Update on age requirements for apps distributed in Texas

by Austin_Conlonon 1/12/2026, 8:27 PMwith 68 comments

by Edmondon 1/12/2026, 9:25 PM

If the hammer ever comes down on this issue, ie hardcore requirement for age verification, there are ways to do this while protecting privacy.

We are experimenting with bootstraping a PKI certificate trust chain for facilitating trust projection and information verification online. Think of it as the ability to do things like age verification at scale via a peer-2-peer ish mechanism instead of sending your government id to a service provider.

One experiment is with PGP key holders (for now Keybase key holders) as CAs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46576590

And also .gov email holders:

https://blog.certisfy.com/2025/12/using-gov-email-addresses-...

It's all self-service and requires no sign-up or download of anything, the app (https://certisfy.com/app) is an in-browser app and all the cryptography happens in the browser.

by ghaffon 1/12/2026, 10:08 PM

Meanwhile I actually started college at 16 which is illegal in some locales.

by runakoon 1/12/2026, 11:06 PM

(Not in Texas)

Did this apply to X (Twitter) at all?

by expedition32on 1/12/2026, 9:21 PM

It is interesting to me that we are running a giant social experiment with people's childhoods- something we know can only be done once.

Meanwhile the silicon valley elite admitted that they don't let their 12 year old daughter on Instagram...

by John23832on 1/12/2026, 10:00 PM

Just let the parents be responsible. Jesus.

Attach minor accounts to the account of the parent, make the parent say yes.