (Good luck with that!) they can keep their credit cards and other ID away from them and let them register at those sites if they have a more relaxed attitude about it.

        To give you an idea where I'm coming from,

    • Ban porn and gambling online. Treat it as publicly visible airwaves.

      (actually doing that effectively is probably impossible)

      • Why?

        Even if you could do that effectively, wouldn't that further entrench the idea that The People are the government's bitch

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dbialac ( 320955 )

          The People are the government's bitch

          We need to take the French approach: make the government afraid of the people.

    • There are no "mixed feelings". It's "think of the children" bullshit disguising privacy invasion and control by billionaires, their data brokers. It's also possible it will be abused by police and intelligence agencies. This same shit is being applied to additive and subtractive machine tools and 3D printers. This is only the beginning. The billionaires want total power over everything we do and want us to pay for everything and not be allowed to do anything outside of their control.
  • So who is liable if an underage user circumvents the check? Do platforms make checks so intrusive to try to make it hard to circumvent at the cost of privacy? Should developers location block places with such laws to avoid violating the law because a user is underage but circumvented the check?
    • It doesn't matter. What matters is the politicians "did something" and the companies followed the law, so everyone is blameless.

  • Despite Apple's attempts to "push back"... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Pure PR on their part. They don't care one way or another, just go for whatever is more profitable.

    For our side, circumvention is the only option.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "For our side, circumvention is the only option."

      Who is this "our"?

    • For our side, circumvention is the only option.

      If you're not a kid, you're likely not going to even need to circumvent anything. Apple already knows I'm an adult based on my account age and the fact I have an Apple Card. I'm sure Florida's next in line to do pass a similar law and all it will amount to is a pop-up saying I didn't need to do anything to verify my age.

      Hell, even getting carded in real life is like "Birth year starts with 19xx? You're good."

  • Texas Nanny State.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by CoolCash ( 528004 )
    Crazy to see Texas slide into the nanny state role so hard.

    • Re:Texas Nanny State.. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Thursday June 04, 2026 @01:10PM (#66175376)

      Is it? Amazing how easily fooled people are.

      • It's the result of an unfit education system and a purposefully ignorant populace that is easier to manufacture the consent of. Comparing average Americans to average Europeans, and it's it not even close which group would make better Jeopardy! contestants or Trivial Pursuit players. Most Americans don't know geography or anything about anything, so it's no wonder they have a President Camacho who builds an octagon wrestling ring on the front lawn of the White House and talks about leaving it.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Not at all. They've been run by Republicans for the last 30 years. In fact, I'd expect nothing less than creeping fascism.

    • Tracks with Christian Nationalism, government surveillance, and corporate oligarchy.

    • Re:Texas Nanny State.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Smonster ( 2884001 ) on Thursday June 04, 2026 @05:31PM (#66175788)
      Republicans were never against the "nanny state" They are against the federal government from dictating to them how they have to treat American citizens who live within states controlled by Republicans. They don't want the feds getting in the way of how they can control the residents in within their state boundaries. They want to be the nanny with no interference from any pesky things like the US constitution and federal regulations.
      • Christofascist white suprematist conservatives hate freedom and liberal, open societies. They want total control over people's lives and their bodies. They want a camera in your bedroom and a keylogger on your computer that decides by AI if you're "good" or not.
  • It seems this would go against freedom of speech laws. You're being compelled to tell your age (and whatever else is being sent).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      You are not, any more than you are "compelled" against your constitutional rights to provide an ability to pay when making a purchase.

    • More than that, it's a rug pull changing the bargain and compelling personal identification verified by unknown party(ies) with unknown data collection and resale policies to use a device. I'd sooner just use a VPN.
    • And how is this any more compelled speech than having to show proof of your age to buy tobacco or alcohol? In all cases you have a choice: prove your age to the seller's statisfaction or don't buy.

  • Identify yourself, citizen!

    Big Brother is watching. Everything you do on your phone or computer will be logged, and any suspicious patterns of activity will be flagged as grounds for detention while an in-depth investigation is performed.

    Don't be alarmed, most people will be released -eventually.

    • You can't even drive or walk down certain roads in border states without getting harassed for papers. So at least the authoritarianism is consistently applied to both real and virtual reality.

      • Alas that nobody every says "Enough. No." and if they do, they either get thrown in jail forever or exiled to another country. I kinda wonder if it's as bad in Poland or Hungary. I know there are still a lot of very pro-western white folks there. Maybe they it figured out? It's all gone to hell here in the USA. I'm glad we nominally still have the First Amendment, which is still better than the weak-sauce in the EU of "free speech until we get annoyed then you go to jail". However, it's nowhere near strong
    • Correlated with Flock and Ring cameras to decide you social credit score. The rest of the people will languish arbitrarily in for-profit GEO Group-run Delaney Hall indefinitely, required to work for $1/day commissary money to afford food because the regular meals are unfit for human consumption.

  • also issue updates including security updates? Won't this stop people from using the store leaving potentially vulnerable machines?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Not for the OS, only for apps downloaded from the store and a few Apple apps that are included by default.

  • It doesn't make a lot of sense in the first place since Apple doesn't permit adult content within the apps they
    allow within the AppStore ecosystem. ( as far as I'm aware of anyway )

    Perhaps instead of doing all this silly age verification stuff for a smartphone in the hands of a minor, why can't
    we choose an option to forgo a data plan for the phone and simply prevent the user of said phone from connecting
    to the internet at all ? Don't need a data plan to make a phone call . . . . .

    Why do we have to have bo

  • This only about surveillance. This is digital ID and social credit system. They are building all the new data centers and enforcing identification in order to store and track every bit of data about you.

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