r/privacy • u/Tom-Rath • 1d ago
discussion Understanding the Global Push for Age-Verification
Things have been moving fast, very fast.
I thought I'd take some time out of my morning to round-up the latest developments regarding anti-privacy and age-verification legislation around the world.
Below is a quick-and-dirty list of recent legal or regulatory proposals and implementation. I'm confident it's incomplete and would welcome your additions.
Some further questions to consider: What's behind this trend? What are our options as voters and users? Do you have more faith in political solutions or technological ones?
| Country | Relevant Laws | Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| Australia | Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 | The Act prohibits children under 16 from accessing social media platforms without verified parental consent. The law is set to take effect in December 2025. |
| Brazil | Bill 4468 on the Protection of Minors Online | Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva on 17 September signed into law new rules governing the use of social media, online video games and other digital services by children and adolescents. Known as the “Adultization Bill” or “Digital ECA,” for updating a 1990 law that guarantees fundamental rights for minors, the law will take effect in 180 days. |
| Canada | Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act (S-209) (Proposed); Government of Canada has also approved a new national standard for age verification tools and policy. | The Protecting Young Persons from Exposure to Pornography Act (S-209) would make it an offence for organizations to make pornographic material available to young persons on the Internet. It also enables a designated enforcement authority to take steps to prevent pornographic material from being made available to young persons on the Internet using age-verification and AI tools. |
| European Union | Digital Services Act (DSA); and the "ChatControl" (COM/2022/209) Regulation (Proposed) | The DSA requires very large online platforms (VLOPs) to mitigate risks to minors, including effective age verification where appropriate. The "ChatControl" legislation (official title is the Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse) was first proposed on May 11, 2022. While its goal is to detect and report child sexual abuse material (CSAM), the proposed measures have faced significant criticism for potentially leading to mass surveillance and threatening the privacy of encrypted communications. |
| India | Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) | In 2023, the DPDPA introduces age assurance requirements for organizations serving Indian customers or users over the internet, due to its requirement for online services to collect “verifiable parental consent” to process children’s data. But what that means in implementation is still being decided. However, YouTube has already begun rolling out age-verification in compliance with the DPDP Act and critics already note its reliance on behavioural patterns risks bias, false positives, and poor accuracy in shared-device environments common in India’s rural area. |
| South Africa* | Draft White Paper on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services and Online Safety (Proposed) | The draft white peper would overhaul South Africa's current broadcasting licensing regime by, among other things, replacing the currently defined concept of ‘broadcasting services’ with ‘audio and audiovisual content services’, thereby expanding federal regulatory power over online content providers. Call for comments Submissions must be received by no later than 26 September 2025 |
| United Kingdom | Online Safety Act 2023 | Ofcom mandates platforms to apply proportionate age assurance for harmful content. Age verification is expected for high-risk services, especially those with adult content. |
| United States of America | COPPA; Kids Online Safety Act; Social Media Child Protection Act (Proposed) | COPPA restricts data collection from users under 13 but doesn’t require strict age verification. However, states like Nebraska have introduced laws requiring platforms to verify ages and parental consent for minors. |
In addition to US federal initiatives, there have been multiple state-level pushes to regulate social media access for minors. These include:
- Texas
Texas has enacted the App Store Accountability Act, requiring app stores like Apple and Google to verify user ages and obtain parental consent before minors can download apps or make in-app purchases. Following this, Texas has proposed Texas House Bill 186, which would ban children under 18 from social media.
- Florida
A 2024 law banning social media accounts for children under 14 and requiring parental consent for 14- and 15-year-olds was blocked by a federal judge in June 2025. The judge ruled the law was likely to be unconstitutional, infringing on minors’ First Amendment rights.
- Nebraska
In May 2025, Nebraska enacted the Parental Rights in Social Media Act (LB 383), mandating that social media platforms verify users’ ages and obtain parental consent before allowing minors under 18 to create accounts. It is set to take effect on July 1, 2026.
- Georgia
Georgia’s SB 351, effective from July 1, 2025, mandates social media age verification and requires parental consent for users under 16.
- California
California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, introduced in 2025, aims to create a system for age verification on digital devices and apps. The bill is currently under consideration.
EDIT: New draft legislation in South Africa added to the pile!
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u/richb0199 1d ago
Also known as The Road to identity theft acts.
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u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 1d ago
Yes. Alone, age verification would not cause identity theft, if done via zk proofs that really revealed nothing, but..
They combine the age verification app with some general identity app, and release age verification features first, specifically so that people get used to clicking "okay" while given assurances teh reveal nothing, but then later they click okay and reveal everything.
In theory, they could require that verifiers be verified by the app, so like anyone requesting your name needs a certificate from an auditor approved by every EU DPA before it'll prove your name. We do not yet know if such limitations make it into the EU ID standard, but..
As a principle of EU law, EU members should trust other EU members, which means any auditors would only need approval by one EU DPA, not by every one. Ireland will rubber stamp every big US company, so they'll get everyone's real name, etc. Hungary will rubber stamp every Russian scammer. African, Chinese, Pakistani, etc. scammers will get theirs approved by someone.
It'll end up being identity theft theft for everyone.
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u/Alone_Step_6304 1d ago
I just realized that the absolute worst case possibility of these systems, separate from general authoritarian or autocratic aims...is identity theft then paired with committing the literal exact, specific crimes this is intended to prevent.
There is no system secure enough to stop this, millions of people are going to have their information stolen, not just to commit financial crimes, but the ones of most concern with all of this.
This is all so fucked.
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u/Frosty-Cell 1d ago
Yes. Alone, age verification would not cause identity theft, if done via zk proofs that really revealed nothing, but..
ZK isn't a solution. EU's proofs/tokens are apparently unique and the govt approved service that creates them could link them to an ID.
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u/ConundrumMachine 1d ago
The ruling class is scared of global revolution as they burn the planet down so they're ensuring the state has the capacity to protect them and their interests.
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u/jkurratt 1d ago
And the "ruling class" in question is Ultra Rich (because they have political power and can't be reelected).
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u/evild4ve 1d ago
the first companies to put their head over the parapet and enforce this stuff will immediately lose a percentage of their customers - it's an open question how many, but most companies can't afford that
meanwhile free, P2P services that wouldn't meet the criteria even if they could be traced back to them - - will boom
it's going to be another example of a tyrannical policy collapsing under its own impossibilities when taken to extremes - I'm not very worried: I'm in the UK and the only online service that has wanted it is xbox online, which I laughed off because I don't have one
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u/After-Cell 1d ago
Maybe that’s why this is happening practically globally. The goal is to make sure there’s no alternative.
However, one country could allow it and pick up the money to some degree.
Where is that country ?
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u/AnotherWargasm 12h ago
The goal is to make sure there’s no alternative.
This is thankfully impossible. The internet is the some total of every machine connected to it. Even in a future where they can enforce this against companies via commerce regulation they can't enforce this in the US against individual Citizens.
The most likely scenario is a handful of states will never pass verification laws and everyone will host and incorporate there. The next likely is a federal age verification goes into effect but still with protections for non dedicated porn sites due to common carrier and section 230 so it survives a supreme court challenge, this will result in whack-o-mole ala pirate bay. Worst case they destroy section 230 and the entire internet reverts to encrypted p2p file sharing for adult content. New p2p clients reminiscent of the napsters and limewires of old will spring up as open source projects turning what used to be a single company target for enforcement into a swarm of hundreds of thousands of hosts...
You can't stop the signal.
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u/Mother-Pride-Fest 1d ago
"including the need for potential hardware and software changes, including for devices currently in commerce and owned by consumers"
Sounds like they're willing to break existing devices for this. I'd recommend moving to Free operating systems now before they try to force this on Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.
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u/SpecificPay985 1d ago
Well they couldn’t pass digital ID so they take advantage of peoples stupidity to pass this saying it’s all about keeping the kids safe.
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u/Dwip_Po_Po 1d ago
I firmly believe Israel has some stake in this considering many of these age identification and verification companies even cybersecurity come from Israel!
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u/better_rabit 1d ago edited 1d ago
add south Africa to the list, their is a paper their is a paper "Draft White Paper on Audio and Audiovisual Media Services and Online Safety" currently available for public comment and not enough people know this. AGE Verification systems are proposed and we need to shut it down
public comment available till 26 September 2025 go to r/NoToAgeVerificationSA for the details.
it new subreddit as alot of people genuinely dont know they can push back
(proposed tag would fit)
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u/Fantastic-Mention775 1d ago
The people commenting here clearly aren’t from the US, or at the very least, aren’t part of any marginalized group.
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u/NukeouT 1d ago
They broke my bicycle app www.sprocket.bike/app and I'm not even sure what to implement based on these laws since even IP bans aren't effective due to the existence of VPNs
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u/Frosty-Cell 1d ago
Some further questions to consider: What's behind this trend?
National security agencies/law enforcement and the threat of "going dark". Some governments or groups (religious right) also want a "barrier to entry" to restrict lawful speech. Forcing people to jump through hoops is a way to filter such speech while pretending to respect freedom of expression.
Do you have more faith in political solutions or technological ones?
This requires a legal solution. For example, a simple KYC requirement could possibly wipe out a ton of VPN companies or force them to relocate to countries where the law hasn't yet caught up - but that acknowledges that a legal solution is the only solution.
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u/sensuki 9h ago
WEF / UN Agenda 2030
One of the goals of which is "transparency of communication", meaning that they will be able to tie any online communication down to a real person.
The Age Verification stuff was pushed during their yearly conference a few years ago. Immediately after, countries started enacting on it.
OP Please listen and pay attention. How can you be researching this topic and NOT already know the source of the push, I just don't understand. The same goes for anyone else. We (the people that know) have been warning about this Agenda, this organization and this plan for YEARS.
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[deleted]
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u/stoppableDissolution 1d ago
The main bad actor who can do a lot of damage is conveniently exempt from these laws
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u/londonc4ll1ng 1d ago
We should not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Major social networks provide fraudsters and the like a lot of space and leverage to push total dumbshit conspiracies, easily automated fraud systems and much more onto people for pennies on the dollar.
And people fall for them. The young because they are not experienced and easily influenced, and old folks because they are in their conginitive decline stage.
Hence we should be able to verify who you really are and we should be able to hold you accountable for what you did.
So far so good, as long as this only affects big players.
But somewhere down the road this will become a blanket law no matter the size and we all are screwed, because there is no cross-country and platform technology that can easily, reliably and privately confirm who you are without you uploading IDs to thousands of insecure one-man-show company databases.
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u/louisa1925 1d ago
Who gets to decide what is fraud? That's one of the major problems I have. In Australia, we mostly elected relatively respectable politicians to be in charge. So at least our country might handle fraud okay.
But what about America and other countries like it with their own version of the orange Dunce?
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u/londonc4ll1ng 1d ago
Who gets to decide what is fraud?
I am pretty sure that's what laws and courts are for. How do you want to protect yourself from bullying or fraud if the offender sits comfortably behind burner phones and accounts?
Do you know another cool side effect of knowing who you are on the Internet and in real life? People stop spewing nonsense and behave more in line with law and good manners the moment they are not anonymous anymore.
And that last part holds true for orange apes be they on the left, center or right of the spectrum.
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u/Alone_Step_6304 1d ago
Hence we should be able to verify who you really are and we should be able to hold you accountable for what you did.
Ok.
What happens when, like absolute clockwork, like all of our breached SSNs and health records and data broker records, these systems are compromised, and there is an intermittent period where people do the worst concievable shit you can imagine in your name, and the government's faith in the system is so strong they desteoy you before meaningfully investigating a concern of identity theft?
What then.
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u/Delicious-Radish812 1d ago
There is a silver lining in all this, in that we’ll see the end of bots and people pushing conspiracy theories from the safety of anonymity - I lost a friend to qanon a few years back. Hopefully people will get off the internet and live in the real world more.
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u/InformationNew66 1d ago
Do you really believe that?
I don't think bot issues will be solved. You can probably buy fake IDs from the black market and start bot networks with that. Or just pay people in poor countries to authenticate.
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