• scarabic@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The precise situation is that US states don’t have age verification laws right now but Texas tried to implement one on Jan 1 (Texas SB2420 - it got blocked by a judge as unconstitutional) and Louisiana and Utah have laws coming into effect soon.

        So it’s both true that platforms are moving because of laws but there are no laws. The laws have been announced for many months. They aren’t trivial to implement so of course platforms are doing advance work. They might even want to test it before the laws come into effect, and see how badly it hurts them while they still have time to adjust and fiddle.

        No company wants to do age verification IMO. There is no upside for them. Maybe if we actually prosecuted tech companies for harming children, there would be, but lolz.